Date: 12/1/2004;
Publication: Accounting Historians Journal; Author: Mouck,
Tom
Abstract: Recent archaeological
evidence supports the claim that the first system of writing and the first use
of abstract numerical representation evolved from the clay token accounting
system of ancient
INTRODUCTION
Thanks to the work of the
archeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat [1978; 1986a;
1986b; 1992], an ancient accounting system developed by the Sumerians of
Mesopotamia some 10,000 years ago has been attracting a remarkable amount of
attention. The reason for the attention is her claim (backed by extensive
evidence) that both the first known writing system and the first known use of
abstract numbers were direct outgrowths of that ancient token accounting
system. (1) This role of ancient accounting has thus been highlighted in many
of the recent works examining the history of human cultures and the evolution
of the modern human mind, including the Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond [1999].
Schmandt-Besserat's work has not gone
unnoticed by accounting historians. Parker [1990] provided a brief but
succinct overview of Schmandt-Besserat's findings,
and Vollmers [2003] has discussed Mesopotamian
accounting in the context of ancient accounting historiography. But Mattessich is the accounting
scholar who has written most extensively in this area. Mattessich
[1987] for instance, has argued that Schmandt-Besserat's
research sheds important light on "the problem of representation". Specifically, he argues that it provides
"evidence for the usefulness of the correspondence theory of
representation" [p. 83] that was at the center of Wittgenstein's early
work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
[1922]. Mattessich also argues that "those
ancient people of the Middle East had record keeping systems, the basic logical
structure of which was virtually identical with that of modern double
entry" [1987, p. 80]. Related arguments about ancient Mesopotamian accounting
being a precursor to contemporary accounting methods and practices is further
elaborated in a series of other works by Mattessich
[1989; 1994; 1998; 2000]. A radically different perspective
on the implications of ancient token accounting is explored by Ezzamel and Hoskin [2002].
Whereas Mattessich tends to view accounting as a tool
for representing pre-existing values and improving the efficiency of economic
activities, Ezzamel and Hoskin
use the post-structural perspectives of Foucault and Derrida to demonstrate how
the early token accounting system promoted new forms of valuing, new economic
practices, and new power and knowledge relationships.
The present paper examines the
significance of the ancient token accounting system from vet another perspective,
the perspective of human cognitive evolution. Specifically, it uses Merlin
Donald's [1991] book, Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution
of Culture and Cognition, to identify the crucial role played
by the token accounting system in altering cognitive structures and
transforming human cognitive capabilities. In a nutshell,
this accounting system consisted of cognitive devices that existed outside the
human brain; devices that served as external memory storage and computational aides.
Ancient token accounting facilitated the development of what the cognitive
philosopher Andy Clark [1997] has characterized as "cognitive scaffolding", allowing us to do far more than the naked brain
could ever do. Indeed, it is the author's contention that accounting history
could usefully be studied as a history of developments that facilitated scaffolded cognition, and from this perspective
the accounting system of ancient
The methodological affiliation
of this project is with "embodied realism" as articulated by Lakoff and Johnson in their 1999 book Philosophy in the
Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Consistent with
Donald's [1991] view of human cognitive evolution, Lakoff
and Johnson argue that human thought and language are rooted in a prelinguistic conceptual structure; a neural-based
conceptual structure that has evolved during millennia of interaction between
brain, body and world. The resultant "embodiment of meaning",
according to Lakoff and Johnson, "locates
meaning in the body and in the unconscious conceptual system" [p. 462].
Embodied realism thus claims that important basic level conceptual structures are shared by human beings by virtue of having the same
perceptual systems, the same sensori-motor systems,
the same biological needs, and by the fact that they share the same physical
world. Yet as Donald [1991] makes clear, and as Lakoff
and Johnson acknowledge, the same basic level structures can support the
addition of differing culturally-specific conceptual
structures as human cultural evolution takes divergent paths through
geographical space and historical time. This view of biologically-based
conceptual structures, together with culturally-evolved additions and
modifications, provides the context for the present project--namely, to
identify the role played by ancient accounting practices in these evolutionary
processes.
The first section below
provides a broad overview of human cognitive/cultural evolution, drawing
primarily on Donald's [1991] book. The next section provides a brief review of
Mesopotamian accounting and the origin of writing. This is
followed by a closer look at Donald's scheme of cognitive evolution,
which is used to locate precisely the nature of the contribution made by these
early accounting systems in terms of new cognitive pathways involving
visual/symbolic processing and external memory devices. Finally, the last major
section provides a cursory exploration of accounting techniques as devices for
cognitive scaffolding and argues that the ancient Mesopotamians were pioneers
in such development.
COGNITIVE/CULTURAL
EVOLUTION--AN OVERVIEW
Chimpanzees, our closest
biological relatives, have demonstrated an ability to integrate patterns of
action associated with relationships and events, as evidenced by their
manufacture and use of rudimentary tools, and their (limited) forms of social
cooperation [Donald, 1991, pp. 155-156]. Their apparent ability to recall
situations, events, and action patterns has been characterized as
"episodic memory" by Donald, and their "culture", which is based upon episodic memory, is referred to
as "episodic culture". But even though they
are at the pinnacle of ape cultures and cognitive capabilities, their
representational capabilities are limited to episodes or series of episodes
involving concrete situations and events. They apparently are not capable of
re-presenting situations or of developing shared understandings based on
representational knowledge of events, situations and
circumstances.
