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Comment by KGIII | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how long the modern idea of debt has existed? Mainly, that idea of owing someone something, (often) at a later date?

The concept of zero isn't even 5000 years old. Negative numbers were still being debated in the 1700s, though I think the first known use was in China's number rod system in 200 BCE. Conceptually, less than nothing is a funny thing and not really well grounded in the physical world.

It does make me curious. I'll have to look for the book. I find the history of mathematics to be fascinating, though debt may have originally been more culture and less math.

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A TL;DR of the book (still read it!) is that debt was (at least typically, and as best we can tell) around before money, and that early communities operated on debt internally and mostly used barter or money-like things when dealing with dangerous, untrustworthy "others", which turns the usual "first we bartered, that sucked so we invented money, then debt" narrative around. Something really resembling money, it claims, didn't come around until rulers invented it to better fund their armies ("OK, soldiers who will be operating in areas where you don't have social ties, here are five coins. All you civilians, including the ones we just conquered? You're each gonna need one of those coins to pay your taxes next year, or I'll take all your shit. Boom, now the coins have value.") The book advances the idea that barter is most common as a temporary measure among people who are used to using money but, for a time, cannot (during prolonged disasters, in prisons), not as a major feature of the economies of early or primitive societies. It also ties the collision of debt-and-money with social-debt societies to the development of slavery, and covers a bunch of other interesting territory. Again, do read it.

As for negative numbers, you can express "owes" without them so I doubt it was a problem. After all, you don't "owe" someone negative one thousand dollars—you just owe them positive one thousand dollars. You hand them a negative-one-thousand dollar bill, they're not gonna be happy. Being able to write negative balances or work formally with negative numbers isn't strictly necessary to work with debt.

Thanks. As mentioned in another comment, I'm going to read the book. I'm not really big on much anthropology, but I do love math. So, it should be interesting to see the concepts in motion before they became described by mathematics.

Agreed, it's a very good book, and Graeber is a very interesting man.

This seems repeating Ibn Khaldun's theories from XIV century.

In subsistence economies surplus is used primarily for fostering social relations and creating social obligations which one can call upon when times get though. And in subsistence economy sooner or later they will.

As more added value is created socioeconomic relations get more complicated and they become based on money.

> I wonder how long the modern idea of debt has existed? Mainly, that idea of owing someone something, (often) at a later date?

Debt contracts appear to be the origin of writing in Sumeria and, likely, in the Americas (the third independent invention, China, appears to have a different origin).

We have remnants of what appear to be contract vessels: pots with statues of sheep and such in them presumed to memorialize a deal for some sheep or grain. If there was a dispute the pot could be broken open and the terms examined. Then they started putting a sheep on the outside so you knew what was in the pot, then a drawing of a sheep and then someone figured out you didn't need the pot.

I believe in the Americas writing began with record keeping such as with the quipu which might even have been discussed on HN recently. Not sure of its contractual implication though.

Fascinating. Any recommended sources for more information - more interested in quipu. I'm so Native American that Canada has to let me in, but I've never heard of that. (I have ancestry records and DNA results that show I'm 3/4 Micmac, which aided me in getting Canadian citizenship.)

Quipu is from mesoamerica I'm afraid. As far as I know writing was invented and used in the Americas only in the Inca/Aztec region, though I'm no expert.

I know the Micmac (Mi'kmaq) people had pictographs before European influence. We still have some of those but, curiously, our tribal dialect was lost. We aren't sure quite what it was. As it was a dialect spoken by the Penobscot, we now share their language. It is believed that we had our own distinct language, based on some writing from the early 1700s.

They are still trying to piece our history together and digging up what they can, sometimes literally. If you ever need something to do, many archeological digs accept volunteer labor. It's hard work but a lot of fun. They will train you and you start by moving lots of dirt that has already been sifted. Sometimes, you get a bucket and sometimes you get a wheelbarrow. Eventually, you can do the sifting and work your way up to doing some digging. Though, they probably will not want you doing much cleaning, mapping, or removal. If you're quiet and polite, you can usually observe when they do classification.

But, I digress...

Anyhow, there weren't many written languages in the pre-Columbian era in North America. Some, like my people, had pictographs and others had increased complexities.

You've given me something to research after dinner. Thanks!

Most likely, Debt preceeded money.

e.g. I give you seed and you give me a portion of your crops for X growing seasons.

Sure, but did it precede the mathematical concepts? If so, what did that look like?

I'm going to read the book.

The book should satisfy your curiosity. It's based on anthropological research, but intelligently and coherently argued, and is not just description.

Thanks for the recommendation. I wrote the title down and will see if the bookstore has it. If not, they'll order it for me. They are handy like that.

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