10,000 Years Ago, Elon Musk Would Have Been Casting Spells Into Feathers, Rocks, and Shells

How the ‘Technoking’ imbues assets with value in the same way medieval kings would

Frederick Kaufman
Marker
Published in
4 min readMar 17, 2021

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SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses on the red carpet of the Axel Springer Award 2020
Photo: Britta Pedersen/Pool/Getty Images

Where does money come from, and how did it get that way?

Most people assume that it all started with bartering, but the barter theory, popularized…

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Frederick Kaufman
Marker

Professor of journalism, magazine writer, author of The Money Plot: A History of Currency’s Power to Enchant, Control, and Manipulate.