Coined: The Rich Life of Money and How Its History Has Shaped Us

by Kabir Sehgal

  Axelrod and evolutionary biologist William D. Hamilton translated their findings to biology. They provide the example of fig trees and wasps, which are symbiotic organisms. Wasps pollinate the tiny flowers inside figs. In return, they have shelter to lay eggs, so their larvae have an immediate source of nourishment. A wasp could “snitch” by underpollinating the flowers found inside figs. The tree could “snitch” by stopping the growth of a fig that has been underpollinated, killing the larvae of the wasps.30 Both these organisms seem to be reflexively following Tit for Tat. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins agrees with Axelrod’s results and writes that “many wild animals and plants are engaged in ceaseless games of Prisoner’s Dilemma, played out in evolutionary time.”31

  It’s not just wild animals, but apparently humans, too. In Axelrod’s tournament, even when it paid not to cooperate, for some reason, cooperation among humans prevailed. That may be because humans are aware that cooperation increases the chances of survival. Unlike most animals, humans can think before they act, and they reason that it’s better to cooperate. The results reinforced the view of economist Ludwig von Mises, who writes in Human Action that “human beings are potential collaborators in the struggle for survival because they are capable of recognizing the mutual benefits of cooperation.”32 We seem to be biologically wired to cooperate, and an awareness of this helps improve our chances of enduring as a species, even though, as many biologists contend, individuals cooperate because of their own self-interest, not because of what may ultimately benefit the species.

  Indeed, cooperation and socializing increase our chances of survival. Dr. Dean Ornish found that a leading cause for heart disease was isolation from others.33 In her book The Bond, Lynne McTaggart writes that “healthy adults with good support networks have lower blood cholesterol levels and higher levels of immune function than those without emotional support.”34

  In one study, stroke patients who were isolated from others were more likely to have another stroke than patients who were more social.35 Another report combed more than one hundred studies that compared human relationships with health outcomes. It concluded that any type of social relationship can increase survival rates by 50 percent. Being alone, not having a social and supportive network, is analogous to smoking more than a dozen cigarettes per day and can increase the likelihood of obesity.36

  That cooperation helps us survive squares with Kozo-Polyansky’s theory of symbiogenesis at the cellular level. Dawkins believes it proves true at the gene level; he contends that the “selfish gene” is responsible for cooperation: Organisms of the same species share similar genes, and even though they are self-interested actors, their cooperation helps to perpetuate their gene pool.37 “Survival of the fittest” describes the gene, not the organism. All organisms, from intestinal bacteria to humans, usually exchange in order to pursue their own self-interests, but one effect is that it can perpetuate their genes in future generations. Because cooperation boosts our chances to survive, a “selfish gene” may have spread through our population as a way to perpetuate the gene pool. This “selfish gene” that encourages cooperation may be part of our evolutionary algorithm.

  Researchers have tried to determine whether primates have a gene that makes them more prone to cooperate. They examined more than two hundred species of primates and concluded that social behavior is a function of genetics. They didn’t locate a specific gene, but they ruled out other variables. For example, baboons exhibit the same social living patterns no matter their geography or environment. In one study, researchers noted the foraging behavior of 217 species of primates. They found that about 52 million years ago, foraging likely became more social. They hypothesize that primates lived together in order to increase their chances of survival. If they lived alone, it may have invited more predators. This more social foraging pattern, they write, “facilitates the evolution of cooperative behaviors and may provide the scaffold for other distinctive anthropoid traits including coalition formation, cooperative resource defence, and large brains.”38

  The DNA of humans is 99 percent the same as chimpanzees’, so researchers also hypothesize that human exchange may be driven by genetics.39 In one study, they found a gene that accounts for cooperation and altruism. Researchers asked more than one hundred participants to memorize and repeat a group of numbers. If they successfully repeated the numbers, they would earn cash. After earning the reward, they were shown a charity advertisement that had a picture of a little girl from Peru. The participants were given the option to donate anonymously part or all of their earnings to charity, though the researchers could still track who donated. Before the study, researchers had collected DNA swabs of all participants. Researchers focused on the COMT gene, which has two variants, COMT-Val and COMT-Met, which are evenly distributed among humans.40 They found that participants who had the COMT-Val variant donated twice the amount of money, and that more than 20 percent of people who had this variant donated their entire reward.41

  Another possibility for why humans cooperate is the “love hormone” of oxytocin. It’s created in the brain and disbursed into the bloodstream, though there are oxytocin receptors found in neurons in the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the reward center of the brain. Oxytocin levels in the bloodstream are typically minimal and require a stimulus to be increased. Mothers experience heightened levels of oxytocin while breast-feeding. When people hug a friend or check Facebook to catch up with friends, they also experience increased levels of oxytocin.42

  In one study, there was a positive correlation between participants who donated money and the amount of oxytocin in their bloodstream.43 In one study that focused on causation, participants who were provided doses of oxytocin were 80 percent more generous in donating money to a stranger than those who received a placebo.44 Researchers have even tested whether oxytocin alters the behavior of those in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Oxytocin increased cooperation in those players who had met their partners before the game. However, it exacerbated noncooperative behavior when players had not met previously. These results suggest that oxytocin can reinforce a preexisting social bond, but it can’t create one from scratch.45

  If there is a cooperation gene, perhaps it would explain why we form families, tribes, clubs, and countries. As the human brain became more advanced, perhaps the gene was expressed through more sophisticated behaviors like reciprocity, and concepts like equality and morality.46 It’s difficult to work out from where these behaviors originate, but it’s clear that humans eventually realized that cooperation increased their chances of survival. And they created tools to foster working together.

