Translation of an article published in Spanish: “El Eco Filatélico y Numismático”

 (May 2008). Vol.64 (n. 1163): pp.60-61.

The human heads were considered as trophies from the ancient Celts to the modern "headhunters" in Oceania. They were too valuable and precious to be regarded as "currency", and came to be part of the most sacred and non-transferable objects (Figure 1), but seems to have been a "currency" which represented or had the value of a human head.

 

Figure 1.- "Head trophy”

In Africa, some knives as "Mbulu" of Zaire, whose original function was to behead the prisoners in ritual ceremonies, were also used as currency in payment of dowries (a dowry often reached 20 knives)⁽¹⁾. In this case the same object presented two very different functions, but is among the "headhunters" in New Guinea where we find the money that has an even more macabre use.

Until relatively recently, Marind-amin of Irian Jaya (Figure 2), people who lived in southern New Guinea, carried out expeditions to hunt for "names"⁽²⁾ for their children. In fact, the Australian government claimed before the Netherlands (responsible for the geographical area where they played the "headhunters") to control this practice, and finally installed a police post in Merauke in 1902 to avoid predatory activities of their people⁽³⁾. According to the ritual, Marind-Amin moved some distance from their villages to reach areas inhabited by people of other languages, then caught some unsuspecting resident, and asked him what his name was while holding him by the hair ⁽⁴⁾. The terrified words coming from the mouth of the prisoner -which of course did not understand what was asked-, were considered the same name, and immediately his head was cut with a sharp knife, made exclusively from bamboo ("sok"). 

 But in return, next to the victim's decapitated body an object was deposited (which can be considered as a "currency"). Victims could not be beheaded, and could not even ask his name, until after his head had been struck with a club ritual called "pahui" or "baratu", consisting of a discoidal stone attached to a handle, and finished on top by a delicate and artistic carved wooden figure. With the coup, the figure was separated from the club, and only then could start the bloody and macabre ritual. The decoration of the club is left with the body as a kind of compensation, and the head-hunters were returning to their village carrying the head, and most importantly, the "name" associated with it. The skulls were deposited in a special hut (Figure 3), and it was not uncommon to see children, wearing as a necklace, the jaws of those unfortunates who came from their name. It is clear that these children would take as a name, a plea for mercy or maybe some reproach or insult in other languages, last words of the victims before being violently beheaded. When Holland took over administration of the area, found - in the early twentieth century-, fifteen thousand names with this macabre origin, which means that in one generation was produced at least this amount of ritual murders among the neighboring tribes in the interior⁽⁵⁾.

With regard to the objects used as "currency", the decorated ceremonial club, a few specimens are preserved in ethnographic museums of Amsterdam, Leiden and Rome, proceding of ethnographic expeditions undertaken from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries⁽⁶⁾. The origins of these brutal customs must be sought in the personal prestige, which is defeating the enemy, taking away the most precious, his own head. Curiously, the value in this case is not the head itself, it is the name associated with it, a name that cannot be appropriated and should be given or transferred to another person, whether the son himself or another child who lacks it. This act of donation implies an increased their social prestige in the group. The French anthropologist S. Breton has realized an interesting study comparing the role of "head-name" of Marind-amin with the "shell money" used as currency by Wodani people in symbolic exchanges, while in the first case the head is a metonymy for the word collected, from which it derives a name, a metaphor in turn on the identity of the person receiving it, for Wodani people, shell-money is itself a metaphor of the person⁽⁷⁾.

Until recently, the frequent wars and rapine among populations of New Guinea were part of the social system (as Paul Sillitoe anthropologists have defined as "ecological warfare") but have been progressively replaced by "festivals", that are peaceful meetings from different villages of the region. In these "Sing Sing" the differences between neighboring villages are resolved by ritual dances, differences which were previously resolved by tribal wars and bloodshed. In certain regions such as Highland, sight and exoticism of these celebrations are an excellent source of tourist attraction. In reality, our "Western civilization" is not so different, we use with the same purpose football and other competitive sports, and when we make war, is also often motivated by "ecological" causes (better "anti-ecological") as the control of the valuable natural resources (Iraq War, wars in Africa promoted by large multinational companies ...).

 

1.1.- Notes about the ecology of money.

Translation of an article published in Spanish: “El Eco Filatélico y Numismático”

(January 2003). Vol. 59 (n. 1104): pp. 46-47.

