This and the ACOUP series about ironmaking[1] were some of the most illuminating pieces I've ever read about human history. Highly recommend this blog, it makes regular evening reading for me.<p>[1] - <a href="https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-mining/" rel="nofollow">https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...</a>
I found it interesting how the article sets up some ideological traps: it mentions a lack of efficiency, trade value, and so on. But then it explains that the lack of efficiency is required for the increased resilience and that trade value is ultimately meaningless because having a big pile of cash won't save you when nobody else has anything to sell to you. It even takes a moment to pause and double down on telling you that Malthus is just plain wrong.<p>It actually provides a nice example for a <i>gift economy</i> even in a system that already has money and markets: the solution to crop failures is not to barter by exchanging your non-food belongings for food but to build strong relationships by giving to others when you have plenty so they will share with you when you have little. Communal spaces are only mentioned in passing but it's also easy to see how if an orchard can double as pasture and plots are decentralized, one farm's orchard might be used by another farm for pasture as part of such a relationship.<p>If you're not already familiar, I would strongly recommend David Graeber's <i>Debt</i> as a very approachable introduction to the idea of gift economies and the myth of barter economies being the precursor to modern money-based trade: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years</a>
I'm surprised that this was flagged, and I wonder why. This blog's content gets linked here with some regularity, and I always find the writing to be interesting, thoughtful, and informative.