Historical 'Savings Accounts' Are A Lot Older Than You'd Expect

Humanity's first savings accounts emerged around 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, one of the world's earliest civilizations. Needless to say, these accounts looked quite different from those we use today. No paper money, coins, banks, or speedy internet transactions existed. Instead, ancient people prioritized saving what they could eat, stockpiling commodities in case of drought or famine. Since one couldn't feast on a silver-and-gold sandwich, people in ancient cultures typically stored grain. 

Ancient Mesopotamia, where grain storage served as a means of storing assets, was an enormous region located between two mighty rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Encompassing most of modern-day Iraq, eastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey, its influence extended to the Middle East, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and the Mediterranean. In this truly vast area with advanced cultures, elaborate royal palaces and temples were built and used to store, monitor, and distribute valuable grain as early as 3,000 B.C. The amount of grain deposited by a farmer correlated with their individual taxation rates, which were based on that year's harvest (much like modern-day income reporting gleaned from the year's final paystub, which dictates what a person owes in taxes). Contributions would be carefully recorded in the government's account ledger. Then, the government strategically made withdrawals, distributing grain in times of need. Over time, these institutions began serving the same function a savings account fulfills today — protecting a person's assets. 

Initially, the residents of ancient Mesopotamia made deposits, and the government made withdrawals and asset distributions. Over time, though, the temples and palaces where government assets were held evolved into bank-like institutions where people could safeguard their wealth. They could store grain and other commodities, precious metals, and other treasured items in the highly secure environment of royal buildings (if you think about it, there are worse places to keep your savings). Then, when the depositors needed to use their assets, they could withdraw them. 

Although this system radically differed from today's financial institutions and savings accounts, a significant similarity existed: People were depositing and withdrawing their assets. Then, after withdrawing, say, wheat, the person might barter some of it for their neighbor's cattle. 

Difficulties in deciding fair barters (how much wheat for one goat?) ultimately caused people to create a radical new way of thinking about value exchange, and so they invented monetary tokens: metal coins, originating in the Asia Minor country of Lydia. These Lydian coins were minted thousands of years before the oldest coin in circulation today (which entered production in Switzerland in 1879). Lydian coins were first produced around 600 B.C. to facilitate trade. When ancient people started storing these coins in royal structures, the depositories of ancient times took another step closer towards resembling today's financial institutions — people could now deposit and withdraw currency.