Su suggerimento di @charlie gordon.

Già 4000 anni fa l’economia era un fatto complesso, e a testimoniarlo è il ritrovamento di migliaia di tavolette di argilla nel sito archeologico di Kanesh, in Turchia. Un gruppo di commercianti di Assur le aveva portate con sè quando aveva creato la sua base commerciale turca, e oggi quelle tavolette sono interessante materiale per archeologi ed economisti. Ne parla Vincenzo Comito sul sito di Sbilanciamoci riprendendo un articolo del New York Times:

The details of daily life are amazing, but another scholar, Gojko Barjamovic, of Harvard, realized that the archive also offered insight into something potentially more compelling. Many of the texts enumerate specific business details: the price of goods purchased and sold, the interest rate on debt, the costs of transporting goods and the various taxes in the many city-states that the donkey caravans passed on the long journey from Assur to Kanesh. Like most people who have studied Kanesh, Barjamovic is an Assyriologist, an expert in ancient languages and culture. Earlier this year, he joined some economists, as well as some other Assyriologists and archaeologists, on a team that analyzed Kanesh’s financial statistics. The picture that emerged of economic life is staggeringly advanced. The traders of Kanesh used financial tools that were remarkably similar to checks, bonds and joint-stock companies. They had something like venture-capital firms that created diversified portfolios of risky trades. And they even had structured financial products: People would buy outstanding debt, sell it to others and use it as collateral to finance new businesses. The 30 years for which we have records appear to have been a time of remarkable financial innovation.

Immagine da Wikimedia Commons.