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. 