  Divide and Conquer

  Darwin was struck with how life could have developed on the Galapagos archipelago, a microcosm of biological diversity. Because island habitats are isolated from the mainland, they appear to have fewer factors that could impact the development and differentiation of various species. Darwin later grasped that many of the species were unique to the islands yet were similar to creatures on the nearby continent.

  Darwin inspected the wildlife closely, comparing the anatomy of birds and recording their size to the millimeter. He famously theorized that the fourteen species of finches found on these islands were interrelated but discernibly different. He noticed the finches had different-sized beaks. He realized that beak size was determined, in part, by each species’ niche. For example, big-beaked finches were able to crack open tough seeds. These finches survived a drought on Daphne Major Island and their population flourished.47 Beak sizes appeared to be an evolved trait that allowed each species to better survive in its environment.48

  “Beaks are tools,” explained Rachel. We had left Concha de Perla, hitched a ride in the back of a red pickup truck (we were still dripping wet and the driver didn’t want to ruin her backseat), and ate at a small café called El Tundel de Mayra to continue our discussion. Her lab mate Lindsey Carr joined us for a lunch of ceviche, french fries, and Coca-Colas. Originally from Southern Calif
ornia, she has made these South American islands a home away from home. Lindsey has spent more than 365 days in the Galapagos over five years. She is on track to be the first American to receive her PhD in marine biology from research done in the Galapagos. She patiently explained to me how exchange works across these islands. When I reflected on our conversation weeks later, I realized she was teaching me Economics 101.

  “Tools enable specialization,” elaborated Lindsey. “When you become a specialist, you narrow your niche and reduce your competition, if everyone else is specializing their niche, too.”

  She was talking about Darwin’s finches, but she could have been talking about Adam Smith’s butcher. Both Darwin and Smith lived in Scotland and were influenced by eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment intellectuals. Darwin even cites Adam Smith in The Descent of Man.

  Adam Smith opens The Wealth of Nations with meditations on the division of labor. To him it springs from the penchant to exchange. Smith believed that division of labor introduces specialization into a society. Not everyone needs to be a butcher. We simply visit one when we want veal shanks. Similarly, the butcher visits a dentist when he has a toothache. The butcher and dentist need tools, and necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention. The butcher has a meat cleaver to hack through muscle tissue. The dentist has a dental mirror to peer into his patients’ mouths. Specialization leads to the need and development of tools—from beaks to cleavers to mirrors.49 One tool, in particular, may have paved the way for the creation of money.

  The First Palm Pilot

  A son of British missionaries and an intellectual disciple of Charles Darwin, archaeologist Louis Leakey traveled to Kenya in 1926 to excavate near Lake Elmenteita, in the Great Rift Valley. Three years later his team unearthed a collection of hand axes that were estimated to be 500,000 years old.50 Similar bifacial hand axes that date back hundreds of thousands of years have been discovered in excavations across Africa, Asia, and Europe.51 In 1931, Leakey discovered a hand axe at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania that dates back 1.2 million years; it is now housed at the British Museum in London. It was made from phonolite, a chunk of green lava, and sculpted by hitting or “knapping” round pebbles against it. The process results in a teardrop-shaped axe with a pointed tip and jagged edges. The pointed edge could be used like a drill to dig holes in the ground. The sharp sides could be used to bludgeon an animal, tear its hide like a rudimentary meat cleaver, scratch bark from a tree, or possibly etch artwork on a cave wall.

  Much can be inferred from ancient hand axes. First, they are older than the human species, as Homo sapiens dates back only 200,000 years.52 Second, this tool suggests its toolmaker had a creative capacity. Third, the toolmaker could have used the hand axe as a type of currency. Fourth, these toolmakers may have had other tools that facilitated cooperation. Fifth, the hand axe may have helped to alter the human diet, to one that provided more fuel to the brain, which would lead to the invention of money.

  The research into the social behavior of primates indicates that our ancestors lived in groups. They eventually realized that cooperation increased their chances of survival. To foster cooperation, they specialized in different areas, creating a division of labor: Some were hunters that caught game; others reared children. The creation of hand axes helped hunters kill and prepare larger game, which provided nourishment to the larger group. Division of labor and cooperation, wrote Mises, “are man’s foremost tool in his struggle for survival.”53