On the evolutionary tree, early
hominid species split off from the apes some five or six million years ago, but
there is little in the archeological evidence to indicate that the early
hominids transcended the episodic-type cognitive capabilities of apes. This is
not the case, however, with respect to homo erectus,
the hominids that emerged some 1.5 million years ago. Unlike earlier hominids,
the archaeological evidence indicates that homo
erectus had significantly larger brains, developed very distinctive tools,
constructed shelters, used fire, engaged in mass migrations, and used base
camps for seasonal hunting activities. These types of activities involve
pedagogical practices, social communication and social
coordination that are unlikely with episodic cognitive capabilities.
Homo erectus had apparently
developed new cognitive capabilities which were
intermediate between episodic cognition and the cognitive capabilities
associated with language. Contrary to the view that consciousness requires
language, (2) Donald [1991] theorizes that they had developed the ability to
engage in conscious mimetic communication. "Mimetic skill or mimesis rests
on the ability to produce conscious, self-initiated, representational acts that
are intentional but not linguistic" [Donald, 1991, p. 168]. Whereas apes
demonstrate limited forms of self-awareness, the mimetic mind must be able to
integrate self-awareness with "voluntary action schemas" and to
combine models of the self in action with the contents of episodic memory to
produce mimetic re-presentations of recalled events and situations [Donald,
1991, p. 192]. With mimesis individuals could
communicate information about feelings, about animals, food sources, dangerous
places, etc. They could communicate information about how to hunt, how to
maintain a fire, how to build shelter, and how to make tools. And not insignificantly, they could engage in reciprocal
game-playing. The significance of mimetic games is the way such games promote
ideas about social roles, consequences of social actions, the development of
shared attitudes, and social conformity. Mimetic game-playing
is also closely related to mimetically based ritual, the outcome of which may
be shared understandings of the world and shared understandings about the
society itself. In sum, "mimetic culture" was radically more
sophisticated and complex than the episodic cultures of apes and early
hominids. Contrary to some widely held views of language and human culture, (3)
mimetic culture was, according to Donald [1991], "the first truly human
culture" [p. 193].
Indeed, Donald [2001] argues
that the next great revolution in cognitive capabilities (the one associated
with homo sapiens sapiens and the evolution of
language 50,000 or more years ago) was in many respects an extension of
cultural directions already put in motion by mimetic culture. With language it was possible to construct more finely tuned
descriptions of places, things, events, and techniques than was possible with
mimesis alone. In and of itself, this meant that humans could expand their
shared informational data base, they could improve the
effectiveness of pedagogy with respect to tool-making and other skills, and
they could enhance their social coordination and planning with respect to
migration, hunting and defense. But even more
importantly, they could construct abstract narratives that, in essence,
generalized across the concrete information about specific episodes; they could
construct shared stories about their immediate world and about the nature of
the universe. The ultimate products of such shared stories wove the grand
unifying thematic worldviews that have subsequently been
characterized as mythological. As Donald [1991] notes, in
hunter-gatherer societies "[m]yth permeates and
regulates daily life, channels perceptions, determines the significance of
every object and event in life" [p. 215]. He accordingly characterizes
such cultures as "mythic cultures".
If we limit our consideration
to biological evolution, the evolution of language can be
seen as the last major revolution in human cognitive capabilities. But Donald [1991; 2001] argues that there was another revolution,
a non-biological revolution, in human cognitive capabilities. This, of course,
was the revolution that added external symbol systems, external memory and external computational devices to the human
cognitive tool kit. The first significant steps toward this revolution were
arguably the use of two and three-dimensional pictorial representations,
beginning 30,000 to 40,000 veins ago during Paleolithic times. The most famous
Paleolithic art works are the cave paintings near
In Donald's view, the first
truly significant development that would eventually begin to undermine mythic
culture was the development of writing some 5,000 years ago in
Another dimension of the
contested territory surrounding theories of writing has to do with the cultural
implications of writing and is typically addressed
under the heading of 'literacy and orality'. Rosalind
Thomas [1992], one of the foremost voices in this controversy, identifies the
two main trends in studies of literacy and orality as
follows: "Put crudely, the first seeks broad psychological and cultural
implications (or effects) of literacy. The second pursues detailed, culturally
specific studies of the manifestations of literacy in a given society, often eschewing
entirely any of the wider claims made for the effects of literacy" [p.
15]. Thomas' oxen work is a notable example of the latter trend, and she is
highly skeptical of attempts to draw broad cross-cultural implications
regarding the influence of writing on cultural and cognitive evolution.
Donald's work, on the other
hand, is characteristic of the trend that looks for broad psychological and
cultural implications of literacy. As noted above, he claims that writing
played a crucial role in the transition from a predominantly mythic to a
predominantly theoretic culture. But in contrast with
many of the views that Thomas targets for criticism, Donald's theory makes no
claim that literacy, in and of itself, produces a quick, uniform and complete
cultural transformation. For Donald, the cultural transformation must be seen in longer, evolutionary terms in which both
narrative-type pictorial art and writing emerged as new visuographic
forms of representation. But whereas pictorial
representations were primarily indexical and/ or iconic representations,
writing evolved a means of using abstract symbols that could be arranged and
rearranged in an infinite number of ways to capture the world of linguistic
representations in a media external to the individual human mind. But more importantly, it eventually opened up the
possibility that humans would begin to reflect upon their own construction of
representations; their own collective views of their social world, the physical
world and the veracity of their own, previously taken-for-granted, knowledge.
