In the Bible I think this was called a "jubilee"; debt was forgiven, slaves (some) freed every 20 years. I guess that in a high mortality society this makes a lot of sense - 90% of human assets will expire in that time period in any case so if you have the bad luck to live for 10+ years in slavery you deserve a break!
In a book called Debt, the First 5000 years they explore this concept and uses it to explain why nations tend to independently concludes that you must have laws that regulate lending. If not you get periodical unrest where the populace go and burn down the debt ledges, and in some historical places this happened as often as once every few years. Collapse of the law don't permanently scare away investors.
Not to say that unrest and collapsing the rule of law is a good thing.