  Making a hand axe requires cognition and dexterity. Around 1.7 million years ago, our ancestors began to walk upright, perhaps as a way to conserve energy while foraging for food. Temperatures had cooled, and there were fewer forests. Walking upright would have helped in searching for prey, peering out over open grassy areas. A consequence of bipedalism is that our ancestors were freed to begin using their hands in new ways, such as creating new tools. They were able to manifest thoughts into physical forms using their hands. In his detailed book Landscape of the Mind, archaeologist John Hoffecker writes that “humans developed the highly unusual ability to externalize information in the brain—probably as an indirect consequence of bipedalism and foreign limb specialization related to toolmaking—and this ultimately became the basis for the mind.”54 Like a sculptor who carves a statue from a block of marble, our ancestors must have visualized a hand axe before it was made. As the brain of the toolmaker became more capable and complex, the tools also became more sophisticated. Axes were refined over the years; the designers may have passed down knowledge on how to create them through apprenticeship. More recent hand axes in the archaeological record were thinner and made from different raw materials, with finer craftsmanship. Most axes have clear symmetry that is the result of preparation and experience, debatably the product of a toolmaker with an appreciation for aesthetics.

  Some scholars contend that hand axes had symbolic value. The brain’s capacity to think symbolically turned these tools into items that could be exchanged. It’s unlikely that everyone created their own hand axe: The specialist toolmaker may have exchanged hand axes for other goods like raw materials, food, and shelter.55 The wide geography in which hand axes have been discovered shows that they were widely used, there was strong demand for them, and they were worthy of exchange. Scholars even contend that hand axes may have become a type of ceremonial art or currency.56 Many large axes that are too difficult to grip have been discovered, and could have been symbols of one’s wealth, status, or ability to protect one’s kin. A larger hand axe may have even helped to attract a mating partner.57

  If our earliest ancestors could create hand axes, maybe they had other tools—like language. In one study, the brains of archaeologists were scanned while they knapped hand axes. The results show that the same part of the brain responsible for making tools is responsible for comprehending and processing language. If you can craft tools, you can form words. Like the hand, the vocal tract was a tool that helped manifest thoughts externally.58 It’s difficult to know when our ancestors gained the capacity to speak, because the vocal tract is composed of organs that disappeared over time and aren’t part of the archaeological register.

  The hand axe also helped to alter the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors. Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of butchered elephants, other large game, and freshwater fish during this period.59 Caches of tools, including hand axes, were located where animal remains were likely taken for processing.60 Several hand axes have been found near the Thames River in what’s now England. Lakes and river valleys provided fresh water that attracted not only early humans but animals as well. Our ancestors probably hid in nearby woods, stalking prey for their meat and furs. While their diet was largely vegetarian, hand axes were a means by which meat was obtained and introduced into consumption.

  The transition to meat intake was a significant phenomenon in the development of early humans and the eventual creation of money. Meat has a higher caloric density than plants. The discovery of fire enabled our ancestors to cook meat and make it a more common part of their diet. The ability to store and cook food may have been a trigger for the shrinking of our ancestors’ stomachs, since the human stomach is 60 percent of the relative size found in other primates.61 However, the increased meat consumption provided energy to a growing organ, the brain. Hungry for glucose, our brain consumes 20 percent of the body’s energy, roughly twelve watts, almost enough to power a lightbulb.62 But our brains weren’t always as large. Fossil remains of our earliest ancestors show head cavities that are unquestionably smaller than those of modern humans.

  There are various reasons besides human diet for why the brain expanded. Among them are climate and competition. During the Paleolithic era, our ancestors migrated around the world, as evidenced by many unearthed remains and hand axes. They encountered a range of environments, from the cooler temperatures of the North to the arid climates of Africa. The Smithsonian compares the variations of the earth’s climate based on evidence in ocean sediments with the brain
size of early humans, using 160 skulls. The brains of early humans increased most quickly from 800,000 to 200,000 years ago, around the time Homo sapiens finally emerged.63 This period was also a time when the earth underwent several ice ages.64 Others theorize that our brains enlarged because of social competition to acquire more resources.

  The expansion of the brain gave rise to consciousness and symbolic thought. It’s this capacity that led to the creation of money.

  Symbolically Thinking

  In 1879 in northern Spain, eight-year-old Maria Sanza de Sautuola and her father went for a walk west of Santander, in Altamira. She dashed ahead by herself, entered a nearby cave, and found an incredible artistic rendering on the ceiling. It was the first known discovery of Paleolithic-era cave drawings. The drawing was made approximately 13,000 years ago, over the span of many centuries. The rendering is of fifteen bison and other large animals. They were depicted using mineral oxides and are polychrome in color. The images are lifelike in detail, and some even have a three-dimensional effect.65 They are so realistic that many accused Maria’s father, Marcelino Sanza de Sautuola, who was an amateur archaeologist, of forgery. It was thought that our Paleolithic ancestors weren’t capable of making such intricate artwork. Eventually the images were verified, and UNESCO has declared the area a World Heritage Site.

  Archaeologists have since found more than one hundred caves with artwork that dates between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago. Like the Altamira drawings, some feature color that was made by mixing earth mineral oxides with blood or other liquids. Some were created using charcoal and by scratching stones against the wall. Also found in caves have been artifacts like beads made from ivory and bone, as well as musical instruments and weapons. More than 90 percent of Paleolithic spears have some decoration. A figurine of a woman with large breasts was found in a cave in southwest Germany and typifies a fertility motif in Paleolithic renderings.66