With Greek culture in the 1st millennium B.C., these possibilities came to fruition as
"[i]deas on every
subject, from law and morality to the structure of the universe, were written
down ..." [Donald, 1991, p. 342]. As written commentaries were shared and
discussed, processes of critique and evaluation were developed, including the
famous Socratic dialectic which was immortalized in
written form by Plato. "The result was that, for the first time in
history, complex ideas were placed in the public arena, in an external medium,
where they could undergo refinement over the longer term, that is well beyond
the lifespan of single individuals" [Donald, 1991, p. 344]. The Greeks
thus cultivated new habits of critical, analytical thought that were largely
alien to mythic thought. They developed the logic of formal argument,
systematic taxonomies, and formal methods of measurement and verification. They
developed elaborate theoretical systems of thought in areas such as philosophy,
mathematics, biology and ethics; systems of thought
which bore little resemblance to mythological thought. As Donald [1991] notes,
"Ancient
The theoretic accomplishments
of the Greeks would not have been possible without the development of new
cognitive skills. The habits of analytical thought and the metalinguistic
skills associated with presentation and evaluation of ideas were
formally taught to generation after generation of Greek students. These
skills were honed in the formal study of rhetoric,
which "emphasized the large-scale, on-line structuring of linguistic
thought products" [Donald, 1991, p. 348]. The rigor of Greek rhetoric as a
field of study is manifested in Aristotle's
three-volume work on the subject. The formal teaching of these habits of
thought were subsequently carried forward in one form or another by the Romans
and then by Medieval universities, eventually playing a major role in laying
the foundation for the development of modern science.
In sum, the development of
writing opened tip vast possibilities for the external storage of human
knowledge, including knowledge of language and analytic thought processes.
Furthermore, although writing was initially used in
the service of solidifying and disseminating mythological perspectives, the
impetus toward critical, analytical thought was essentially a demythologizing
move. And although mythology continued to play a major
role in subsequent cultures, including our own, the products of theoretical
thought processes have taken over an increasingly influential role in major
institutions related to education, business, science and politics. In this
sense, the development of writing can be seen as the
major development that initiated the chain of events by which the forces of
theoretic culture have eclipsed those associated with mythic culture.
MESOPOTAMIAN ACCOUNTING AND THE
ORIGIN OF WRITING
Accounting played a crucial
role in the transition from mythic culture to theoretic culture. Specifically,
ancient accounting provided the bridge between mythic culture and the origin of
writing. In fact, the first known writing system emerged some 5,000 years ago
in
Until recently, the reigning
hypothesis about the development of cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia was that a
relatively concrete pictographic writing had evolved first and gradually been
modified into the more abstract cuneiform writing as evidenced by the many clay
tablets that have been discovered by archeological researchers. This hypothesis
has essentially been overturned by the archeological
research of Schmandt-Besserat, which was first
published in the late 1970s. Schmandt-Besserat [1978;
1986a; 1986b; 1992] has provided persuasive evidence that the Mesopotamian
cuneiform writing system developed not from a previously existing pictographic
writing system but from an ancient clay token accounting system which
originated at least 10,000 years ago. In this accounting system, baked clay
tokens were used to represent various agricultural goods (such as sheep, wheat
and oil), and latex manufactured goods (such as pottery and rugs). Certain
shapes and sizes of tokens, and tokens with certain markings, were used to represent and to count specific types of items:
"Sheep were counted with disks, small and large measures of grain with
cones and spheres, and ovoids served to compute jars
of oil" [Schmandt-Besserat, 1986a, p. 266].
This system was modified in the
4th millennium B.C. when the Mesopotamian accountants
began enclosing tokens in clay envelopes (bullae) and
impressing the tokens on the outside to indicate the contents. In fact, it was a clay envelope found in the late 1920s that provided
"the key to understanding what the tokens were" [Schmandt-Berrerat,
1992, p. 8]. The cuneiform inscriptions on the outside of the envelope have been interpreted as follows by Schmandt-Besserat
[1992, p. 8]:
Counters representing small
cattle:
21 ewes that lamb 6 female lambs
8 full grown male sheep
4 male lambs
6 she-goats that kid
1 he-goat
3 female kids
The seal of Ziqarru,
the shepherd.
When the envelope was opened, it contained 49 clay tokens, corresponding to
the number of animals indicated in the above list. Since this example provides
a clear indication that the tokens were "used for bookkeeping", Schmandt-Besserat
characterizes it as "the Rosetta stone of the token system" [1992, p.
9].
By the middle of the 4th millennium B.C., however, some of the ancient
accountants began impressing the image of the tokens directly into solid clay
tablets, a step that would lead to the obsolescence of clay envelopes and the
tokens. As Schmandt-Besserat puts it, "Whereas
the markings on envelopes repeated only the message encoded in the tokens held
inside, the signs impressed on tablets were the message" [1992, p. 129].
