Not originally a CS paper, but this one describes a distributed algorithm medieval merchants used to simplify their debts graph: http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/up

Not originally a CS paper, but this one describes a distributed algorithm medieval merchants used to simplify their debts graph: http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/boerner.pdf http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/boerner.pdf I highly recommend it to anyone interested in CS, history & finance.