Accounting and the Input-Output Principle in the Prehistoric and Ancient World

abstract flows-e.g., between such different ‘things’ as Machinery and Owner’s equity). Another consequence of the assumed ‘merger’ is that the transactions marked &(a second kind of what were originally inter-entity transactions), would be required to canceZ out the claims or obligations between the two departments (formerly two separate entities).g To show how inter- and intra-entity transactions are linked with each other, we connect them (in Figure 1) with horizontal and vertical dashed lines. Hopefully this analysis has clarified those connections and shed some light on our previous assertion that the two dualities, although by no means identical, are closely tied to each other and may be considered as two aspects of a basically physical duality. Above all, it should now be obvious that the transactions involving debt or investment relations, though not themselves concrete, can be reduced (e.g., in the case of a merger) or at least traced to physical inputs and outputs. Whether the representation of the more concrete commodity transactions preceded historically the more abstract investing and lending transactions, is not documented. But there is evidence that by