bitcoinwell on Nostr: https://m.primal.net/Oehz.jpg What do Sumerian tiles from the Neolithic have in ...

What do Sumerian tiles from the Neolithic have in common with Bitcoin?

Beyond their monetary parallels, bitcoin and the Sumerian tiles share a history of innovation

But how?

Time for Bitcoin deep dive!

During the neolithic era some 8,000 years ago, human civilization in the Middle East began to proliferate

Agricultural centers started to grow and grow, sustaining increasingly larger populations

The ancient Sumerian city of Uruk grew to become one of the world's largest ever, with a population of several thousand

As the hunter gather way of life evaporated, a new form of governance emerged; a complicated Social hierarchy - an upper class and a working class evolved

Previously, each city or town would have an individual who would count everything, such as taxes and barter trade

Essentially, each town selected a savvy math brain to be a 'walking spreadsheet'

However, the city's own success resulted in the demise of the ability of walking spreadsheets to track everything

Mr. Spreadsheet needed some support to remember all the debts and their form (no standard currency, remember!)

The solution?

A physical reminder to denominate the amount owed

Mr. Spreadsheet issued tokens to depict debts owed, for example, 10 goats or 10 sheep

These 3D tokens eventually became inscribed into tablets, closely resembling written language by today's standards

Today, we'd call these tablets a ledger or a trade log

The Sumerians invented a new form of accounting - single-entry accounting

Now, a physical trace accompanied larger-scale trade and debt balances, enabling society to better scale and coordinate capital

How do these clay tokens relate to Bitcoin?

The clay tokens were the innovation that transitioned a society from a mental form of accounting to a more standardized form of single-entry accounting

Single-entry accounting would remain the only way to track resources until double-entry accounting was invented in Italy some 7,500 years later, ending the era of single-entry accounting and introducing the era of double-entry accounting

Perhaps it is a coincidence, but the invention of double-entry accounting coincided with the start of the Renaissance and intellectual revolution of the West 🤔

Bitcoin famously ushered in a new accounting standard - triple-entry accounting

Single- and double-entry accounting increased scalability and capital coordination but was an imperfect system due to its centralization

Thus, fraud and errors were unfortunate realities

Bitcoin's triple entry account standard enables anyone to safely transact with one another

Invalid transactions are impossible via triple entry accounting and continuous counterfeit monitoring, thus, bitcoin enables greater capital coordination than the eras before it

Previously, society relied on Mr. Spreadsheet, and later centralized banks, to coordinate the movement and custody of capital

The invention of Bitcoin is as significant as the infrequency of accounting standard innovation