Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/403

 Conclusion.

It now simply remains to sum up the results of our enquiry. Starting with the Homeric Poems we found that although certain pieces of gold called talents were in circulation among the early Greeks, yet all values were still expressed in terms of cows. We then found that the gold talent was nothing else than the equivalent of the cow, the older unit of barter, and we found that the talent was the same unit as that known in historical times under the names of Euboic stater or Attic stater, and commonly described by metrologists as the light Babylonian shekel. Our next stage was to enquire into the systems of currency used by primitive peoples in both ancient and modern times, and everywhere alike we found systems closely analogous to that depicted in the Homeric Poems, and we found that in the regions of Asia, Europe and Africa, where the system of weight standards which has given birth to all the systems of modern Europe had its origin, the cow was universally the chief unit of barter. Furthermore gold was distributed with great impartiality over the same area, and known and employed for purposes of decoration from an early period by the various races which inhabited it. We then found that practically all over that area there was but one unit for gold, and that unit was the same weight as the Homeric Talanton. Next we proved that gold was the first object for which mankind employed the art of weighing, and we then found that over the area in question there was strong evidence to show that everywhere from India to the shores of the Atlantic the cow originally had the same value as the universally distributed gold unit.

From this we drew the conclusion that the gold unit, which was certainly later in date than the employment of the cow as a unit of value, was based on the latter; and finally we showed that man everywhere made his earliest essays in weighing by means of the seeds of plants, which nature had placed ready to his hand as counters and as weights. Then we surveyed the theories which derive all weight standards from the scientific