[Alkman]

FIGURE 1

The First Two Transitions in Donald's Theory of Human Cognitive Evolution

It is at this level, the transition to literacy, that the ancient accounting techniques of Mesopotamia made their crucial contribution in terms of a 'visuo-symbolic system'. But this contribution needs to be put in historical perspective. The early cave paintings, for instance, were apparently used to 'tell stories' about hunting and fertility; 'stories' that were certainly visual, and in a loose sense probably contained symbolic references. Thus, in Donald's [1991] theory of cognitive evolution, they suggest a development beyond the stage of mimetic cognition; a development that required new cognitive pathways for the construction and processing of abstract visual symbols. This is indicated in Figure 2 (below) by adding a V/S enclosed in a circle, with related linkages to the E and M systems. However, since the symbolic aspect was more indexical and/or iconic than it was abstract, Donald argues that the linkage between the V/S system and the M system was tentative and not solidly established. This is indicated in Figure 2 by showing a solid line linking V/S with E and a dashed link linking V/S with M.

Consider, however, the change in cognitive structure that was entailed by the early token accounting system. According to Schmandt- Besserat [1978, p. 57], the basic types of tokens were spheres, discs, cones and cylinders. Unlike the cave paintings, these were used as abstract symbolic representations of things of value. The basic tokens surely bore little, if any, indexical or iconic relationship to the things represented. In terms of Donald's diagrammatic depiction of cognitive structures, the use of these tokens entailed a solidifying of the linkage between V/S and M, and they entailed the tentative establishment of a linkage between the V/ S structure and an emerging 'external memory field' (EXMF). Donald [1991] describes an external memory field as "essentially a cognitive workspace external to biological memory" [pp. 296-297]. He elaborates in a footnote: "The EXMF usually consists of a temporary array of visual symbols immediately available to the user. The symbols are durable and may be arranged and modified in various ways, to enable reflection and further visual processing" [1991, p. 297].

FIGURE 2

New Cognitive Pathways Linking Visuo-graphic Cognitive Structures with Episodic and Mimetic Cognitive Structures

In accordance with this definition, the accounting tokens and their potential arrangements constituted a potential EXMF. And since Donald uses the term "external symbolic storage system" to refer to "all memory items stored in some relatively permanent external format" [1991, p. 306], the token accounting system also constituted an ESS and any related EXMF would be a subset of the ESS (the portion that is in use at any given time).8

The ESS represented by the token accounting system expanded as additional sub-types of tokens were created, as the tokens were modified by incisions and punch marks, as the representations of the tokens themselves were imprinted into clay envelopes, and as the related cuneiform writing was developed. In terms of cognitive structure, the EXMF is linked (initially, in a relatively tentative manner) to the visuo-symbolic cognitive system which, in turn, is tentatively linked with the linguistic cognitive system, as indicated in Figure 3. With each evolutionary step of this ancient accounting system the cognitive linkages between the V/S system and the budding EXMF became more substantial. These new cognitive developments are shown diagrammatically in Figure 3.

But even as the evolution of the accounting system approached a full-fledged system of cuneiform writing, as described earlier, Donald does not consider the ESS sufficiently developed to support the transition to 'theoretic culture'. The early forms of writing that evolved from the Mesopotamian accounting system were extremely difficult and time consuming to master. As a result they were learned by a small elite who were, in turn, charged with maintaining records of economic and legal transactions, and with preparing official accounts related to religious and political matters. It was only with the evolution of the Greek phonetic alphabet that writing and reading became accessible to a wider range of individuals and writing became a catalyst for critical reflective thought on all aspects of life, the world and human affairs. Beginning with the Greeks, written stories, reflections, speculations, and critiques formed an increasingly elaborate 'external symbolic storage system' (ESS) which was available to the EXMF.

Thus, while the writing systems of the ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and others constituted external symbolic storage systems, their cultural impact was much more circumscribed than the ESS developed by the Greeks. Stimulated by the Greek phonetic alphabet, the growing body of books and other written artifacts began to have an increasingly potent influence on the conduct of human affairs, culminating eventually in atransition from a predominantly mythic culture to a predominantly theoretic culture. Thus, in Donald's diagrammatic scheme, the phonetic alphabet can be seen as the beginning of the most recent phase of human cognitive evolution, with a solidly established ESS and cognitive pathways linking the ESS, via the EXMF, to the V/S cognitive structures. And finally, the phonetic writing system created direct linkages between the V/S structures and the cognitive structures of language, L. These cognitive structures and their linkages are indicated diagrammatically as Level IVc in Figure 4.

