/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>15923441
>Bartering is not a natural economic activity.
If you are talking about on a civilization-scale then yes it's not very effective as a means of trade as you do need to look for someone who wants your stuff and has the things you want.
>Even very ancient peoples would trade on debt or currency.
The earliest record is Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE where farmers would deposit their grain in the temple and gave the farmer a receipt in the form of a clay token which they could then use to pay fees or other debts to the temple.
>Since the bulk of the deposits in the temple were of the main staple, barley, a fixed quantity of barley came to be used as a unit of account.[53]

Also found this:
>Anthropologists have noted many cases of 'primitive' societies using what looks to us very like money but for non-commercial purposes, indeed commercial use may have been prohibited:

>Often, such currencies are never used to buy and sell anything at all. Instead, they are used to create, maintain, and otherwise reorganize relations between people: to arrange marriages, establish the paternity of children, head off feuds, console mourners at funerals, seek forgiveness in the case of crimes, negotiate treaties, acquire followers—almost anything but trade in yams, shovels, pigs, or jewelry.[51]