Blockchain: A Very Ancient Idea?
Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that can solve a lot of problems and already is across a number of sectors, including legal, property and commerce. And I’m not talking cryptocurrency. They shouldn’t be conflated. But what is the concept of blockchain is actually far more ancient than we might think? Current blockchain technology is new and only possible because of the technologies that have come together to enable it to work. But the ideas behind it are perhaps, far more ancient.
Core to much of the characteristics of blockchain are egalitarianism, along with implicit trust. Other characteristics include immutability and consensus along with transparency and decentralization. And while whoever Satoshi Nakamoto may be, they certainly are quite brilliant. But the root concepts of blockchain may go back many thousands of years to more recent times in the 1500’s across pre-Spanish Andean cultures in what is today Latin America. Think Inca and Aztec and even earlier than that.
In those ancient times, societies and cultures were quite complex and very sophisticated. Arguably more so than Western European cultures and societies. Ancient Andean societies were an elaborate and complex hierarchy of social and politics units bound together by defined rules of kinship affiliation and reciprocity. At the base of this social structure was the household unit. These were divided in Allyu groups. They may form small communities all the way up to larger cities. They were usually grouped together in units of 10, 50, 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000 and so on.
Each Allyu was responsible for the division of labour to their own Allyu and above and beyond to the greater community in which they lived. The Allyu even wore uniforms; distinct patterns and colours for each Allyu. Equality of people was also very important. Wealth wasn’t material objects, but rather family. The more kids you had, the more land you had. Equal distribution of land was very important in this regard, so that no one really had more than was necessary. All debts and credits were meticulously recorded and at the end of each year, they were also wiped out.
And it is this form of record keeping which is interesting. That is the semblance or perhaps the very first use a technology that could be compared to today’s blockchain technology. This form of record keeping was achieved through the khipu. As the image below shows, this was a sort of necklace with multiple strings. Into these were tied knots of varying sizes, shapes and colours. As a debt was paid, a knot would be undone, a new knot added for new debts, whether they be for material goods, foods or perhaps even animals. It was an accounting procedure. A single source of truth, transparent to everyone, agreed by everyone, matched across Allyus.
While in one sense it is very egalitarian in nature and does promote equality and enabled a degree of decentralization, it also has a darker side. The Inca used the khipu as a bureaucratic means of strict governance to control the population and ignoring the law of the khipu could result in sever punishment. But the khipu form of record keeping spanned other ancient, pre-historic Andean societies where it was less onerous and enabled the concept of decentralization while connecting communities and reducing the frictions associated with ensuring agreements and that justice could be secured to avoid arguments and greater conflict.
Some proponents of the uses of blockchain proclaim that it will enable complete decentralization. The reality is that it will in some cases and applications, but not across all. Human societies and cultures have tried many forms of decentralization going back to Neolithic ages. They’ve worked to varying degrees, but there has always been some degree of centralization. It is an idea we’ve not yet been able to fully realize and blockchain is no exception.
“History seldom repeats, but it often rhymes” — Mark Twain
While a technology may enable decentralization, that doesn’t mean that once it hits human cultures, that it will remain that way. Technologies are always neutral. It is the ideas, ideals and ways that we use them that are either good or bad. Blockchain will be used and is being used, in many interesting ways. The ideas behind its usage however, may well be very ancient indeed! As Mark Twain purportedly said “history seldom repeats, but it often rhymes.” And so it is with the ideas around blockchain.
