Clay accounting tokens
Fichas contables de arcilla (tokens)
- Date
- c. 8000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Ganj Dareh and Tepe Asiab, Zagros, Iran; Mureybet, Syria
- Credited to
- Neolithic communities of the Fertile Crescent
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Small geometric clay shapes (cones, spheres, discs) representing quantities of grain, oil or animals. The first abstract accounting system for goods and, according to Schmandt-Besserat, the seed of writing and of numerals.
The continuity between 8th-millennium tokens and 4th-millennium writing (Schmandt-Besserat's thesis) is broadly accepted but disputed in its details.
What it led to
- Accounting of surplus and tribute: administration before the state
- Separation of quantity from the object counted, the basis of abstract number
- Control of debts and rations by an administrative elite
Built on
- Granary / grain siloc. 9300 BCE
- Grain silo
- Tally marks on bone
Made possible
- Stamp seal and clay sealingsc. 6000 BCE
- Clay envelope (bulla) with tokensc. 3500 BCE
- Commodity money (barley and silver standards)c. 3400 BCE
- Proto-cuneiform writingc. 3300 BCE
- Cuneiform writingc. 3200 BCE
- Sexagesimal number systemc. 3000 BCE
- Early counting board / abacusc. 2400 BCE
- Babylonian sexagesimal positional systemc. 2000 BCE
- Bulla with impressions
- Numerical tablets
- Sexagesimal system