Ascent of Money 1

(I watched the video by the way) The Ascent of Money follows different aspects of money and how they relate to our current systems of economics. As it started off with stories about the Spaniards and the Incan Empire, I especially found the Incan Empire's lack of money interesting. I decided to do some further research on this topic because it's not one that I've ever really explored. Apparently the Spaniards had a lot to with our modern perception of the Incan empire. They wrote about superhighways between cities and customs of the peoples they observed. One thing that particularly puzzled them was the lack of any physical money. It is believed that the Incan people used a sort of labor tax, as in, if you do your work, you will be fed and housed. Of course, they did have some version of money or bartering when it came to ports and areas where they were in close contact to other groups of people. Despite this information that we know, there is a good chance that there's aspects of this culture that the Spaniards did not see or misjudged.
       The Ascent of Money also focused on where we first got the concept of banking, and how the Medici family of renaissance Italy rose to power and managed to afford commissioning so many renaissance artists of their time. Despite starting off more closely resembling the Soprano family as the video said, the Medici family came to be well respected during their time for their work loaning out money to wealthy and middle class Italians. While they may have started out closer to loan sharks, they later ended up creating a system similar to banking.
       Sometimes it's difficult to look back on how we came to the systems we use now in terms of economics and other things. It's interesting to see the global influence of other countries and cultures past and how they have affected our present.