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From: andrew@alberta.UUCP (Andrew Folkins)
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Subject: Origin of 'dollar'
Message-ID: <565@alberta.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Jun-85 11:06:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: alberta.565
Posted: Wed Jun 26 11:06:55 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Jun-85 00:56:31 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: U. of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
Lines: 31


    Cash was the commodity in shortest supply throughout the Middle Ages,
    and never more so than in the late fifteenth century, when the Black
    Death receded.  Prices rose in some places as much as 400 per cent, and
    although the survivors were left with twice the assets they had had
    before the plague, simply through inheriting what had belonged to those
    who died, the increase in demand for goods by the newly rich produced a
    drastic shortage of coin.  There was, simply, not enough to go round.
    Then, in answer to the demand, prospectors began to find silver in the
    Hartz mountains, and in 1516 one of the greatest silver strikes in
    history was made.  It was in an area of the mountains which now lies
    within northern Czechoslovakia, near the town on Jachymov, then known
    as Joachimsthal.  The mountain valleys provided two vital aids to
    mining : water power from the falling streams to run the mining
    machinery, and wood to build with and to provide the charcoal needed
    for smelting the ores.  A mining boom followed the Joachimsthal
    discovery, and thousands came to the valleys to seek their fortunes in
    the mineshafts.  At peak output, between 1515 and 1540, Joachimstal was
    producing three million ounces of pure silver a year from it's 135
    veins, and the mint in the town was coining the silver as fast as the
    stamping machines would go.  The coin they minted was called a
    _joachimsthaler_, shorted to _thaler_, the word from which the modern
    'dollar' comes.

    James Burke, _Connections_, Little, Brown and Company, 1978, pg. 70.
-- 
Andrew Folkins
ihnp4!alberta!andrew
 
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics : 
       Superiority is recessive.