ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Here Graeber explores the evidence on: the use of cattle as money in eastern or southern Africa, of shell money in the Americas or Papua New Guinea, bead money, feather money, the use of iron rings, cowries, spondylus shells, brass rods, or woodpecker scalps. Money, as Ann Pettifor forcefully asserts, 'is not and never has been a commodity, nor is it based on a commodity. Instead money is a social construct a social relationship based primarily and ultimately on trust. Here at last we have found an instance where the community as a whole needs to establish relative prices for each commodity; no longer can it circumvent this need by allowing the parties involved to haggle out the prices among themselves. And sure enough, it is in the legal codes of various societies where we find the earliest records of relative prices.
