![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goodsthat is, long before the invention of coins or cash. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods-that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It explores the historical relationship of debt with social institutions such as barter, marriage, friendship, slavery, law, religion, war and government in short, much of the fabric of human life in society. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a book by anthropologist David Graeber, published in 2011. ![]()
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