Token accounting in ancient Mesopotamia (Part 11)

The Mesopotamian civilization emerged during the period 3700–2900 BCE amid the development of technological innovations such as the plough, sailing boats and copper metal working. Clay tablets with pictographic characters appeared in this period to record commercial transactions performed by the temples.[10] Clay receptacles known as bullae (Latin: 'Bubble'), were used in Elamite city of Susa which contained tokens. These receptacles were spherical in shape and acted as envelopes, on which the seal of the individuals taking part in a transaction were engraved. The symbols of the tokens they contained were represented graphically on their surface, and the recipient of the goods could check whether they matched with the amount and characteristics expressed on the bulla once they had received and inspected them. The fact that the content of bulla was marked on its surface produced a simple way of checking without destroying the receptacle, which constituted in itself an exercise in writing that, despite being born spontaneously as a support for the existing system for controlling merchant goods, ultimately became the definitive practice for non-oral communication. Eventually, bullae were replaced by clay tablets, which used symbols to represent the tokens.

During the Sumerian period, token envelop accounting was replaced by flat clay tablets impressed by tokens that merely transferred symbols. Such documents were kept by scribes, who were carefully trained to acquire the necessary literary and arithmetic skills and were held responsible for documenting financial transactions.[15] Such records preceded the earliest found examples of cuneiform writing in the form of abstract signs incised in clay tablets, which were written in Sumerian by 2900 BCE in Jemdet Nasr. Therefore "token envelop accounting" not only preceded the written word but constituted the major impetus in the creation of writing and abstract counting.

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Token accounting in ancient Mesopotamia

Source : Wikipedia

The earliest accounting records were found amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon, Assyria and Sumeria, which date back more than 7,000 years. The people of that time relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of crops and herds. Because there is a natural season to farming and herding, it is easy to count and determine if a surplus had been gained after the crops had been harvested or the young animals weaned.

During the period 8000–3700 BCE, the Fertile Crescent witnessed the spread of small settlements supported by agricultural surplus. Tokens, shaped into simple geometric forms such as cones or spheres, were used for stewardship purposes in relation to identifying and securing this surplus, and are examples of accounts that referred to lists of personal property.[10] Some of them bore markings in the form of incised lines and impressed dots. Neolithic community leaders collected the surplus at regular intervals in the form of a share of the farmers’ flocks and harvests. In turn, the accumulated communal goods were redistributed to those who could not support themselves, but the greatest part was earmarked for the performance of religious rituals and festivals. In 7000 BCE, there were only some 10 token shapes because the system exclusively recorded agricultural goods, each representing one of the farm products levied at the time, such as grain, oil and domesticated animals.The number of token shapes increased to about 350 around 3500 BCE, when urban workshops started contributing to the redistribution economy. Some of the new tokens stood for raw materials such as wool and metal and others for finished products among which textiles, garments, jewelry, bread, beer and honey.

The invention of a form of bookkeeping using clay tokens represented a huge cognitive leap for mankind.[12] The cognitive significance of the token system was to foster the manipulation of data. Compared to oral information passed on from one individual to the other, tokens were extra-somatic, that is outside the human mind. As a result, the Neolithic accountants were no longer the passive recipients of someone else's knowledge, but they took an active part in encoding and decoding data. The token system substituted miniature counters for the real goods, which eliminated their bulk and weight and allowed dealing with them in abstraction by patterning, the presentation of data in particular configurations. As a result, heavy baskets of grains and animals difficult to control could be easily counted and recounted. The accountants could add, subtract, multiply and divide by manually moving and removing counters.

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Accountancy

Source : Wikipedia

Accountancy is the process of communicating financial information about a business entity to users such as shareholders and managers. The communication is generally in the form of financial statements that show in money terms the economic resources under the control of management; the art lies in selecting the information that is relevant to the user and is reliable.

Accountancy is a branch of mathematical science that is useful in discovering the causes of success and failure in business.The principles of accountancy are applied to business entities in three divisions of practical art, named accounting, bookkeeping, and auditing.

Accounting is defined by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) as "the art of recording, classifying, and summarizing in a significant manner and in terms of money, transactions and events which are, in part at least, of financial character, and interpreting the results thereof.

Accounting is thousands of years old; the earliest accounting records, which date back more than 7,000 years, were found in the Middle East. The people of that time relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of crops and herds. Accounting evolved, improving over the years and advancing as business advanced.

Early accounts served mainly to assist the memory of the businessperson and the audience for the account was the proprietor or record keeper alone. Cruder forms of accounting were inadequate for the problems created by a business entity involving multiple investors, so double-entry bookkeeping first emerged in northern Italy in the 14th century, where trading ventures began to require more capital than a single individual was able to invest. The development of joint stock companies created wider audiences for accounts, as investors without firsthand knowledge of their operations relied on accounts to provide the requisite information.[6] This development resulted in a split of accounting systems for internal (i.e. management accounting) and external (i.e. financial accounting) purposes, and subsequently also in accounting and disclosure regulations and a growing need for independent attestation of external accounts by auditors.

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