There were a lot of ancient societies that didn't have money but still engaged in commerce. The ancient Egyptians payed taxes in food for example. What the article stresses is that we don't have a record of the Incas' merchant class. This doesn't mean they didn't have one; they had no writing system either so it's possible that Inca trade was simply never recorded.
One thing to remember about the Inca's though is that though they had no written language, they did have a record keeping system involving knots in string. Only a very few Incas knew how this system worked so it's possible that here was no efficient reckoning system available to the masses so large scale trade would have been impossible in a lot of ways.
Another thing to think of, is that when talking about the 'Incas' we should avoid conflating the Incas themselves, who were relatively few in number, and the vast number of peoples that they ruled over. The bulk of the Incas themselves were soldiers in the military and were provided for directly by the government, while the conquered peoples were reputedly pressed into labor and made to wear uniforms corresponding to their social statuses. It's possible that the various tribes traded amongst themselves before they were conquered by the Incas and had their societies radically transformed.
1. The Inca state had no internal trade system whatsoever. This is, if accurate, indeed unusual for a society of its size.
2. Despite this, they still managed to acquire great "wealth", which the article defines as infrastructure and public works. This is not surprising at all, since historically even societies that had markets did not usually rely on them for civil engineering projects.
It's possible, in principle, that this "transaction" was the first of its kind in Inca civilization and only happened to involve gold because that's what the Spanish wanted. But since gold is the quintessential commodity currency and has much of its value tied to others' valuing it [1], I think the burden of proof is on the claim they didn't have money. (And that's even before considering this famous anecdote -- one of only a few available, about any aspect of Inca culture.) They don't even address it though.
[1] Unlike bartered goods or services, gold (like other good currencies) is readily divisible and transportable, transfers without any skill, and stores indefinitely. Unlike many commodities, gold is not valued primarily for its functional value (food can be eaten, cloth provides warmth, etc.)
I guess you're entitled to use whatever standard of proof you want. But "random guy on the internet doesn't like it" is not the kind of thing you should expect to persuade others. For me it certainly doesn't outweigh the opinion of professional scholars.
The reason we know Romans had money is that we still have some of their money. If they did have money and you're asserting it was gold, then it should be up to you to come up with some of their golden money. There are certainly plenty of other artifacts from the era.
I get the feeling from this and your previous post that you're associating something having value with it being traded or used as money? Value and currency. Am I wrong? I know that the majority of my possessions have very little monetary value (maybe even zero) but a lot of value none the less. Judging by the small understanding of the Imca I have, they placed a lot of value in a lot of non material things and also in material things that weren't readily tradable.
A lot about the Inca isn't understood - their record keeping/message system for example, quipu. And these were made of string. A lot of their artifacts have been preserved in deserts and glaciers, allowing very fragile things to be recovered. Quite apart from first hand accounts, I would think that unless something major has been overlooked that is right in front of everyone, money didn't exist.
First, it depends on whether the gold was considered a currency. If it was just another good, then it's really just a bartering -- life for some good, which in this case happens to be gold.
Second, that story is post-conquistador. It is in fact the Spanish who are demanding the gold and silver, which is of course what the Spanish used for currency. So it's really an observation on the Spanish, not the Incans.
It may be that the Inca never used gold as currency, but it would be hard to substantiate that claim, I would think. The reason the Spanish valued it as currency is not because of some quirk of the Spanish, however -- it's univerally a good currency (though not the best). Unlike bartered goods or services, gold is readily divisible and transportable, transfers without any skill, and stores indefinitely.
The Spanish had grown up knowing that gold could be swapped into land and wine and women. Get a lot of it, go home, live the good life. I doubt it was more sophisticated than that. The evidence suggests that the Spanish didn't have an academic understanding of currency, because the influex of silver caused huge inflation in Spain and damaged their economy.
> it's univerally a good currency
It's not. Metals don't function as currency even in the world we live in. You can't go into a shop and buy a computer with a piece of gold - nobody is set up for it. It functions less as a currency even than something like bitcoin, which you can occasionally find something quoted in. With gold - you won't find someone quoting food, land, or shares with it, or set up to accept it as payment.
There's a concept called 'store of value'. Gold is regarded by many to function as a strong store of value. In fact, recently it hasn't - it's gone up significantly for several years and then down this year.
But that's a different thing to currency. And it's not unique to metals - land and cocaine tend to have those properties also.
> It may be that the Inca never used gold as
> currency, but it would be hard to substantiate
> that claim, I would think
You've set down a default assumption that is incorrect - that gold is a universal currency. Then you've followed on to say that - therefore - it should be assumed that the Incas used gold as a currency. This is invalid.
The article says there's an absence of evidence of markets from the Incas, and painted a picture of how life worked. If you think that gold was valued as a currency, show some evidence.
The Spanish had grown up knowing that gold could be swapped into land and wine and women. Get a lot of it, go home, live the good life. I doubt it was more sophisticated than that.
Actually it really was. Spanish, Europeans, Asians, and perhaps other nations elsewhere, tried different methods of exchanging goods. In the beginning they would have exchanged good directly (salt for sheep), but they found this would be very hard because you could not readily divide certain goods and you had to buy significantly more or less of what you needed. Other forms of payments were introduced in different parts of the continents including salt, silk, and even nails in some regision, etc... Then came metal. It wasn't easy to divide, but soon enough they introduced small equally sized weighted metal. But as you can imagine the crooks would mixed different metals, which in the long run lead to coined money to certify authenticity. However Kings started to reduce the quantity of gold to repay debts they owed because it was not so much based on weight, but more so on "coin." There is more, but you would want to read the Origins of Wealth of Nations by A. Smith for more on the subject.
Gold seem to have been a good "currency," (but then again what do you mean by currency) and could have remain such, but the problem has always been the value it was based on and what you could have afforded with it. There layed the problem.
The above is what I understood from Adam's Smith Wealth of Nations, Book I, but I must admit I am still at my first read and perhaps by read 3 I will have a better understanding.
To be clear, I think gold is inferior as a currency compared to modern (fiat) money. I was comparing it to other goods-of-value (livestock, clothes, food, etc.)
I know very little about the Inca, and make no claim about them. I'm merely skeptical of the article's claims (which may very well be right).
It looks like a fairly universal currency: Roman soldiers were paid in it (at least, "salary" comes from the word for salt), as were soldiers in the American War of 1812. In Timbuktu they traded salt for slaves. It created cities and the Polish kingdom. It was taxed for hundreds of years in Europe.
These days salt is practically free, but when the only way to get it was from mining or by evaporating ocean water (neither very readily accessible in many parts), and unlike gold, you tended to consume it in preserving food, it was worth a bit more.
The other major benefit is that it had no other use except as a medium of exchange (unlike grain, salt, and other commodities) and was easy to carry in decorative form (ie jewelry).
