Sorry, I did not mean to imply anything about temporality (i.e. that short selling was "new" in terms of starting significantly after stock trading).

My point was almost consonant with yours - it's almost as old as stock trading, but nobody realized how fundamentally different the concept is. They didn't realize it in 1609, and they certainly don't recognize it now.

Most naive conceptions of how stock markets work would never allow for these sorts of contracts. The fact that they've (nearly) always been a part of actual stock markets just points to the same sort of gaps between the actual operation of the financial services industry and how most people think things ought to be that the current GME gyrations are (according to some) also pointing at.