>>20376584>In Aztec culture, cacao beans were considered more valuable than gold.I can't resist an invitation to post my ancient Aztec artifacts and "coins" again, their monetary system was really interesting. That article is for normoids so it's not true that cacao beans were worth more than gold by weight or anything, but they were much more culturally and economically important to the Aztecs. Cacao beans were a pretty standard and ubiquitous currency through the 1500s, whereas gold was just ornamental/ceremonial. Back in the 1950s it was calculated that a single bean has the purchasing power and function of a 5c Nickel (probably 10x or more in today's USD) but you can't really get a 1:1 comparison between such different cultures and economies. This is an excellent reference point though:
>A 1545 list of commodity prices in Tlaxcala gives an idea of the purchasing value of cacao:>1 good turkey hen=100 cacao beans>1 turkey egg=3 cacao beans>1 fully ripe avocado=1 cacao bean>1 large tomato=1 cacao beanThis brings me to the indigenously smelted then hammer-formed copper axe and hoe/ulu knife shaped money, the latter called a tajadero:
>The copper tajadero (Spanish for chopping knife) was a form of money used in central Mexico and parts of Central America. Also known as Aztec hoe or axe money, this standardized, unstamped currency had a fixed worth of 8,000 cacao seeds – the other common unit of exchange in Mesoamerica.Instead of gold being used for high value units of money as in the Old World, the Aztecs used these copper "coins" as a far more compact and less perishable store of wealth compared to cacao beans. I'd guess an Aztec chocobean weighed around 1 gram, so although not a convenient pocket-piece a tajadero was way easier to carry around than 8 kilograms of beenz.
Equivalent to 8,000 seeds, a tajadero had the rough purchasing power of $400 (in 1950s USD) and just 1 could supply your village with 80 turkeys for the annual feast. Impressive eh?
