Paying For Megalithia (British History)

[Mick Harper]

Paying for Megalithia (cont)

This is one of the problems of reconstructing Megalithia: when literary sources become available Megalithia tends to disappear or at any rate go underground, and when Megalithia flourishes there are no historical sources. Nonetheless there is evidence in situ. For example, consider the village green and the village pond. These are always treated as if they are the most natural thing in the world for any self-respecting village to have, but that is not the case.

Animals are in fields and are watered there; they are moved from field to field; they are taken from the field to market. Where is there a requirement for communal animal facilities? But the village green and the village pond are both perfect for drovers bringing their animals through the village and needing somewhere to stop overnight. Now the green and the pond have become valuable communal assets since the drovers will not enjoy such facilities for nothing. But how does the drover pay? After all, the average drover, with meat animals on the hoof, will have nothing the village wants.

[nemesis8]

Ok it's coming together now...

At the start I was a tad confused, you began by saying salt was a medium of exchange and then later started talking about tax, trade, pre-monetary era and barter.

So here I started rereading... thinking what's happened about the medium of exchange bit? Have I missed something?

Was this pre-monetary/barter era prior to the medium of exchange bit you mentioned in the first couple of posts?

Maybe the idea is to make the reader think?

Maybe it was clear to everyone else?

[Mick Harper]

No, this is a confused treatment of a confusing subject because I haven't worked out the answer. I am assuming throughout that there is no cash. But it is not sufficient just to vaguely wish into existence 'bartering' because a nationwide system, operating at every level, has to have some easier way than having to barter every step of the way. Today I will be posting one such possibility. But it's not a problem that I have sold and needless to say nor has orthodoxy (unless Don tells us otherwise).

[Mick Harper]

Paying for Megalithia

A constant theme of this book is to demonstrate that the Megalithics are the source of most of our past and present religious practices and the curious but very widespread rite of sacrificing animals “to God” gives us a clue as one of the ways drovers repaid the village.

In all agrarian economies, fresh meat is almost never on the menu. Meat of any kind is for high days and holidays and even then will normally be preserved. But for drovers fresh meat is all around them so the calculated barbecuing of a lamb for a village en route is to ensure a welcome at that village for drovers.

Some animals seem to have been developed for payment purposes: geese for instance can waddle along happily for miles with juvenile imprinting relieving anybody of supervision duties*, and their omnivoric diet means they can be left to their own devices along the way. All of which means dropping one off to every village is cheap indeed.

Notice that the trading of meat for access can be an entirely routine exchange but the religious dimension can be emphasised with the village ‘en fete’ in expectation of a communal barbecue. All this is entirely mirrored by the last vestiges of the traditional droving life, the modern ‘travellers’. Perhaps not the very modern travellers but even quite recently the arrival of travellers in a given location might either be an entirely routine affair involving various metallurgical services (as with the Megalithics) or the trumpeted arrival of the funfair or the circus, both of which were (and indeed are) travellers' specialities.

* Or at least to children as per Little Goose Girl folk tales.

[Mick Harper]

Paying for Megalithia (cont)

Looked at from above, it might be concluded that each side benefits from the other but this is to be over-sanguine about the cordiality of the relationship. Taking strictly historical examples of situations where animals-on-the-hoof and farmers co-exist, say the sheep of the Mesta in medieval Spain or the cattle drives of the early American Midwest, it is certainly noticeable that downright hostility is the most obvious relationship. There is no attempt by either side to benefit the other directly, the relationship being policed by the state which appreciates both are necessary.

However, Megalithia always assumes there is no state. It constructs its systems on the assumption that in good times the state will be so weak as to be of no assistance, in bad times there will be no state at all, and in the worst of times the state will be positively inimical to Megalithic interests. This must always be borne in mind when trying to reconstruct at this distance how Megalithia paid its way, indeed to account for how it survived so long.

[Mick Harper]

Paying for Megalithia (cont)

Consider the children's ditty “Here we go gathering nuts in May”, an activity that is not advised since there are no nuts to be had in May. The reference is to Megalithia, to whom the month of May is special, because nuts are like salt, the kind of relatively high value, low weight goods that can be used for exchange in a cash-free economy. But why would the Megalithics specialise in this when nuts are readily available everywhere?

Firstly it is because Megalithics are constantly moving from one geographic area to another so they are constantly moving from places where certain types of goods are in supply to where it is in demand. Secondly, Megalithics specialise inter alia in tree plantations. Nuts in peasant economies tend to be regarded as either a seasonal delicacy or as something you let pigs root for, because tree plantations are not a peasant activity other than on the small scale of coppicing. Even fruit orchards are noticeably absent from the ordinary economy since it is just not worth going in for this kind of specialisation, local demand being too limited and transport costs of tree products uneconomic.

However for Megalithics, particular kinds of wood are required on a quasi-industrial scale, notably alder for smelting and oak for shipbuilding, so growing nuts commercially becomes another candidate. It may even be that our present large edible nuts are the product of Megalithic domestication efforts in the past.

[Chad]

[Mick Harper]

Ouch! If true. Are these mentioned in the song? Give us some fell reason to take this out.

[Chad]

An old auntie of mine (long dead) showed me how to collect these when I was a kid. She told me then that they were what was being referred to in the rhyme.

I suspect it's another name for pignuts.

[Mick Harper]

How about we cite your aunt in a footnote to show how open-minded we are? I am always loath to chuck away a good idea (the nuts theory exists in isolation to the rhyme).

[Chad]

How about a section on megalithic bush-tucker?

I bet the dried mushroom trade was highly lucrative.

[Mick Harper]

No, Chad, the Megalithics were highly civilised, not taking part in some benighted pre-historic game show. However you may continue to regale us with your family's dietary regime. Yes, halucinogenics were Megalithic big business; no, mushrooms have no calorific content.

[Chad]

[Mick Harper]

Paying for Megalithia (cont)

Another example of a folk survival pointing us towards payment methods is the wishing well. It is generally assumed that throwing a coin into a well is a modern form of the religious practice (vouched for by archaeological finds) of throwing goods into 'sacred' water sources. It always pays to suspect any 'it's for ritual purposes' explanation and in this case throwing gewgaws into water was originally an ingenious form of payment the Megalithics employed in places where it wasn't economic to have a fulltime toll collector.

The drover simply threw his payment into the 'well' or a special pool. It is not generally speaking worth anyone's while robbing the well because wells are difficult of access and there might not be much in it anyway but the peripatetic Megalithic toll-collector knows exactly when it is time to collect and, hydraulics being something of a Megalithic speciality, no doubt the means to do easily enough. Local legends are always worth reconsidering in the light of Megalithic payment methods, and they always follow the same pattern: pay the money and it's good luck, don't pay the money and something awful will happen.

[Grant]