Tag: #Accounting

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N is for Numbers

Blackadder: Right Baldrick, let’s try again shall we? This is called adding. If I have two beans, and then I add two more beans, what do I have?
Baldrick: Some beans.
Blackadder: Yes… and no. Now try again. One, two, three, four. So how many are there?
Baldrick: Three.
Blackadder: What?
Baldrick: …and that one.
Blackadder: Three and that one.  Let’s try again shall we? I have two beans, then I add two more beans. What does that make?
Baldrick: A very small casserole.

Blackadder episode, “Head”
Student geometry problem in Babylonian cuneiform @1500 BCE. Photo by Rama in the Louvre.

Yes, dear readers, there will be math today. I know you can do it. I know you can run intellectual circles around Baldrick.

The definitive work on this topic is The History of Mathematics by Merzbach and Boyer, which is already in a Third Edition, even though not much has changed for the Egyptians and Sumerians, who used what we’d consider basic counting systems to construct giant pyramids. Mainly, Merzbach and Boyer have added a “Logic and Computing” and “Recent Trends” chapters at the end. Remember when Computer Science was about logic and not Belarussians creating algorithms to stuff your social media full of outrage porn? How quaint!

Anyway, I digress. Today, I want to describe how different cultures approached numbers–not specifically whether they were smart enough to figure out Fermat’s theorem or Poincare’s theory–but how we as humans figured out what Baldrick apparently couldn’t. Thinking about math is hard, but we’ll also see that there are harder and easier ways to do it.

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L is for Library

“The Great Library of Alexandria” by O. Von Corven, 19th century
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Libraries might seem too modern a topic for an ancient history compilation that focuses elsewhere on the first bit of thread or shaped dish. Libraries do come much later in sequence. By definition, libraries are historic rather than prehistoric, since writing has to exist in order for someone to keep collections of it. Yet even if today’s examples are all after 3300 BCE, it’s true that most societies that developed writing also created a way of storing it.

One of the most famous ancient institutions–a wonder perhaps bigger than the other seven ancient wonders–was the Library of Alexandria. It was the most ambitious and likely biggest: the Internet of its day. But Alexandria was by no means the first or even only great library of the ancient era. Moreover, different cultures took different approaches to what they stored, and that difference says something about what cultures value.

As we explore libraries, we should consider:

  1. What constitutes a “library”?
  2. What cultures created libraries in ancient times?
  3. What did the creation of libraries suggest about humans, and what lessons can be learned from Alexandria?
Doe Library at UC Berkeley, Reading Room. Pho by Joe Parks
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U is for Usury

German woodcut of Italian bankers. Photo from medium.com

Usury was denounced by the Catholic church in the Middle Ages, a potential route to heresy and excommunication. But royalty, the church, and the merchants needed bankers. The bankers found ways around restrictions. The Medici thrived on banking, but it proved to be their downfall, or their rise depending on how you look at it. Lending to people in charge seems to have an inherent risk, usury or not.

Criminal Interest

Usury is defined as charging an “exorbitant” interest according to Webster’s. But there’s that third dictionary definition, listed as Obsolete. Usury was once defined as charging any interest at all. It varied with the century.

There were banks in Rome, which might charge from 5-12% interest. There were banks in the 6th century Byzantine Empire, because Emperor Justinian set loan rates, which varied by the venture: 4% for “exalted personages,” 7% for business loans, and 12% for maritime loans. The Council at Nicea centuries earlier had banned interest but for clergy, not everybody.

Yet a few centuries later, between the time of Charlemagne (750 CE) to the Black Death (1350), usury was more strictly banned. First, the Catholic church said that usury was banned to everybody, that you could not have a transaction where more was returned than was given. Even in a simple transaction, like selling a cow, the farmers had to find a just price, where they would only receive what it cost.

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