This seems to draw from the late anarchist archeologist David Graeber’s work, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, who drew from Marxist economist Michael Hudson, among other sources.

Since then Michael Hudson and a team of historians have been developing a more comprehensive history of money.

• Temples of Enterprise: Creating Economic Order in the Bronze Age Near East
• The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point
• …and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year