[00:00.30]
[00:04.59]Because we take it for granted
[00:06.15]we tend to underestimate the extent to which our entire civilisation is based on the borrowing and lending of money
[00:12.70]No, it doesn't literally make the world go round
[00:15.32]But it does make vast quantities of people, goods and services go around the world from Babylon to Bolivia
[00:24.39]The puzzle is that the early moneylenders got so little thanks for their services
[00:29.91]On the contrary, they were widely reviled as pariahs
[00:35.29]Why was that?
[00:48.50]Welcome to Northern Italy in the year 1200AD
[00:56.64]A land divided into multiple feuding city states
[01:04.29]a land where trust was in rather short supply
[01:09.62]Among the many remnants of the defunct Roman Empire
[01:12.60]was a numerical system singularly ill-suited to complex mathematical calculation
[01:18.29]let alone the needs of commerce
[00:12.26]