The same day the human race came up with currency is the same day its reason for
existence changed for all time. One day two Neanderthals were standing there in the middle of frozen tundra. Glog was shivering his butt off looking at Zlog holding a nice, smelly bison skin.
Of course Glog wanted the smelly bison skin so that the last of his five teeth wouldn’t fall out from chattering. The only problem was that Glog didn’t have anything to trade to Zlog as was the custom at the time. Zlog shrugged, but then he noticed that Glog had eight small, pretty, round ivory discs hanging around his neck on a gut string. Zlog examined them closely and through various rudimentary gestures and grunts made it somewhat clear that he would ‘sell’ the smelly bison skin for the string of small ivory discs. Thus was borne the first actual purchase of something by a human being. Malls were soon to follow.
About a week later Glog, who never seemed to be able to do anything well except make pretty little discs out of ivory, was sitting there working on some gut string and he noticed that Zlog had a nice hunk of meat from that same bison as he was slogging by. Glog was hungry and this meat was nicely aged; just this side of a nice dull green color and with just the right aroma.
So he approached Zlog and indicated by pointing at his five teeth and the meat that he was hungry. Zlog shrugged him off because, being the keen-eyed hunter of the group, he immediately noticed that Glog did not have any more of those discs, (or much of anything else.) He turned around and started shuffling off.
Glog, desperate to have a nice steak, hit Zlog over the head with his stick full of gut string to regain Zlog’s attention. He indicated again, through various rudimentary gestures and grunts, that he would make Zlog eight more of those pretty ivory discs, complete with a free gut string, if he would let him have a hunk of the savory green meat. Zlog, being the sharp bargainer that he was, jacked the offer to ten discs, plus three more for interest. He gave Glog seven suns, (a week in modern times,) to come up with them or else. Thus was born the first credit transaction in the history of humans. Late night television offers of two for the price of one were soon to follow. In fact, operators are still standing by to this very day.
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