Frankly, accounting is so old that it might actually be true. Also, it depends on what is meant by "trade": individuals exchange goods between themselves in a f

Frankly, accounting is so old that it might actually be true. Also, it depends on what is meant by "trade": individuals exchange goods between themselves in a free-form setting, like as in sharing a bite off each others' meals or lending each other stuff. But in order to reliably and repeatedly exchange goods through time without any suffering through systematic losses - which is more like the problem of a shopkeeper - people are pretty much required to keep some form of running tally of their previous transactions in order to know what they've done so far and what their bottom-line is. It's very much like saying that there would be no traveling without maps (or perhaps without navigation). At a glance, it is wrong. But it seems a fair and reasonable statement if it's interpreted as if saying that if people had no way of telling where they are or at least where they're going, then there would be no way of "traveling" from or to anywhere. There would merely be wandering.