Historical evidence refutes the myth that barter preceded credit-based economies

Evidence

But as historians have shown, there is no evidence that pure barter economies ever existed, anywhere; instead, the historical record is rich with human societies in which credit came first, deeply intertwined within moral and cultural systems, with money and markets developing only later, via the state. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 60

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years, which makes exactly this argument about barter being a foundational myth.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the counter-narrative to Adam Smith’s textbook account of economic origins that the book’s whole method depends on.