The next significant development began around 3,100 B.C. when a pointed stylus was used to incise pictures of tokens in clay tablets
instead of impressing the tokens themselves. This in fact, was the beginning of
pictographic writing in ancient
Developments in the token
accounting system are directly associated not only with the world's first
writing, but also with the development of numerals and "abstract counting". In fact, it was the development of abstract
counting, according to Schmandt-Berrerat's theory, that paved the way for the development of the
Mesopotamian cuneiform writing system. The early token system involved a very
concrete form of counting in which the concept of number was not distinct from
the concept of the type of item counted. "Ovoids
were used to count jars of oil and spheres to count measures of grain;
vice-versa, jars of oil could only be counted with ovoids
and measures of grain with spheres" [Schmandt-Besserat,
1992, p. 190]. A quantity such as three sheep would, accordingly, be
represented by three sheep tokens: "Such a group of three tokens
indicated, literally 'sheep, sheep, sheep' instead of the modern western usage,
'3 sheep' (or 'three sheep')" [Schmandt-Besserat, 1986a, p. 266]. Schmandt-Besserat
[1992], however, has marshaled an impressive amount of archeological evidence
to support her claim that gradual modifications of this accounting system led
to an increasingly abstract form of counting. Indeed, as she points out, the
practice of impressing the image of tokens in clay tablets and clay envelopes
was a move toward greater abstraction. "Compared to three-dimensional clay
counters, the two-dimensional markings represented commodities in greater
abstraction since they could no longer be grasped in the hand and
manipulated" [1992, p. 191]. Then about 3,100 B.C., ancient Mesopotamian
accountants "invented the first numerals" [p. 192] when they began
incising a pictograph of a token for a type of good together with impressed signs
denoting numbers. "For example, a tablet from Uruk
features two accounts of '5 sheep' shown by the pictograph for 'sheep' (a
circle with a cross) and '5' appearing as five impressed wedges ..." [p.
192]. This example indicates a clear separation of the numerical concept
separate from the concept of the item counted; a
crucial step for the development of abstract counting. (5)
According to Schmandt-Besserat, the development of abstract counting
was, in turn, the crucial move in the development of writing. It had a freeing
effect on the system of pictographs in the sense that they could
be modified more easily, and expanded, to represent concepts that were not
immediately associated with counting. Thus, the system of pictographs
"could expand to communicate any subjects of human endeavor" [Schmandt-Berrerat, 1992, p. 194]. This capability was
further enhanced as signs began to be linked with phonetics early in the 3rd millennium B.C. Thus, Nissen et. al. [1993] note that, "[f]rom the early third millennium B.C., script had factually
the potential to faithfully represent spoken language" [p. 117]. And due to the flexibility of the cuneiform script system [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 123], it was adaptable by
languages other than Sumerian, thus facilitating the spread of writing "to
As noted by Hallo [1992], Schmandt-Besserat's views have been refined to deal with
previous challenges, and at least some of the revisions presented in Before
Writing will probably be challenged. Before Writing
[1992], however, "furnishes to date the most coherent working hypothesis
to account for the prehistory of the historic invention known as writing"
[Hallo, 1992, p. xi]. According to that account, the ancient clay token
accounting system of
ANCIENT ACCOUNTING AND NEW
COGNITIVE PATHWAYS
Donald's [1991] account of
human cognitive-cultural evolution involves tour stages--episodic, mimetic,
linguistic (oral mythic culture), and external symbolic storage (theoretic
culture). For each new stage new neural-cognitive
pathways were required to enable new types of representations and new types of
cognitive processing. The first two transitions--from episodic to mimetic and
[tom mimetic to linguistic--required the biological evolution of new innate
neural systems. The third transition--from oral-linguistic to external symbolic
storage--was not accompanied by any change in the
innate biological brain. It was a transition that
relied solely on the plasticity of neural networks. That is, the cognitive
changes related to the third transition are changes that rely upon the ability
of the brain to literally generate new neural circuitry as a
result of our experiences in the world (both physical and
socio-cultural). The neuro-cognitive research program
that supports this perspective on plasticity is increasingly referred to as
"neural constructivism" and two of its most influential proponents
are Steven Quartz (Director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at
the California Institute of Technology) and Terrence Sejnowski
(Director of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute).
A technical outline of their view was published as "The neural basis of
cognitive development: A constructivist manifesto" [1997]. A more
accessible version, which is interwoven with an exploration of implications for
understanding human socio-cultural evolution, is available in their book Liars,
Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About
How We Become Who We Are [2002]. A full review of neural constructivism is
beyond the scope of the present paper, but some of the ideas will
be introduced below in support of Donald's account of cognitive/cultural
evolution.
