We did not begin with barter, discover money, and then eventually develop credit systems. It happened precisely the other way around. What we now call virtual money came first. Coins came much later, and their use spread only unevenly, never completely replacing credit systems. Barter, in turn, appears to be largely a kind of accidental byproduct o

To twenty-first-century policymakers, the interest rate is simply a lever used to control inflation and tweak economic output. Yet an acquaintance with the Babylonian origins of interest should give pause for thought. Interest has always been with us because resources have always been scarce and must be rationed somehow, because wealth is unequally

those trying to prove that contemporary forms of competitive market exchange are rooted in human nature have pointed to the existence of what they call ‘primitive trade’.