How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk

Re:How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk by sushsjsuauahab on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @03:12AM (#29238143)

There are Babylonian tablets where merchants are complaining about other merchants not delivering on their contractual obligations :)

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Re:How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk by FranzFerdiNaN on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @04:08AM (#29238465)

One of them even became a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir

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Re:How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk by BoxOfRain on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @05:02AM (#29238820)

There's something incredibly surreal about a dispute over trading standards between two people who have been dead for literal millennia and couldn't possibly have conceived of the internet and the technology that makes it possible becoming a meme. I wonder if there's any correspondence out there today which will amuse people 3500 years in the future?

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Re:How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk by geoduck14 on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @06:32AM (#29239372)

>I wonder if there's any correspondence out there today which will amuse people 3500 years in the future?

I really hope RickRolling is still a think in 3500 years

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Re:How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk by BoxOfRain on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @01:22PM (#29244383)

I wonder how it might get translated into future languages? There's dozens of Bible translations and while they all say the same thing the tone of the text can be quite different between them, the Valley of the Shadow of Death (KJV) conjures a much more vivid picture than the darkest valley (NIV) for example.

The idea of a future historian painstakingly translating and trying to figure out the "deeper significance" of each phrase in Never Gonna Give You Up makes me smile! Maybe we should print out Wikipedia on the kind of paper the ancient Israelites were using to give them a hand.

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Re:How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk by ovi256 on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @08:20AM (#29317443)

Most probably it will be as alien to people in 3500 years as the babylonian gods are to us.

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Re:How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk by nikprasad on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @06:32AM (#29239374)

Haha I had forgotten about this meme! I wonder if they had insurance for merchants back then and if so how did they even figure out the premium on it...

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