FIGURE 3

The Beginnings of an External Memory Field (EXMF) and Tentative Linkages Between the V/S System and the Oral Linguistic System

FIGURE 4

The Expanded ESS System and Related Cognitive Structure Supporting the Development of 'Theoretic Culture'

In summary, Donald's thesis about the stages of human cognitive evolution are presented in diagrammatic form in Figures 1 to 4. Note that the fourth stage of cognitive structure, the one involving an EXMF and an ESS is indicated as going through three evolutionary phases indicated as Levels IVa, IVb, and IVc (portrayed in Figures 2, 3, and 4, respectively). In this scheme of cognitive evolution, the ancient Mesopotamian accounting system played the most influential role in the developments leading to cognitive level IVb [Figure 3]. This ancient accounting system solidified the linkage between V/S and M; it established a tentative EXMF with tentative linkage to the V/S system; and the system of writing that emerged from the accounting system eventually incorporated the use of syllabaries, providing a tentative linkage between the V/S structures and the linguistic structures, L.

This diagrammatic scheme thus offers an interesting way to pinpoint the role of accounting in human cognitive evolution, but in and of itself it conveys only a partial and altogether too modest a picture of the cognitive significance of Mesopotamian accounting. A more complete picture can be fleshed out from the perspective of Clark's [1997] notion of scaffolded cognition; a notion that is thoroughly compatible and closely related to Donald's ideas about external memory fields and external symbolic storage systems.

MESOPOTAMIAN ACCOUNTING AND SCAFFOLDED COGNITION

According to Clark [1997], "scaffolding . . . denotes a broad class of physical, cognitive, and social augmentations - augmentations that allow us to achieve some goal that would otherwise be beyond us" [pp. 194-195]. Thus, just as physical scaffolding allows house painters to reach and paint at heights that would otherwise be unreachable, our capabilities for working with abstract symbol systems allow us to perform tasks and solve problems that would be impossible for the "naked brain" (Clark's term). A succinct example of cognitive scaffolding discussed by Rumelhart, et. al. [1986, p. 45] and reiterated by Clark involves the multiplication of large multi-digit numbers. Whereas we can easily multiply 6 χ 7 in our heads to get 42, few of us are able to multiply 6,348 χ 9,235 in our heads. But with the aid of pencil and paper we can set up the problem in a way that facilitates breaking it down into a series of smaller problems (5 χ 8; 5 χ 4; etc.) that we can solve by pattern recognition, write down the result (i.e., store it in 'external memory' on paper), and move on to the next small pattern recognition problem.

But the significance of cognitive scaffolding goes far beyond the leveraging effect that it has with respect to the cognitive capabilities of individuals. Cognitive scaffolding is a crucial prerequisite for the complex organizational structures of contemporary human society. Our schools, businesses, transportation systems, and our governmental systems require elaborate systems that can be characterized as cognitive scaffolding. Consider, for instance, the importance of written signs and labels that we build into our environments to provide information, to warn, to recommend, etc. From labels such as 'Ground Floor' on an elevator panel to signs with street names, from Out of Order' to 'Road closed 2 miles ahead', signs and labels are used extensively to enable us to plan, to find places, things and people, and to navigate through buildings, airports and cities that we have never seen before. We work in organizations that have been designed to pursue constrained goals and objectives. We perform tasks that are more or less well defined and tightly constrained. We navigate daily through streets, offices and factories that are designed to ease the cognitive load on individual brains. In Clark's words, we function within "designer environments" in the sense that "[w]e manage our physical and spatial surroundings in ways that fundamentally alter the information-processing tasks our brains confront" [1997, p. 63]. The cognitive cues and crutches that we build into our environments allow us to function in a vast, elaborate network of social institutions, organizations, coordinated social practices and physical artifacts that organize information for us, channel our actions, and constrain the decision-making situations we face.

