From the worlds first-ever bailout by the Romans to 33% interest loans 5,000 years ago, humans have pretty much always been in financial crisis

The first recorded personal name in human history didn’t belong to a king or a priest.It belonged to a Sumerian brewer named Kashim and his name was inscribed on a clay tablet to document a loan he’d taken out.Some 5,000 years ago, he borrowed some barley to brew a batch of beer — and, remarkably, wrote down his debts.There was just one small problem: the interest rate was 33%, and time was running out.

Could he brew the beer fast enough? Would he get paid? Would the price of barley crash and wipe him out?“We can picture Kushim, late at night, praying for a bumper harvest,” writes economist David McWilliams in “The History of Money: A Story of Humanity” (Henry Holt, out Tuesday).Kushim’s financial anxieties feel remarkably modern because they are.

The interest rate on his loan wasn’t arbitrary — it was “the price of time, expressed by money,” McWilliams writes.It represented the lender’s calculation of risk, opportunity cost, and the borrower’s desperation.

This is how interest works, whether you’re a Bronze Age brewer or a millennial with student debt. Flash forward to Pompeii, where worship took a distinctly commercial turn.On 19 of the 29 beautifully ornate mosaics archaeologists have uncovered in the ancient city, a recurring image appears.

It’s a winged man carrying a bag of coins — the god Mercury.He was held in high regard not because of any Olympian prowess, but because he was the god of commerce—“a negotiator, salesman, charmer, a trusted partner as well as a trickster, moneylender, and dealmaker,” writes McWilliams.The Romans didn’t just worship money; they weaponized credit in ways that feel eerily contemporary.

They had banks, bankers, mortgages, and speculative real estate bubbles.And, in 33 CE, they experienced what McWilliams calls “the world’s first credit crisis.”Emperor Tiberius was enjoying semi-retirement in Capri when news of an alleged coup shattered his peace.

A young pretender named Seja...