Donald's diagrammatic portrayal
of the first two transitions is reproduced below as
Figure 1. The cognitive processes associated with the event perceptions of
episodic culture are indicated by an E enclosed in a
circle. The cognitive processes associated with mimetic representations are indicated by an M enclosed in a circle. And those associated with linguistic representations are
indicated by an L enclosed in a circle. Note the asymmetric relationship
between the "episodic system" (E) and the 'mimetic system' (M). The
event perceptions of E can be modeled mimetically, but
the episodic system has no way to model the voluntary action schemas inherent
in mimetic representations. Likewise, note that both the event perceptions of E
and the mimetic representations of M can be represented
linguistically, while neither E nor M is capable of representing language. The
evolution of language required major additions to the cognitive structure of
the mimetic mind. For the production of speech, it required neuro-cognitive
systems capable of encoding human ideas and representations into abstract sound
units, as well as the related muscular-skeletal structures capable of producing
the rapid, finely modulated sounds that constitute human speech. For hearing
and understanding, it required neuro-cognitive
networks capable of distinguishing the sounds of human speech and decoding
them.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
The transition to literacy, on
the other hand, required no changes in the innate biological brain. The new
cognitive structures associated with the construction and interpretation
of abstract visual symbols have been accomplished by experiential
training and re-structuring the neural systems of the innate brain. This is
evidenced by the fact that anthropologists have studied many pre-literate human
cultures that have the full use of spoken language and display the full ability
to learn the skills of literacy, and by evidence that the time
frame for the evolution of writing has been too short for any
significant change in the biologically-evolved brain. Also,
the aforementioned neural constructivist research program provides scientific
support for this view. Quartz and Sejnowski [1997, p.
538] note that "the currency of cognition is representations", and that cognitive neuroscience is capable of
characterizing "representational change in terms that correspond to
structural changes in the [brain's] learning mechanism". Basically, they argue that solid neuro-scientific
evidence exists to support the theory that representational neuronal structures
grow in complexity as a result of interaction with one's environment (both
physical and socio-cultural).(6) Such interactions promote an increasingly
complex representational structure that is capable of "constructive
learning"; learning that, to use a computer metaphor, involves not only
the software, but "causes major changes to the underlying hardware"
[Quartz and Sejnowski, 1997, p. 537]. (7) In
sum, both the anthropological evidence and cutting-edge neuro-cognitive
research support Donald's view that the new cognitive structures associated
with the construction and interpretation of abstract visual symbols have been accomplished by experiential training and
re-structuring of the neural systems of the innate brain.
It is at this level, the
transition to literacy, that the ancient accounting techniques of
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
Consider, however, the change
in cognitive structure that was entailed by the early
token accounting system. According to Schmandt-Besserat
[1978, p. 57], the basic types of tokens were spheres, discs, cones and
cylinders. Unlike the cave paintings, these were used
as abstract symbolic representations of things of value. The basic tokens
surely bore little, if any, indexical or iconic relationship to the things represented.
In terms of Donald's diagrammatic depiction of cognitive structures, the use of
these tokens entailed a solidifying of the linkage between V/S and M, and they
entailed the tentative establishment of a linkage between the V/S structure and
an emerging 'external memory field' (EXMF). Donald [1991] describes an external
memory field as "essentially a cognitive workspace external to biological
memory" [pp. 296-297]. He elaborates in a footnote: "The EXMF usually
consists of a temporary array of visual symbols immediately available to the
user. The symbols are durable and may be arranged and modified in various ways,
to enable reflection and further visual processing" [1991, p. 297].
In accordance with this
definition, the accounting tokens and their potential arrangements constituted
it potential EXMF. And since Donald uses the term
"external symbolic storage system" to refer to "all memory items
stored in some relatively permanent external format" [1991, p. 306], the
token accounting system also constituted an ESS and any related EXMF would be a
subset of the ESS (the portion that is in use at any given time). (8)
The ESS represented by the
token accounting system expanded as additional sub-types of tokens were
created, as the tokens were modified by incisions and punch marks, as the
representations of the tokens themselves were imprinted into clay envelopes,
and as the related cuneiform writing was developed. In terms of cognitive
structure, the EXMF is linked (initially, in a relatively tentative manner) to
the visuo-symbolic cognitive system which, in turn,
is tentatively linked with the linguistic cognitive system, as indicated in
Figure 3. With each evolutionary step of this ancient accounting system the cognitive linkages between the V/S system and the
budding EXMF became more substantial. These new cognitive developments are shown diagrammatically in Figure 3.
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]
But even as the evolution of
the accounting system approached a full-fledged system of cuneiform writing, as
described earlier, Donald does not consider the ESS sufficiently developed to
support the transition to 'theoretic culture'. The early forms of writing that
evolved from the Mesopotamian accounting system were extremely difficult and
time consuming to master. As a result they were
learned by a small elite who were, in turn, charged with maintaining records of
economic and legal transactions, and with preparing official accounts related
to religious and political matters. It was only with the evolution of the Greek
phonetic alphabet that writing and reading became accessible to a wider range
of individuals and writing became a catalyst for critical reflective thought on
all aspects of life, the world and human affairs.
Beginning with the Greeks, written stories, reflections, speculations, and
critiques formed an increasingly elaborate 'external symbolic storage system'
(ESS) which was available to the EXMF.
Thus, while the writing systems
of the ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and others constituted external
symbolic storage systems, their cultural impact was much more
circumscribed than the ESS developed by the Greeks. Stimulated by the
Greek phonetic alphabet, the growing body of books and other written artifacts
began to have an increasingly potent influence on the conduct of human affairs,
culminating eventually in a transition from a predominantly mythic culture to a
predominantly theoretic culture. Thus, in Donald's diagrammatic scheme, the
phonetic alphabet can be seen as the beginning of the
most recent phase of human cognitive evolution, with a solidly established ESS
and cognitive pathways linking the ESS, via the EXMF, to the V/S cognitive
structures. And finally, the phonetic writing system
created direct linkages between the V/S structures and the cognitive structures
of language, L. These cognitive structures and their linkages are indicated diagrammatically as Level IVc
in Figure 4.
