The Origins of Interest

Interest is a very old phenomenon, five millennia, at least. If you look at the words in the ancient languages, including Assyrian and Greek and Latin and Egyptian, all the words for interest are linked to calves and lambs and kid goats. So there is this sense that interest must have existed in prehistoric societies. And then as I say, in ancient Mesopotamia, these, you know, which had large cities and trading in a way quite capitalistic. In fact, the Yale historian, William Goetzmann, says that the invention of interest is the most important invention in the history of finance.