[lasagnaphil]

I thought these were also already explained in Graeber's book...

A paragraph from Chapter 8:

> Why? The single most important factor would appear to be war. Bullion predominates, above all, in periods of generalized violence. There's a very simple reason for that. Gold and silver coins are distin­ guished from credit arrangements by one spectacular feature: they can be stolen. A debt is, by definition, a record, as well as a relation of trust. Someone accepting gold or silver in exchange for merchandise, on the other hand, need trust nothing more than the accuracy of the scales, the quality of the metal, and the likelihood that someone else will be willing to accept it. In a world where war and the threat of violence are everywhere-and this appears to have been an equally ac­ curate description of Warring States China, Iron Age Greece, and pre­ Mauryan India-there are obvious advantages to making one's trans­ actions simple. This is all the more true when dealing with soldiers. On the one hand, soldiers tend to have access to a great deal of loot, much of which consists of gold and silver, and will always seek a way to trade it for the better things in life. On the other, a heavily armed itinerant soldier is the very definition of a poor credit risk. The econo­ mists' barter scenario might be absurd when applied to transactions between neighbors in the same small rural community, but when deal­ ing with a transaction between the resident of such a community and a passing mercenary, it suddenly begins to make a great deal of sense.