Weapons on Ancient Coins | Hacker News Reader

Weapons on Ancient Coins

coinweek.com

49 pointsbenbreen21 comments

I guess the implicit question is why such obsession on fighting and weapons on the coins. Anthropologist David Graeber has a fascinating perspective (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs).

He posits that our present assumptions about money (first there's barter, then coins and fiat money, then credit) is actually backwards. And that primitive societies rather had interlocking systems of informal credit between everyone instead, since everyone knew everyone and you only really needed to settle the difference very infrequently.

And coins only really came into play as a supply logistics mechanism for traveling armies. Since a band of people traveling through town can't participate in the informal credit system. And so the taxation system created in such a way that the food producers needed to acquire an "external" currency the army had. And that this was shown archeologically where concentration of coins were denser around militarized border regions of various societies around the world.

> And that primitive societies rather had interlocking systems of informal credit between everyone instead, since everyone knew everyone and you only really needed to settle the difference very infrequently.

And, thus, the very first blockchain (i.e. distributed ledger) was created.

The Great Wall of China was built by labourers making and laying blocks, many of them providing their labour to meet regional tax quotas. They marked sections showing who built which section. This makes it the first proof of work block chain.

More temporary structures used palisade fences of wooden posts, the remains of these posts giving us the first proof of stake.

Kafka has a lovely telling of how the Great Wall of China was built:

http://www.kafka-online.info/the-great-wall-of-china.html

That book (Graeber's Debt) really opened up my eyes to how valuable anthropology is for understanding human interactions. (No shit! In hindsight.)

(Well, it did that, and taught me a lot about economy and finance in the grand scheme of things.)

Since I read it, I've started looking more into some anthropology-leaning literature, and found that when people are a something-slash-anthropologist, there's somewhat reliably always fresh insight in what they're saying.

Anyway, I'm about to enjoy Graeber's post-humous Dawn of Everything now.

I always love these postings about these subjects on HN. Especially, as I studied Cultural Anthropology myself. Find it more interesting than most technical posts :))

> Note that the soldier is naked except for his helmet, a sensible adaptation to a hot climate. This may also reflect an awareness that garment fibers driven into a wound by a spearpoint promoted infection.

Pretty sure this is erroneous speculation. Nudity in Greek art is meant to symbolize heroism - the Greeks did not actually fight naked.

It makes me doubt the accuracy of the entire article.

“Defeated at the Battle of Philippi on October 23, 42 BCE, Brutus and Casca killed themselves”

I agree, the naked Greek warrior is art rather than showing hot climate uniform/dress. The coins are cool but the history is off. It was Cassius and not Casca. Cassius and Brutus committed suicide separately after losing the 1st and 2nd battles of Phillipi respectively. Not on the same day either.

God, some of those coins are so beautiful. It's really hard not to idealize ancient civilizations when we're staring right at some of their best and most beautiful propaganda.

You're right, they're truly beautiful. As I said in my own reply those ancient craftsmen knew their trade par excellence.

I once learned metalwork and despite lots of my reading on how they made those coins I'm still damned if I know how they repeatedly maintained the quality of those coins given that back then that stamping coins was a manual process and of necessity coins had to be mass produced quickly in great quantities.

Today we often see archaeologists go in for experimental archaeology to get to the root of how ancients achieved some seemingly insurmountable task. I'd love to see a modern day exercise of this sort. I reckon we'd be very hard pressed to replicate those coins if we were restricted to using only the technology those ancients had available at their disposal.

Funny. Due to your comment I went to actually read the article ( really! ).

And I get no pictures. None whatsoever.

I didn't check the code but they delay to load for me, so it probably uses JS. Using Firefox with uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger, so I dunno.

I too got no pictures in Firefox, but it is working in Chrome.

Same here - inaccessible and broken site. Tor is blocked completely from accessing it. Man, I hate the modern web so much. Just put text and pictures in an HTML file and stop this insanity already.

This is super interesting to me (interested in metallurgy and ancient forms of money).

Went on a bit of a deep dive (i.e. watched some YouTube videos).

Ok jokes aside, what a very interesting topic.

Best video I found so far is about 8 months old. It’s related to a researcher’s PHD. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GSIJIOfpK08

She did some comparative experiments and definitely adds to the general knowledge base.

(There’s a 2007/2008 French experiment video that basically didn’t prove anything they hypothesized and was quoted a few times. I’m disregarding it because of the inclusive results and what looks like lack of follow up.)

The main issue is that there really isn’t a ton of historical knowledge of how money was minted thousands of years ago. Turns out that people back back back in the day valued the knowledge of how coins were minted to the extent that there is almost no archaeological evidence.

It’s a really interesting topic that even in 2021 has a huge amount of room for research.

Perhaps monarchs have a great political motivation to destroy molds, equipment, personnel and knowledge that could support minting competing currencies? (The word monarch literally means single ruler.)

Since this minting craft would only practiced by a very small number of people (relative to other crafts), I think the chance of many relevant artifacts/documents surviving until today would be relatively slim.

I'll limit my comments to the coins themselves. I've always been amazed at the remarkable quality and the height of the relief on many ancient coins.

Not only are many of these designs quite beautiful but also the fact that the high relief used on many of the dies was transferred with high accuracy to the coins is a great tribute to the excellent skill and craftsmanship of those early metalworkers.

I was expecting to see something really exotic that time forgot like a hybrid between a whip and a scythe, a two person operated foot pump based flamethrower or a shadoof with a bucket of snakes that invaders would drop over castle walls...

(Yes I just made these all up.)

I don’t know if you were joking when you said you made them all up but the first two are actual thing: the Kusarigama (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusarigama) and pump used for Greek Fire (e.g. see the illustration here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire)

That is apparently an auction site, selling off ancient coins for modern money, which I struggle to see as very ethical. Those ancient treasures should be in museums, not in private collections, especially the ones that -according to the article- are "very rare".

Other than that, the article reminded me of something I've always found interesting. The article mentions that "hoplon", in ancient Greek, was the word for the large circular shield carried by hoplites. Accordingly, "arma" is the ancient Greek word for chariot. The interesting thing is that, in modern Greek, "hoplo" (όπλο) means "weapon" and so does "arma" (chariot) when used in the plural, "armata" ("άρματα"). The latter use of "arma" is more common in texts from around the time of the revolution against the Ottomans, in 1821, where we find the "armatoloi", who were originally hired by Ottomans to "bear arms" (I think the latin words is unconnected). The word "armatosia", (αρματωσιά) on the other hand means "armour", or more generally "armament". And now I'm wondering if "arms" is actually unconnected to the modern use of the Greek "arma"...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com