Fathom (money)
Fathom (of English fathom "thread") is the unit of the shell money of the indigenous people of Tolai on the island of New Britain , which in their province of East New Britain as official complementary currency to local currency Kina is used. A fathom is a string of money made from clam shells that extends between two outstretched arms; the current exchange rate is 4 kina for 1 fathom (June 2013, about 1.50 euros).
The designation of the money line is the nautical measure of length "thread" derived (English fathom , German also " fathoms "): 1.8 meters is the span of a man with outstretched arms. 1 fathom is "1 thread length of mussels" or " 1 fathom clam money" with 300 to 400 cut shells of the small sea snail Nassarius arcularius . When exchanging ideas with the early British sailors, the islanders adopted this expression in their Kuanua language. They call their shell money taboo, tambu or diwarra .
The name fathom was also mentioned by the Swiss ethnologist Felix Speiser in 1923 as historical money from the South Pacific island state of Vanuatu .
literature
- Alexander Solyga: Taboo - the shell money of the Tolai: An ethnology of money in Papua New Guinea. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3496028512 .
Info: Solyga's economic ethnology study was awarded the prize of the city and the University of Bayreuth in 2011. - William Taufa, Heinrich Fellmann: About the shell money (a taboo) on Neupommern, Bismarck Archipelago (German New Guinea).
In: Communications from the seminar for oriental languages at the Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, Dept. 1: East Asian Studies, Volume 5, 1902, pp. 92-102. - AL Epstein: Tambu: The Shell-Money of the Tolai. In: RH Hook (ed.): Fantasy and Symbol. Studies in Anthropological Interpretation. Academic Press, London 1979 (English).
Web links
- Sigrun Preissing: Tabu - The shell money of the Tolai in Papua New Guinea. (PDF; 233 kB; 4 pages, accessed on July 29, 2013) In: Zeitschrift für Sozialökonomie , Volume 46, Series 160-161, April 2009 , pp. 38–40, Gauke Verlag für Sozialökonomie, Kiel 2009, ISSN 0721-0752 .
Individual evidence
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↑ Carolyn Leigh, Ron Perry: Guide to Artifacts. (English) In: Art-Pacific , Tucson Arizona USA 2011. Retrieved July 30, 2013.
Quote: “Strings of shell disks or beads (called heishe in the US) are often valued by the fathom which equals 6 feet or slightly less than 2 meters. “
Info: Leigh and Perry have been collecting art from New Guinea since 1964. -
^ Felix Speiser: Ethnology of Vanuatu. An Early Twentieth Century Study . University Press, Honolulu 1996 (first 1923), ISBN 0-8248-1874-1 , p. 245 (English; direct link to page 245 in the Google book search);
Original title: Ethnographic Materials from the New Hebrides and the Banks Islands. Kreidel Verlag, Berlin 1923 (since then various new editions / reprints, no Google preview).