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4. The Classical World of Greece and Rome (Birth of Christ to about 500 A.D.)
[Note: World Population at the beginning of this period was about 200,000,000]
Of all the creations of the ancient world, probably none has been more easily used by counterfeiters, neocheaters, and government bureaucrats than the invention of coinage. They have always used the monetary system to their profit and advantage without offering true value in return. The process of expropriation of private wealth through monetary manipulation, which still continues in the world today, is a complex process, largely dependent on government interpretation of written contract law and monopolization of coinage, weights and measures.
When gold and silver were first used as money (as a means of exchange in the buying and selling of goods), they were passed from hand to hand in small ingot form or else as dust or nuggets. According to legend, the first coins were produced in Lydia in western Asia Minor in about 700 B.C. The process by which these early coins were made is the same basic procedure employed today. First, a precise quantity of gold or silver was weighed out and then melted in a mold, so as to form a button or blank (the modern disk or planchette). These blanks were placed on an anvil and stamped or struck with an iron die bearing the symbol of the issuer (often the state or king). Sometimes a pair of dies was used, one on each side of the blank, so that when struck, an impression was made on both the obverse and reverse side of the to-be coin.
Some creative producer probably developed the idea of making coins in order to avoid the repetition involved in weighing the precious metals each time they were passed from person to person. The stamping of impressions on the disks was to provide a form of guarantee as to their weight and purity. Since the production and use of precious metals was a jealously guarded prerogative of royalty in the ancient world (and a source of state income and wealth) the coining of money soon became a government monopoly. The coining monopoly also necessitated government involvement in the definition and promulgation of weights and measures because of the need to accurately and consistently measure identical amounts of gold and silver.
The production of coins led to their imitation by counterfeiters, one minor type of neocheater. Since coins were a valued commodity, embracing a certain metallic content as well as the hard work involved in their craftsmanship, they were likely to be duplicated by cheaters who hoped to lessen the amount of craftsmanship in each coin or else lessen either the purity or the quantity of the metal. Laziness prompted them to use fraud in an attempt to falsify wealth. Thus their counterfeit coins would actually cost them less effort than the real coin. As state sovereignty over coinage was amassed, it came to be an affront to the state to compete in any way in the production of coins. Not only did it become a crime to issue full-weight imitation pieces, but the state forbade private persons from minting their own full-weight coins (even if they were not fashioned after the likenesses on the government coins). Government monopolization of the mint became total in order to insure these neocheaters the fullest measure of benefits. Their laziness justified using the law to not only expropriate wealth, but to prevent others from creating it.
Whatever counterfeiting existed before medieval times was on a relatively small scale, at least until governments themselves realized that they could handsomely profit by taking on the role of the counterfeiter. In the history of nearly every national unit of metallic currency is found the story of chronic monetary debasement. Three general methods of tampering with the coinage were usually employed. The two most common were the reduction of the weight or the purity of the metal in a given coin, without diminishing its current value. The third, a slightly more subtle form of coin debasement, involved no actual tampering with the coin, but rather a governmental redefinition in the legal denomination or standard of value. The story of European governmental control over coinage is summed up in the history of the gold `maravedi', an Arabian coin which was maintained at 60 to 65 grains for a period of 400 years or more by the Arabs. When Europeans took control of the gold `maravedi', within less than four centuries it became a unit of account representing less than 1.5 grains of silver.
The history of coinage debasement in all of the western European nations was nearly the same. In France there was a nearly continuous record of over 40 different and distinct debasements, which occurred between 768 and 1764, during which time the monetary unit declined to 1/66th of its original value. Things got so bad at times in medieval Germany, that the neocheaters resorted to the crudest methods to prevent detection of their debasement: Private ownership of scales was outlawed in an attempt to prevent individuals and merchants from detecting weight changes.
There was only one point in governmental debasement of its own coinage. It was a dishonest and lazy attempt to confiscate part of the property belonging to those who held governmentally minted coins. The proceeds were used to support the royal monarchies or to finance war, by which these monarchies hoped to obtain more plunder. Monetary debasement often went on with such wild abandon over the centuries (particularly after the invention of paper money), that it was only limited by the destruction of the monetary standard itself.