 

Before the invention of coins, in the form that we know today, and which serves a purely economic function, there were other types of currency (which are still used in some regions of the world) that served to maintain and develop social reproduction, ensuring a balance of relations between individuals in the group and with other different groups over time. These "noneconomic" coins were used on certain occasions and for a specific purpose, such as marriage dowry (bride money), compensation for assault ("blood money"), ritual gifts, to involve reciprocity or not (the "Potlatch" of American Indians or "Soulava" and "Mwali" among Melanesians) etc ... These coins are objects full of symbolic value, which soften the social relationships between different populations, making "hostility" into "hospitality" and "competition" in "partnership", playing an important ecological role in the intra-specific relationships, in the “Homo sapiens” species.

 

Over time, the "economic" money or our real money has been imposed (the Spanish word "dinero" comes from the Roman monetary unit "denarius"), and replaced all other types of currency appropriating their functions. Asia Minor metallic coins spread rapidly throughout the Mediterranean from the eighth century BC., becoming an essential tool in the process of expansion and conquest of the Persians, Alexander the Great and, later, Roman, Carolingian, Muslims, etc ... The conventional economic currency (Phoenicians and Carthaginians shekels, Greek drachma, Roman ases, sesterces and denarii, Muslims dirhams and dinars, Carolingian deniers ...) was a very important instrument in the fiscal strategy of established power, while at same time, also favored commercial development. Therefore, it is not surprising this initial success of its implementation in the places where an empire or a powerful state exercised its authority or influence.

 

The other types of currency (not commercial), were being relegated to the unknown regions of the world, but in some remote corners of the planet, they are still used daily (such as "Tambú" shells from the Tolai people, the "shell money" used in the Trobriand Islands or  the "Kina" used in the ceremony of Moka, in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

 

However, in recent years we have lived, without realizing it, one of the most important revolutions experimented by the currency throughout its history. It is the sudden appearance of the "electronic money" or "information currency". If we calculate the millions of dollars (or other currency) changing hands in world trade in 24 hours, we can see that all the money coined or printed (ie, all notes and coins in circulation that exist in the different countries of the planet), would hardly present a small percentage of what circulates daily. Where is the rest of the money from?, it does not physically exist, ie does not have a material existence in notes or coins, but is an electronic information contained in michochips of credit cards or in the bank information systems. Our coin besides has a strong traditional and conventional symbolic content, although originally it was gold and silver, but now it doesn’t exist physically, and never before has there been so much faith in the world (as the Catechism says, faith is believing what is not shown). So, paradoxically, when religious beliefs are in decline, it when we have more faith (in the money) in the world.

 

E-commerce spreads rapidly throughout the planet, and today through many companies (like Paypal which has more than twenty million users worldwide), we can make a payment or make a charge from a remote Spanish village to a trading house in Singapore or New Zealand in tenths of seconds, because this "money" can travel at nearly the speed of light.

 

This is one of the advantages / disadvantages of Globalization (or McDonaldization “sensu” G. Ritzer), a phenomenon that although, at first glance, seems positive and symbolizes the progress of humanity, satisfies, as in nature, and generally in all systems (especially in the ecological system or ecosystems and the economic system) the famous principle of "St. Matthew": “Those who have more” (money, resources, information, power, ...) “will be increasingly at the expense of those who have less”, that increasingly will have less (based on a parable from the Gospel of St. Matthew).

 

There are affinities between Ecology and Economy, words almost synonymous, and before the invention of the word "ecology" (Haeckel, 1869), some naturalist as Linnaeus used the expression "Economy of Nature" in the XVIII Century.

 

Focussing again on the role of money in the "economic wealth" of a society, this wealth does not depend only on the amount of existing money, money must circulate, and if the flow is faster, better. Economic growth means more production of goods and services, with a greater and more rapid flow of money and this can be done through a grant of energy (fossil fuels) that accelerates the system. Moreover, current technology has also maximized the mobility of money and its speed of travel from one place to another. Natural systems are ultimately a cycle of materials, that maintained and developed its internal structures due to a continuous flow of external energy (sunlight), that enters and flows through the system. Identically, the economic system structures are maintained by a "money flow" that circulates in the opposite direction of goods and services.  Curiously this "economic money", was invented 28 centuries ago by the Ionians bankers, using little metallic pieces of "electron" made only of matter (atoms of gold and silver), but now, money is pure energy, transmitted from one place to another, by the atomic "electrons". Some ecologists (E. Odum, 1988) have even come to establish an equivalence between the U.S. dollar and the amount of solar energy  (1 $ U.S. = 2.6 billion joules of solar energy).