April, 2015
Somewhere around the year 950 ad, women in a Chinese harem invented a new game that used something called playing cards. Now there you go, you thought a harem was a private potentates whore house, right?
Not so. Wikipedia says this is an Arabic invention to protect and train women for their future as wives. So, why do we have a reference to a Chinese harem 300 years before Turkish/Arabic inventors decided this was the cat’s meow?
I don’t know, but rumor has it that this “card playing” is the origins of poker but there is no confirmation that Texas Hold’em was the game of choice.
Later, in the year 970 ad, the rulers of China approved the use of paper money for public and private debts. Well actually it was only private debts because public debts brought on horrendous torture and death to your relatives until the debt was paid. So, why would the ruler’s of China approve of the use of a worthless dehydrated amalgam of fibers to be used to pay debts? To women? Who lived in harems? Who collected debts for their sexual favors?
And in 1295 ad, about 300 years later, Marco Polo returned to England from his “walk about” with stories of the Chinese using paper money. He was laughed at and thought a fool, because England had not yet come to the use of cards as a form of gaming or paper for the use of money. The rest of Anglo Saxon economic history is there for the reading. Gaming, debts and sexual favors!
So what do we learn from this? Women in sexual service rule the economy? Suckers of gambling rule the economy? The English quickly recognize the link between fools of gambling and the economy? A fool and his money are soon parted?
I’ll let you decide what you think the connections are.
Respectfully submitted from your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem
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