085: Pre-20th Century - From Ancient Barter to the Dawn of Modern Markets

In this episode we cover everything before the twentieth century - roughly four thousand years of experimentation, from the first scratched forward contracts on Mesopotamian clay all the way to the global telegraph-linked bourses of the late 1890s. No computers. No Bloomberg terminals. No circuit breakers. Just people, pieces of paper (or clay, or parchment), and the eternal tension between trust and temptation.