d, can be catastrophic when times are bad. Homer and Sylla describe normal contracted rates, not realized rates net of those costs, as 10% — 40% in Sumer and Babylonia, 6% - 18% in ancient Greece, 5% — 24% in Egypt, and 4% — 12+% in Rome and the Byzantine Empire.* After higher rates in the dark ages, E

Symbolic Communication The earliest recorded permanent human communication is cave painting, dating to 33,000BcE. Written communication emerged in Sumer, the southern part of Mesopotamia (now Iraq), using a script called Cuneiform, written on clay tablets. It was used primarily for accounting. The Sum