From Sumerian Tokens to Distributed Ledger
Dusk… The sun was chasing shadows over the Euphrates which was 35 kilometers to the east of mound, towards Mesopotamia plains. In November 1930, German archeologist Julius Jorden was standing and observing the work being done on the archeological excavation site below the Great E-Anna Temple at Uruk, which is known as Warka today.
Workers at the excavation site were digging tiny clay pieces out of the temples’ collapsed walls with small brooms and trowels in their hands. The scientists somehow couldn’t discover what these objects with the size of a coin on average, generally round in shape that contains simple scratches, dots and abstract scribbles were.
J. Jordan thought that these objects were tiny replicas of daily commodities, however nobody really had an idea what they used for. These items referred to as “interesting tiny objects”(sonderbae kleine Gegenstände) by Jordan and his team, and termed as Token today (how curious is that they are called with similar names in today’s Blockchain technology!). But this would remain a mystery for the world of science, until the year of 1970.
In 1970, French archeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat made a catalogue of these objects belonging to Sumerian Civilization, found in Uruk and all through Mesopotamia. And as a result of her research, she concluded that these Tokens were used by Sumerians for correspondence counting of daily commodities. These Tokens were most probably used for calculation and accounting operations also such as addition and subtraction.
These Tokens were generally found to be scattered throughout the site, they sometimes were found to be hidden in an envelope made of clay or in clay balls that resembled a globe shaped piggy bank termed as Bulla (how similar does that sound to the word”Block”?) These envelopes and Bullas contained Tokens and, on their cover, generally existed abstract dots, lines and seals to signify that they belonged to their owners. These sealed Tokens were being used as reliable data storage tools by Sumerians for permanent records of realized transactions. Meaning that they were closed off on a contract, sealed and kept in temples for storage purposes. Tokens, clay envelopes and sealing of those on contracts were utilized as an outstanding economical system.
Uruk, was a great Sumerian city where thousands of people used to live during years of 4 thousand B.C. This kind of an urban economy required the presence of commercial activities, planning and taxation for certain. And in order for healthy implementation of all these economical activities, Sumerians invented this terra-cotta system of Tokens. This system was, of course, a Centralized system where main actor was the temple. This complex system compared to that age, consisting of Tokens, Bullas and Contracts was of course managed by expert accountants, economists and priests that lived and worked in the temple. That would be the system which is the ancesstor of modern centralized banking and economical world. And the system would even evolve to form the magnificent communication and recording technology that we call “Writing” today…
Looking all these concepts from the framework of today’s Blockchain technology and Token economics, it can be observed that they have common concepts and features: Tokens (Coins, Tokens, Transactions), Bullas and terra-cotta envelopes (encrypted Blocks), Seals (signatures and Smart Contracts), and of course the centralized system termed as the temple where all these transactions are recorded, stored and trust is built between parties (Centralized Economy).
This was the beginning of all, 6 thousand years ago…
✢ ✢ ✢
January 9th, 2009, midnight... Next to the 27-inch monitor, a coffee cup was standing on top of the print-out of a text titled “Modern Money Mechanics”, with its’ circular stains and remains of coffee on the pages. The cursor was blinking below a few lines on the e-mail window lighting up the black screen. Only a couple of hours later, hundreds of cryptography experts and enthusiasts would get an e-mail from Satoshi Nakamoto through an e-mail group they subscribed for:
“Bitcoin v0.1 released
Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending. It’s completely decentralized with no server or central authority.
See bitcoin.org for screenshots.
Download link: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/bitcoin/bitcoin-0.1.0.rar
Windows only for now. Open source C++ code is included.
- Unpack the files into a directory
- Run BITCOIN.EXE
- It automatically connects to other nodes
…”
On that day, the first version of Bitcoin was launched. 6 days ago, on January 3rd, 2009 at exactly 18:15, the first chain on the block, the Genesis Block, was created. As the date indicated 12th of June, the first transaction between Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney was being realized over blockchain through the Block no 170.
What made this transaction exclusive was that, it was being realized over a decentralized blockchain that had numerous copies on distributed computers independent of each other, instead of being realized over a ledger managed by a centralized authority such as the government or a bank. This record could not be controlled or manipulated by an entity or an institution. Instead, any one of the computers belonging to the network could make an alteration to the records. However, in order for this to happen, this computer needed to follow the rules of a mathematical algorithm termed as Consensus Algorithm and also needed the approval of the majority of computers in the network.
Trust was hence separated from mediating institutions and assigned to a decentralized structure.
Revolution was evoked within Block numbered 170..
In case societies desire to establish economical relationships within themselves and with people they do not know, they have to find a way to reach a commonly agreed reality that is based on trust. Methods mentioned along the first section of this article, that were being used approximately 6 thousand years ago, were of the evolutionary strategies communities generated for their social and economic behavior just to respond this need. This centralized structure that started with a temple maintained its function in one way or another until today. Nevertheless, old-fashioned institutions that we used for realizing these realities are about to become useless in the digital world of 21st century where online communities are established and due to their lack of boundaries and structures beyond centralized systems.
We observe that this centralized structure that started with a daily need in Sumerians and that evolved towards more complex systems with evolving needs of society, i.e the temple, has evolved to banks, notaries, courts and governments in time. Tokens and Bullas have found their novel places in the digital world with developing technology, but still, the real revolution was Mr. Nakamoto’s act of releasing these technologies from the temple’s storage and its control, opening it to the participation of communities. This habit of ours that can also be defined as “Collaboration”, is already one of our core characteristics that differentiated us from our other ancestors, and that made us take a great leap in evolution as the Homo Sapiens.
This technology that started being used 6 thousand years ago by the Summerian culture within the region of modern MENA, is coming back today as MenaPay . But this time with the first decentralized Tokens of Middle East and North Africa!
If you have any further questions, you can reach me via our Telegram group;
