Native Cubans Valued Shoelace Tags More Than Gold.

Scientists from University College (isn't that redundant?) London, United Kingdom analyzing the graves of indigenous Cubans who traded with Columbus found that they valued shoelace tags more than gold:

... the most common artefacts were small brass tubes thought to be cheap lacetags from European clothing.

These tags were used from the 15th Century onwards in Europe, to prevent the ends of laces fraying, and to ease threading in the points for fastening clothes.

The native Taino people of Cuba often threaded the tags into necklaces.

Early chroniclers report that pure gold was considered the least valuable metal among indigenous Cubans. It held significantly less esteem than copper-based alloys.

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Gold's hardly useless. It's virtually indestructible, it is a soft metal, easy to work with, shape, flatten or draw out into microscopic strands. Besides jewelry it's used in telecomunications, computers, semiconductors, powered wheelchairs, spacecraft, telephones, wall jacks, tv's, vcr's, medicine, dentistry, eye surgery, lasers.....etc. etc.

not to mention toilets and rocking horses
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The correct term for those thingys that keep your shoelace from turning into poodle-tails is "aglet. As in "your aglets are awry." That's a classy way to tell someone their shoelaces are untied. Right before you give them a blistering uppercut to the jaw.
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