In the United States, the epitome of neocheating was reached when the government courts abrogated gold clauses in private contracts during the New Deal era. Not only did the state require that all privately owned gold be turned over to the government treasury, but the Supreme Court refused to honor the clear language and intent of contractual agreements. Lenders wanted to have the same amount (weight) of gold returned to them as they had lent. Since the government was the biggest borrower, it was to their clear advantage to have the gold clause disowned in their own government bonds. It would have been too obvious an inconsistency to violate such a clause in government bonds, and then upheld it in contracts not involving the government.
Among all the purely commercial inventions of mankind, the use of money as a common medium of exchange and the technology of minting coins must surely rank as one of the most beneficial and seemingly innocent developments. Yet, one can hardly think of a more devious subversion of beneficial means than what the state and its neocheaters have done to money. Apparently free of aggression, the history of money should teach that it is often seduction and subversion, and not necessarily compulsion and coercion, upon which the opponents of Neo-Tech depend.
Other Inventions of the Classical World
Although sketch maps and unscaled plans of cities and local regions are known from the civilizations of the Near East from as early as 2500 B.C., it was not possible to create maps, as we know them today, until means had been devised to express the spatial relationships between one geographic point and another. Such a system could not be developed until progress in astronomical observations permitted some rough system of plotting longitude and latitude. This did not come about until the centuries immediately after the birth of Christ.
Ptolemy, the Greek geographer who did map work in Alexandria in about 150 A.D., is generally considered the father of cartography (mapmaking). He relied upon a systematic use of coordinates based upon known distances and measurements of the height of the sun at midday. He also relied upon triangulation to verify locations. Despite great defects in his maps (he lacked accurate measuring devices, timepieces, and the magnetic compass to check his work), they were depended on at least until the 10th Century when Arabic and Islamic geographers took a renewed interest in mapmaking.
A knowledgeable grasp of geography was a prerequisite of inter-regional trade. Merchants and traders could hardly send out caravans and convoys without some knowledge of where they were going and how to get there and back. Trade and commerce were two of the most important forces in expanding the boundaries of man's knowledge of geography, both on land and at sea. As early as the 5th Century B.C., for example, some sailors in the Mediterranean were noting down their observations of landmarks, coastal features, and other important factors having bearing on their ability to navigate in the area. Both before and during the early days of the Christian era, the most important contributions to cartography were not made by professional theologians, who often speculated on the location of the Garden of Eden, but by sailors on the edge of the sea, where the outlines of the earth were tested by everyday experience.
It was probably about 2000 B.C. somewhere in the Near East that the discovery was made that a mixture of silica sand and an alkali such as soda or potash, when heated strongly, would fuse and liquefy to become glass. The Romans, as in other areas of civilization, made improvements on the basic technology of others. Roman glass had fewer bubbles than that of the Egyptians because they were apparently able to fire their furnaces to a higher temperature. The Romans originally had little need for window glass, but as they moved northwards, windows became more of a necessity. Although it is impossible to credit any one inventor with developing the technique of casting window glass, at least two different methods were known at the beginning of the medieval era. The production techniques for large quantities of plate glass were not really developed by commercial businessmen until the l9th Century in Britain and the United States.
The pulley was probably first used to aid in the raising of water from mid-Eastern wells (around 800 B.C.) and then later in Greek ships as an assist to sail hoists (around 600 B.C.). Compound pulleys were certainly known by the time of Archimedes of Syracuse, who died in 212 B.C. It is doubtful if Archimedes actually invented them, but he did make fabulous use of them (in one instance he pulled a grounded galley up on the beach single-handedly). Both the Roman writers, Vitruvius (first century B.C.) and Hero of Alexandria (first century A.D.) were familiar with cranes, pulleys, windlasses, and the use of wooden gears. Hero built a machine, the first odometer, to measure distance directly according to the number of revolutions made by the wheel of a cart. The use of gear teeth has also been found in medieval water mills and wind mills. When translated into metal, the toothed wheel was to become an important part of the clock. Medieval cranes were used in the construction of buildings, as well as for the loading of ships. Eventually they were used both in attacking and defending medieval castles and other military fortifications.
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