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Another take may be found on Dr. Garrett Ryan’s excellent “Told in Stone” YouTube channel:

Yes, this.

There were no entrepreneurs, no capital, no banks, no investors. There was no incentive for someone to invent something and get rich. So, no one did.

Considering that ship loans were known already to the Greeks, that assertion is wrong. They were a feature of the antique world, and the fact that Mohammed declared them an abomination would indicate that they worked rather too well.

And there was a recorded instance of futures selling in olive oil in Ancient Greece.

But to the GPs point, while there were contracts, there were no tradeable claims, no capital markets and no professional management separate from the ownership, all of which we associate with the early British and Dutch trading companies and eventually railroads and industrial concerns.

There were all of those things in the Roman empire.

And even before the Roman empire in ancient egypt...

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