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Ledgers, the records of economic transactions, are even older technology than encryption. Savvy business owners and governments understood that they needed to account for the things they purchased, orders they had given to traders, and the receipts for these goods later.

Many of the ancient clay tablets from Mesopotamia are accounting logs, known as ledgers, that are over 5,000 years old. The very earliest accounting record known is a 20,000-year-old bone from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has matched tally marks that were used to account for something. Believe it or not, accounting for things may have been why humans created written languages and mathematics. Ledgers made trade and life in a complex society possible.