barter

• early practices of silent b.; fetish stood guard

69:4.1Just as mar­riage by con­tract fol­lowed mar­riage by cap­ture, so trade by barter fol­lowed seizure by raids. But a long pe­riod of piracy in­ter­vened be­tween the early prac­tices of silent barter and the later trade by mod­ern ex­change meth­ods.

69:4.2The first barter was con­ducted by armed traders who would leave their goods on a neu­tral spot. Women held the first mar­kets; they were the ear­li­est traders, and this was be­cause they were the bur­den bear­ers; the men were war­riors. Very early the trad­ing counter was de­vel­oped, a wall wide enough to pre­vent the traders reach­ing each other with weapons.

69:4.3A fe­tish was used to stand guard over the de­posits of goods for silent barter. Such mar­ket places were se­cure against theft; noth­ing would be re­moved ex­cept by barter or pur­chase; with a fe­tish on guard the goods were al­ways safe. The early traders were scrupu­lously hon­est within their own tribes but re­garded it as all right to cheat dis­tant strangers. Even the early He­brews rec­og­nized a sep­a­rate code of ethics in their deal­ings with the gen­tiles.

69:4.4For ages silent barter con­tin­ued be­fore men would meet, un­armed, on the sa­cred mar­ket place. These same mar­ket squares be­came the first places of sanc­tu­ary and in some coun­tries were later known as “cities of refuge.” Any fugi­tive reach­ing the mar­ket place was safe and se­cure against at­tack.

• in sex slaves

69:5.107. Sex urge—the de­sire to buy one or more wives. Man’s first form of trad­ing was woman ex­change; it long pre­ceded horse trad­ing. But never did the barter in sex slaves ad­vance so­ci­ety; such traf­fic was and is a racial dis­grace, for at one and the same time it hin­dered the de­vel­op­ment of fam­ily life and pol­luted the bi­o­logic fit­ness of su­pe­rior peo­ples.