A Glance at the History of Banking Systems

Banking has become a very significant aspect of financial management for an individual, a business, or the government. IT may be interesting to find out how it all started by discussing the history of banking systems.

Barter trading and the first forms of money

Long time ago, there wasn't any currency to exchange with other people if there is to be an exchange of goods. What the primitive people did was to do barter trading.

Individuals can own properties out of any ornaments like stones or shells that are shaped to qualify as very good dŽcor. Those who have these nice objects can exchange them for other items they can make use of. This is the root of trading and wealth acquisition.

The individual barter extended between tribes in the event of surplus of utilities. If one tribe has so much of an article that is useful to another tribe, there can be an arrangement to exchange the surplus with some very good pieces of ornaments.

But physical exchanges of things eventually became too much of a burden so a system was developed to assign or transfer certain perceived values to a token which can represent a certain amount of wealth. That was how people conceived the usage of money.

Wealth refers to things that have inherent use. Land is very useful, so it is considered as a wealth. The deed that covers ownership of a land is in itself, not the wealth, it is just an evidence or proof of wealth.

A metal that has certain value or use for many people, like the gold, can be considered wealth.

During those times, a man is very wealthy though he doesn't really have so much money. If he owns a lot of land, useful tools, or goods that are in demand, then he is wealthy.

The need to exchange wealth from one tribe to another gave birth to banking. The process was slow and the growth was inevitable. The history of banking systems has indeed gone through the needle's eye but it has really grown through time.

First banking system

The very first system related to banking can be traced twelve thousand years ago in the era prior to the Assyrian empire. There were evidence of records and accounts believed to be built around a system that controls trade in that empire. This evidence was discovered in 1890 by a professor of Archaeology in the University of Pennsylvania whose name was Doctor Heilprecht.

Most civilizations and empires rose and fell according to how the wealth was successfully traded. Wealth is in the form of useful metals that were exchanged through channels and which also got affected by supply and demand.

As civilizations developed, people devised ways to grow as groups and it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that people have engaged in producing things apart form those that are intended for personal use. People started producing against competition or in cooperation with others.

Each group would produce utilities for use of the other group. The purpose then shifted and production was intended for exchange of commerce. Civilization, commerce or trade, and tokens of wealth or money have all come to mean banking.