> I mean, we don't need any kind of science or history if we could just be like "this story makes sense to me, so it must be true."
We don't have any historical record of people explicitly writing that they started using bronze tools to deal with the undesirable aspects of stone tools afaik. We just happen to know from scientific first principles that bronze tools are much more efficient than stone and we also know that societies switched from using stone to bronze. So we assume that they switched due to bronze being better. That's how the study of history has always worked.
> I guess it's appropriate for our post-fact world.
If you want to imply a conspiracy of control through currency I would say that would require more facts to back it up than the simpler alternative. Historically, we know that those in power in the past had no trouble controlling / levying tribute with simple violence.
We don't have any historical record of people explicitly writing that they started using bronze tools to deal with the undesirable aspects of stone tools afaik. We just happen to know from scientific first principles that bronze tools are much more efficient than stone and we also know that societies switched from using stone to bronze. So we assume that they switched due to bronze being better. That's how the study of history has always worked.
> I guess it's appropriate for our post-fact world.
If you want to imply a conspiracy of control through currency I would say that would require more facts to back it up than the simpler alternative. Historically, we know that those in power in the past had no trouble controlling / levying tribute with simple violence.