Debt: The First 5000 Years

[Acrylicist]

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-08-20-graeber-en.html

Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved
institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees,
Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt's potentially
catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era,
writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the
creation of the first effective planetary administrative system
largely in order to protect the interests of creditors.