Explore the history of money as a system of human trust, from the 20,000-year-old Ishango bone and ancient tally marks to modern digital ledgers and debt.
Money wasn’t a thing you held; it was the quantifiable notion of 'I owe you one unit of something.' If the Ishango bone is the ancestor of our digital ledgers, then money has always been a way of managing human relationships.
Money
The Ishango bone is a 20,000-year-old baboon thigh bone discovered near the Nile that features purposeful, matched tally marks. It is significant because it represents one of the world's first spreadsheets and serves as an ancestor to modern digital ledgers. This ancient artifact suggests that humans were hardwired to track obligations and debts long before the invention of physical currency or formal banking systems.
The 'money of account' system challenges the classic idea that humans began with bartering goods like chickens for cows. Instead of swapping physical items, anthropologists like David Graeber argue that early societies focused on keeping track of quantifiable obligations. In this view, money originated not as a physical object to be held, but as a record of trust and the notion of owing someone a specific unit of something.
According to the history of human trust, money is less about the physical 'stuff' in our wallets and more about the record of promises made between people. From ancient tally marks on bones to the numbers on our phone screens today, money serves as a quantifiable way to track what we owe each other. This perspective shifts the focus from the object itself to the underlying social trust and the history of debt.
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