194 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 
after man had acquired the necessary metallurgical knowledge 
In the Homeric poems we have evidence of the concurrent use 
-of definite weights of gold and silver, and iron, with the older 
OX unit. 
The metals acquire value as all other articles acquire value, 
\because they are suited to satisfy certain human needs. After 
the metals have been adopted as money, they acquire a distinct 
and special importance because of their utility as the medium of 
exchange ; but first of all they must acquire the direct value that 
arises from direct utility. The metals are valued by man chiefly 
as ornaments, or as the material out of which the implements of 
industry or the weapons of war may be fashioned. The precious 
metals are valued for their utility as ornaments only. Neither 
gold nor silver had been put to serious use either in war or in 
industry. They obtained their value because of their attrac- 
tiveness as ornaments for adorning the person, and in all 
probability the earliest form in which gold circulated was in 
strings of nuggets or beads resembling the older shell necklaces. 
Ancient geographers tell us that in Arabia native nuggets were 
used as ornaments. “Having perforated these they pass a 
thread of flax through them in alternation with transparent 
stones and make themselves chains, and put them round their 
necks and wrists.”* But with increasing knowledge of how to 
work the metals, gold dust, as well as “ fireless gold,” as these 
Arabian natives called it, was fashioned into ornaments, and at 
first, no doubt, after the older models. Primitive coins are in 
existence, and in some cases still in circulation, in which the 
evolution from the ring and shell can be traced. 
As man’s chief employment in the early stages of society 
was war and the chase, weapons of war were greatly prized and 
jealously guarded. Consequently we find many traces of the 
employment of the implements of war as a medium of exchange. 
Even in the stone age we know that this was the case. Tough 
green stone slabs, valuable for making hatchets, form the unit of 
value among the lowest Australian natives who have hardly yet 
*Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, quoted Ridgeway, op. cit., pp. 75-77 