[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]
In summary, Donald's thesis about tile stages of human cognitive evolution are
presented in diagrammatic form in Figures 1 to 4. Note that the fourth stage of
cognitive structure, the one involving an EXMF and an ESS is indicated as going
through three evolutionary phases indicated as Levels IVa,
IVb, and IVc (portrayed in
Figures 2, 3, and 4, respectively). In this scheme of cognitive evolution, the
ancient Mesopotamian accounting system played the most influential role in the
developments leading to cognitive level IVb [Figure
3]. This ancient accounting system solidified the linkage between V/S and M; it
established a tentative EXMF with tentative linkage to the V/S system; and the
system of writing that emerged from the accounting system eventually
incorporated the use of syllabaries, providing a
tentative linkage between the V/S structures and the linguistic structures, L.
This diagrammatic scheme thus
offers an interesting way to pinpoint the role of accounting in human cognitive
evolution, but in and of itself it conveys only a partial and altogether too
modest a picture of the cognitive significance of Mesopotamian accounting. A
more complete picture can be fleshed out from the perspective of
MESOPOTAMIAN ACCOUNTING AND
SCAFFOLDED COGNITION
According to
But the significance of cognitive
scaffolding goes far beyond the leveraging effect that it has with respect to
the cognitive capabilities of individuals. Cognitive scaffolding is a crucial
prerequisite for the complex organizational structures of contemporary human
society. Our schools, businesses, transportation systems, and our governmental
systems require elaborate systems that can be characterized
as cognitive scaffolding. Consider, for instance, the importance of written
signs and labels that we build into our environments to provide information, to
warn, to recommend, etc. From labels such as 'Ground Floor' on an elevator
panel to signs with street names, from 'Out of Order' to 'Road closed 2 miles
ahead', signs and labels are used extensively to enable us to plan, to find
places, things and people, and to navigate through buildings, airports and
cities that we have never seen before. We work in organizations that have been designed to pursue constrained goals and
objectives. We perform tasks that are more or less well defined and tightly
constrained. We navigate daily through streets, offices
and factories that are designed to ease the cognitive load on individual
brains. In
Accounting has obviously played
a huge role in the production of 'designer environments'. Accounting organizes
information in the form of documents, journals, ledgers, and reports. By means
of formal information systems and procedures manuals, accounting organizes and
controls the sequence of information processing. Accounting enlists technology
in the form of calculators and computers to assist in the processing of
information. It formulates budgets and standards that serve to channel action.
It provides calculative techniques, such as discounted cash flow and capital
budgeting, that serve to focus decision making. And it defines targets such as contribution margin, return
on investment, earnings per share, and so forth, that serve to guide efforts
and focus attention. In these ways accounting can be
seen as playing a major role in the construction and maintenance of the
'designer environments' in which most of us spend our working lives. Indeed,
much of management accounting could be portrayed as a
history of designing and implementing cognitive scaffolding within
organizations.
But this role is not a new one for
accounting. In their book, Archaic Bookkeeping, Nissen
et. al. [1993] present evidence that during the 3rd
millennium B.C. the Mesopotamians were developing ever more sophisticated
accounting techniques to keep track of grain production, storage and use, together
with detailed records concerning the distribution of grain and grain-based
products. As an extensive illustration, they devote an entire chapter to
analysis of the accounts of an administrator putatively named Kushim, who is mentioned in a total of 18
tablets: "Kushim was apparently entrusted with
the administration of a storage facility containing the basic ingredients for
the production of beer" [Nissen, et. al., 1993,
p. 36]. One tablet shows Kushim's 'signature' and a
sign indicating distribution, together with the sign for barley and a
designated amount. Beneath this information is a second signature of an
official who frequently acted "as a co-signatory in documents concerning
barley allocations" [p. 39]. The other side of this tablet shows four
separate amounts (adding up to the total on the previous side) and an
official's signature below each amount. Another tablet discussed, shows
"calculations pertaining to the exact ingredients required for nine
different cereal products and eight different kinds of beer in a tabular
compilation" [p. 43]. And yet another shows
details of the distribution of different quantities and different kinds of
beer, and Nissen, et. al.
suggest that "[t]he difficult reverse of the tablet probably contains
references connected to the labor time which various named brewers required for
the production of the beer" [1993, p. 46].
Examples from later periods
(the mid and later centuries of the 3rd millennium)
indicate that the types of clay tablet record-keeping which were previously
characterized as proto-cuneiform script, had developed into full-blown
cuneiform writing together with the ability to record accounts in considerably
more detail. These examples also demonstrate a sophisticated development of
production standards, techniques for comparing actual with expected
performance, the calculation of production 'deficits' and 'surpluses'. The
deficits and surpluses were treated as balancing
entries for the accounting period and were carried forward to the subsequent
period. As noted by Nissen, et.
al., "A precondition for the feasibility of such global balancing of all
expected and real performances was the standardization and calculability of the
expected performances ..." [1993, p. 49]. They point out that
"performance standards" and "value equivalences" can be reconstructed. "Depending on the economic
sector, the means of comparison or the measure of standardized norms and duties
could be silver, barley, fish, or 'laborer-days', that is, the product of the
number of workers multiplied by the number of days they worked" [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 51]. As an example, they analyze
a very elaborate tablet which contains the accounts of
a foreman who apparently was in charge of female workers involved in grain
milling processes. The tablet shows the deficit (in female laborer days) from
the previous year, the expected production (again in female laborer clays), the actual flour produced and converted into female laborer
days, and the resulting "increased deficit" [p. 54].
