On 18 Jul 2003 12:19:09 GMT, assed (South of
Provemont) wrote:

(0) It is one heck of a nice coin.

Thanks.

(1) As Mark Programmer pointed out, this coin a later type and not the earliest
Lydian coin. So, the title "Earliest Coin" does not apply.

"Mark Programmer" pronounced definitively what's correct and what's
correct by Googling around to Web sites, one of a 100-year-old book
with information long outdated, one of a museum in Canada that
mislabeled the very coin in question as a stater instead of a third
stater, some of dealers who are just aping old information. He pointed
to nobody who has actually done research about this area, only to one
page with any in-depth, scholarly information, a good page actually.
It's a page that you also pointed to and that I had seen when I first
started researching these coins, but it's a page that doesn't support
at all Mark's position that I'm wrong about the dating or anything
else about Lydian Lions or this particular Lydian trite:

http://ancient-coin-forum.com/ancien...to_croesus.htm

You also are saying definitively, and without validity, that Lydian
Lions are not the oldest coin. In saying this, you also show that you
didn't read, or didn't understand, what I wrote on my page. Much of my
contention that the Lydian Lion is the first coin, again, depends on
how you define "coin." Below, as I'll show, you're defining it
differently from me, and others, though not everybody. And I'm not
saying *anything* definitive about these coins myself, since as I said
the hoard and die-study knowledge about them is so sparse and
inconclusive. What I am doing is proposing that the Lydian Lion is the
first "true" coin and making a case for this position based on what we
do know and what can be logically presumed.

(3) Our cultural context prejudices us against recognizing the incuse punches
as "devices" but indeed they are. They had some purpose, albeit not clear to us
now, perhaps.

A very small minority of incuse punches had designs embedded within
them. Most were just random impressions made during the minting
process. But if you want to see designs in them, in the same way that
someone sees designs in clouds when gazing at the sky, go for it. One
numismatic writer actually wrote a humorous piece about just this
subject, trying to make out designs in the random markings of incuse
punches.

(4) The oldest known coins come from a set of separate find sites collectively
called The Artemesian Hoard from Ephesus. Some of these are mere "dumps" nugget
shaped proto-coins. Others have punch marks and so are true coins.

This is where the definition of "coin" comes in. A lump of metal with
an incuse punch is not a "coin," according to E.S.G. Robinson, Colin
Kraay, and a number of others who have studied these and other early
coins, as I pointed out on this page. Their reasoning makes sense, and
I agree with it. A "coin," according to them (and according to
Webster, Second Edition, and other dictionaries today), must have a
type (design) that clearly links it to a recognized ruling authority.
These typeless pieces do not -- the lumps, the lumps with incuse
punches, the lumps with incuse punches and striations across their
obverse. These were pre-coins. It was only when the lion was
introduced as a mark, a design, that the piece could be linked to an
issuing authority (the Lydian royal house), that it became a "coin,"
according to this definition of what a coin is.

(5) The dating of that hoard has been the subject of much debate. See for
instance,
http://ancient-coin-forum.com/ancien..._origin_of_coi
ns_to_croesus.htm

No kidding. I clearly mentioned this, emphasizing it, on my page. As
said, "what we don't know about this coin and other very early coins
is at least as great as what we do know, and with what we do know,
there's much disagreement and controversy."

(6) Googling around the web is perhaps less desirable than getting lost in the
library stacks, so knowing your sources and evaluating them is important.

Google, and the Web in general, can be a useful source of information.
But people like Mark and others before him here go way wrong when they
assume it's the final word and when they fail to evaluate the
information they find there for accuracy and relevancy.

There's a great deal of misinformation on the Web, more so in general
than in print because you don't have the same safeguards against it.
And there's a great deal of information that isn't on the Web -- most
articles and books, as just one tiny little example.

The word "composter " is a good one to describe people who take Web
information and post it on Usenet as definitive information, making
out as if they're experts.

(7) We have a cultural prejudice that gives us a spectrum of development from
coins to banknotes to credit cards, and that is the reason that stepping back
for perspective allows the student of history to understand that perhaps as
early as 4000 BC merchants created promisary notes on clay.

Agreed. But I was talking about coins.

(7a) The origin of metallic money (weighed and hallmarked and traded for other
goods) might begin with bronze "cow hides" known from Mycenaean finds.

Also, not a coin. Again, depending on how you define "coin." We're
talking coins here, not money. All kinds of objects have been used as
money, as you know.

(8) http://rg.ancients.info/lion/ is an interesting presentation that oversells
its case and so fails to make it. Many sources are cited at the top, but the
body lacks footnotes attributing specific statements to reliable authorities.
It is very readable, but the content is ultimately questionable.

The footnotes will appear in the published article, which will be an
expanded version of this page.

(9) It is still one heck of a nice coin. It deserves a good presentation
appropriate to its time and place.

Thanks again.

--

Coin Collecting: Consumer Guide: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Bogos: Counterfeit Coins: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos