Historical Tidbits Archives – Page 37 of 59

April 12, 2021April 13, 2021

J is for Journal

Journal entries are the backbone of accounting records. Despite the shift from quill pens to wi-fi chips, from clay tablets to vellum sheets to a blinking data entry screen, the accountants have always had to keep track.

Reducing Eggs Payable

Historians generally saw the ancient cuneiform notations as some of the earliest examples of writing–and accounting–in the world. The large-scale management of taxes, grain allotments, and army rations for the burgeoning Sumerian and Egyptian empires took a lot of tablets.

But local farmers had to keep track on their own, so researchers think that “primitive” bookkeeping, even based on barter, would have still included writing in a ledger. A neighbor might agree to take three chickens in exchange for a bag of seed when the harvest is completed. Or, suppose another neighbor made a sturdy cabinet for the kitchen in exchange for a year’s worth of eggs.

There would still need to be journal entries:

Bought one sack of seeds : Three chickens payable to Farmer Jones
Bought one kitchen cabinet: Year’s supply of eggs to Farmer Kozlowski

Then, one of the kids had to be sent over every day to Kozlowski with the day’s supply of eggs, while someone would make the daily journal entry. Because if something happened to the parties in the transaction mid-year, Mrs. Kozlowski would want to know that she was still owed 183 eggs. On your books, that would be sitting as eggs payable.

April 8, 2021April 8, 2021

F is for Fraud

Enough of the accounting philosophy, let’s talk about something more fun. Fraud!

If accounting is as old as the hills, so is fraud. If you recall my post about Clay Balls a few days ago, you may remember that they were storage for tokens carried by tax collectors. The tokens were stored inside hollowed balls to “prevent tampering.” In other words, tampering–tax collectors collecting a few of the tokens to barter for their own purposes–was already a common practice in 3000 B.C.E. Where there are tax collectors, there are corrupt tax collectors, apparently.

Oops! My Warehouse Burned Down…Insurance Fraud

There was also ancient insurance, and with that came ancient insurance fraud. Ancient merchants purchased “bottomry” contracts (now there’s a word!) in Babylon as early as the third millennium BCE, as did Hindus, Greeks, and others. A trader would get a loan for his cargo and pay an extra fee for insurance, with the interest on the loan also helping cover the loss. When the ship came in, if he defaulted on the loan, the insurer would keep the cargo.

The Greek merchant Hegestratos decided to try an end run around his bottomry contract, in 360 BCE. He had received a cash advance and figured to keep it–and the corn–and claim an insurance loss. He put the corn in secret storage and sailed the ship, but empty. However, there were other passengers on the ship, and they were not too keen when they noticed him trying to scuttle the empty vessel. They chased him off, and he drowned. So much for early insurance fraud!

April 3, 2021April 5, 2021

C is for Clay Balls

Inventory. Tax records. Rations of bread and beer to the workers. Storage of food during the winter. The earliest civilizations were built on keeping track of things.

Accounting via clay tablet, tokens, cuneiform. Photo from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago

Before data warehouses. Before the invention of the steam engine, calculus, banking, or even the ox-drawn plow, somewhere between the wheel and the pyramids, the Mesopotamians created tracking systems.

We tend to think about the earliest people as hunter-gatherers. But nomadic hunters are the antithesis of foragers. Gatherers figured out eventually that if they stayed in the place with lots of bushes, bare survival turns into surplus food. Domestic the cow rather than chasing after it, figure out how to plant barley, and you have farming. Farming leads to population growth, and suddenly you have 40,000 people living in the Fertile Crescent, building cities and empires. You need armies to protect your grain, which requires the farmers to give surplus to a central authority to pay soldiers. Now you’ve invented taxation and a centralized administration.