The milling of grain, the
production of bread, beer and other food items were made
possible, of course, by the agricultural activities of Mesopotamian farmers. And here too there is evidence that budgeting and production
planning and other form of management control had achieved a rather
sophisticated form by the middle of the 3rd millennium. Clay tablets included
reports and budgetary-type information concerning the amount of grain to be set
aside for seeding. Other tablets manifested the use of surveying, sketched
plans for fields, and calculations of area measurements. Indeed, the technique
used for surveying irregularly shaped fields is a classic example of how the
ancient Mesopotamians used their external 'symbolic story age system' as
scaffolding to solve a difficult cognitive problem. According to Nissen, et. al. [1993, pp. 68-69],
an irregularly shaped field was sub-divided into smaller triangular sections,
which were then measured individually and the measurements were "entered
into the plan" [p. 69]. The areas of the smaller sections were then
calculated and entered into the plan and summed to obtain the approximate area
of the larger irregularly shaped field.
Accounting for sheep, goats,
cattle and other domesticated animals was exert more
detailed. Records were kept with details regarding sex
and age of animals, production quotas lot cheese, milk and dairy fat, and the
amount of fodder needed for monthly feed requirements. "One unusual
document" discussed at length by Nissen, et. al. [1993, pp. 97-102] shows the hypothetical ten year
growth of a cattle herd, together" with the annual expected production of
dairy fat and cheese.
Examples such as these leave no
doubt that the Mesopotamians were pioneers in the development and use of scaffolded cognition. Their accounting systems were used to
sort and store information, to formulate production standards, and to produce
detailed plans for the future. These accounting and related calculative
techniques served to define targets, focus attention, and channel action; all
of which was made possible by the extensive use of information
which was recorded and stored in external memory devices, namely clay
tablets. Their accounting systems enabled them to achieve a high level of
comprehension and control over the economic aspects of their lives. As
It must be pointed out,
however, that these claims regarding scaffolded
cognition cannot be used to infer socio-political progressiveness, indeed, as Nissen, et. al. point out, the
civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia were made possible by centralized planning
and strict control over state-controlled laborers: "One of the unanswered
questions", they note, "is whether the individuals in the labor force
should be called slaves or whether they should be regarded as having simply
restricted freedom" [1993, p. 70]. In a previous chapter, however, they
cite evidence that strongly suggests slavery: "So-called inspection texts
regularly report on large numbers of escaped laborers. In view of the total
control the laborers were subjected to, it is not difficult to imagine why they
tried to flee" [1993, p. 54]. Nevertheless, the advances
in scaffolded cognition pioneered by the
Mesopotamians has had a huge impact, for better or worse, upon the
subsequent evolution of human cultures, at least in the West.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS AND
COMMENTS
Within a few millennia, a very
short period from an evolutionary perspective, human cultures have been totally transformed. They have been transformed from
hunter-gatherer societies dominated by oral-mythic traditions, mimetic ritual
and narrative thought to hierarchically-stratified, post industrial societies
dominated by shared theoretic world-models, large scale theoretic artifacts and
massive external symbolic networks [Donald, 2001, p. 260]. While it may seem
bizarre to claim that something as mundane as accounting played any significant
role in this transition, it is an increasingly well
documented fact that the development of writing was the salient catalyst
in this transition, and that the first system of writing evolved from a system
of keeping accounting records in ancient
Perhaps surprisingly, the
evolution of writing did not involve any significant change in the innate
biological brain. It did reflect a massive change in cognitive capabilities,
but those enhanced capabilities are more aptly characterized
as the product of cognitive scaffolding, that is, the use of external devices
to leverage our cognitive abilities, to enhance memory, to focus attention, to assist
in processing information, and to aid decision-making and guide action. The
leveraging power of writing is captured very
succinctly by Diamond [1999] in his description of its role in the patterns of
conquest:
Writing marched together with weapons, microbes, and centralized political organization as an agent of conquest.
The commands of the monarchs and merchants who organized colonizing fleets were conveyed in writing.
The fleets set their courses by maps and written sailing directions prepared by previous expeditions.
Written accounts of earlier expeditions motivated later ones, by describing the wealth and fertile lands awaiting
the conquerors. The accounts taught subsequent explorers
what conditions to expect, and helped them
prepare themselves. The resulting empires were administered
with the aid of writing. While all those types of
information were also transmitted by other means in
preliterate societies, writing made the transmission
easier, more detailed, more accurate, and more persuasive
[pp. 215-216].
But cognitive scaffolding has played a less
dramatic, though perhaps more insidious, vole in recent cultural evolution. And it is here that accounting can certainly be identified
as one of the major players. Cognitive scaffolding has been
employed in the service of fine-tuning and controlling much of the
environment that we occupy on a daily basis--our schools, our workplaces, our
governmental offices, and other major institutional settings. Accounting
practices such as budgeting and performance standards in conjunction with the
construction of abstract spaces of responsibility such as 'cost centers',
'investment centers' and 'profit centers' arc prime examples of cognitive
scaffolding deployed to focus attention and guide action. Such techniques and
practices are usually thought of as relatively recent
outcomes of the rise of management accounting. The fact is, however, that the
ancient Mesopotamians pioneered fine use of such techniques some 5,000 years
ago. By the 3rd millennium B.C., they had developed a
primitive form of cost accounting, elaborate techniques of budgeting and
planning, and calculative techniques for devising labor standards.
In sum, the ancient
Mesopotamian accounting practices played the key role in the development of
writing and the use of these early accounting techniques were highly
instrumental in pioneering some basic aspects of cognitive scaffolding that are
so evident in the contemporary post-industrial world. Having said this,
however, it must be reiterated that these claims for
ancient accounting are not to be taken as unadulterated claims of
praiseworthiness. They are claims concerning the actual course of events, even
though that course of events has, in many ways, been
far from laudatory. As Diamond [ 1999] notes,
"Early writing served the needs of political institutions (such as record
keeping and royal propaganda), and the users were full-time bureaucrats
nourished by stored food surpluses grown by food-producing peasants" [p.
236].
Acknowledgments: The author is
very appreciative of the helpful comments of the two anonymous AHJ reviewers,
one of whom provided especially challenging, but extremely constructive, comments.
The result is an immensely improved manuscript.
(1) This claim has recently been challenged by Gunter Dreyer, a German
archaeologist, who purports to have found evidence of a slightly earlier form
of writing in
(2) As Donald [2001, p. 35]
points out, Jaynes' [1976] theory links consciousness
to language. More recently, Dennelt [1991] has made a
sophisticated argument for a language-based theory of consciousness. For
contrary theories--i.e., that consciousness does not require language, and that
certain non-human species exhibit consciousness, see Churchland
[1995] and Damasio [1999].
(3) Ong
[1982, p. 2] for example, asserts that "Human
society first formed itself with the aid of oral speech".
(4) Harris also rejects the scriptist view, but he suggests that the nature of writing has not yet been fully understood. He argues for a
rethinking of writing from the standpoint of what he calls integrational
semiology. From an integrationist perspective, signs are used to integrate activities, either one's own
individual activities or social activities. The semiological
value of signs thus "depends on the circumstances and activities in which,
in any particular institute, they fulfill an integrational
function" [Harris, 2000, p. 69]. From this perspective, "there is no
simple, universal relationship between the written sign and the spoken sign of
the kind that Saussurean semiology
postulates" [p. 81], and semiological meaning
"emerges from the integration of activities" [p. 92].
(5) The Mesopotamians went on
to develop several different numeral systems that were used
in differing contexts [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 27].
The most important of these was the sexagesimal place
value system, widely associated with signs for the numbers 1, 10, 60, 600, and
3600. The sexagesimal system, invented sometime
around 2000 B.C., "afforded Babylonian scribes the means to develop
general methods of computation similar to those we use today" [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 143]. They could add, subtract,
multiply, divide, use fractions, etc.
(6) Quartz and Sejnowski note that the name neural constructivism
"reflects the Piagetian view that there is an
active interaction between the developing system and the environment in which
it is embedded" [1997, pp. 538-539]. They further point out that,
"Like Piaget's theory, ours also emphasizes the constructive nature of
this interaction ..." [1997, p. 539]. But neural
constructivism does not depend upon Piaget's view that "a universal
endogenous process guides the construction" [Damerow,
1988, p. 129].
(7) The evidence presented in
their 1997 article is primarily in terms of growth in the number of synapses,
and the spread of dendritic and axonal connections as a result of environmental interactions during
development. But they make clear in their 2002 book
that our constructive learning mechanism continues to change throughout life.
If you learn to play the piano as an adult, the structure of your brain is
altered [2002, p. 41]. When a blind person learns Braille, the visual cortex is
"transformed into one for processing touch information for Braille"
[2002, p. 40]. And when one becomes more and more adept at playing a new
computer game, evidence suggests that special brain circuits are developed;
circuits devoted to the game [2002, p. 245]. Furthermore, this perspective is
quite consistent with Damerow's conclusions regarding
ancient Mesopotamian accounting and the cultural evolution of arithmetical
thinking; i.e., that it suggests "a substantial influence of culturally
transmitted representations on the emergence of cognitive structures in
ontogenetic development" [1988, p. 150].
(8) Donald's precise differentiation
of the ESS and the EXMF is as follows: "The ESS is distinguished from the
EXMF on the basis of its availability and permanence. The term ESS applies to
all memory items stored in some relatively permanent external format, whether
or not they are immediately available to the user. The EXMF is a temporary
arrangement of some of the material in the ESS, for the use of one person.
Thus, I may have a whole library of material available for a project, but I can
remove only a few items and arrange them for my immediate needs; the former is
part of the ESS, while the latter constitutes my EXMF for the moment"
[1991, p. 306].
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Submitted July 2002
Revised August 2003
Revised April 2004
Accepted May 2004
Tom Mouck
COPYRIGHT 2004 Academy of
Accounting Historians
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