Accounting has obviously played a huge role in the production of 'designer environments'. Accounting organizes information in the form of documents, journals, ledgers, and reports. By means of formal information systems and procedures manuals, accounting organizes and controls the sequence of information processing. Accounting enlists technology in the form of calculators and computers to assist in the processing of information. It formulates budgets and standards that serve to channel action. It provides calculative techniques, such as discounted cash flow and capital budgeting, that serve to focus decision making. And it defines targets such as contribution margin, return on investment, earnings per share, and so forth, that serve to guide efforts and focus attention. In these ways accounting can be seen as playing a major role in the construction and maintenance of the 'designer environments' in which most of us spend our working lives. Indeed, much of management accounting could be portrayed as a history of designing and implementing cognitive scaffolding within organizations.

But this role is not a new one for accounting. In their book, Archaic Bookkeeping, Nissen et. al. [1993] present evidence that during the 3rd millennium B.C. the Mesopotamians were developing ever more sophisticated accounting techniques to keep track of grain production, storage and use, together with detailed records concerning the distribution of grain and grainbased products. As an extensive illustration, they devote an entire chapter to analysis of the accounts of an administrator putatively named Kushim, who is mentioned in a total of 18 tablets: "Kushim was apparently entrusted with the administration of a storage facility containing the basic ingredients for the production of beer" [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 36]. One tablet shows Kushim's 'signature' and a sign indicating distribution, together with the sign for barley and a designated amount. Beneath this information is a second signature of an official who frequently acted "as a co-signatory in documents concerning barley allocations" [p. 39]. The other side of this tablet shows four separate amounts (adding up to the total on the previous side) and an official's signature below each amount. Another tablet discussed, shows "calculations pertaining to the exact ingredients required for nine different cereal products and eight different kinds of beer in a tabular compilation" [p. 43]. And yet another shows details of the distribution of different quantities and different kinds of beer, and Nissen, et. al. suggest that "[t]he difficult reverse of the tablet probably contains references connected to the labor time which various named brewers required for the production of the beer" [1993, p. 46].

Examples from later periods (the mid and later centuries of the 3rd millennium) indicate that the types of clay tablet recordkeeping which were previously characterized as proto-cuneiform script, had developed into full-blown cuneiform writing together with the ability to record accounts in considerably more detail. These examples also demonstrate a sophisticated development of production standards, techniques for comparing actual with expected performance, the calculation of production 'deficits' and 'surpluses'. The deficits and surpluses were treated as balancing entries for the accounting period and were carried forward to the subsequent period. As noted by Nissen, et. al., "A precondition for the feasibility of such global balancing of all expected and real performances was the standardization and calculability of the expected performances ..." [1993, p. 49]. They point out that "performance standards" and "value equivalences" can be reconstructed. "Depending on the economic sector, the means of comparison or the measure of standardized norms and duties could be silver, barley, fish, or 'laborer-days', that is, the product of the number of workers multiplied by the number of days they worked" [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 51]. As an example, they analyze a very elaborate tablet which contains the accounts of a foreman who apparently was in charge of female workers involved in grain milling processes. The tablet shows the deficit (in female laborer days) from the previous year, the expected production (again in female laborer days), the actual flour produced and converted into female laborer days, and the resulting "increased deficit" [p. 54].

The milling of grain, the production of bread, beer and other food items were made possible, of course, by the agricultural activities of Mesopotamian farmers. And here too there is evidence that budgeting and production planning and other forms of management control had achieved a rather sophisticated for\m by the middle of the 3rd millennium. clay tablets included reports and budgetary- type information concerning the amount of grain to be set aside for seeding. Other tablets manifested the use of surveying, sketched plans for fields, and calculations of area measurements. Indeed, the technique used for surveying irregularly shaped fields is a classic example of how the ancient Mesopotamians used their external 'symbolic storage system' as scaffolding to solve a difficult cognitive problem. According to Nissen, et. al. [1993, pp. 68-69], an irregularly shaped field was sub-divided into smaller triangular sections, which were then measured individually and the measurements were "entered into the plan" [p. 69]. The areas of the smaller sections were then calculated and entered into the plan and summed to obtain the approximate area of the larger irregularly shaped field.

Accounting for sheep, goats, cattle and other domesticated animals was even more detailed. Records were kept with details regarding sex and age of animals, production quotas for cheese, milk and dairy fat, and the amount of fodder needed for monthly feed requirements. "One unusual document" discussed at length by Nissen, et. al. [1993, pp. 97-102] shows the hypothetical ten year growth of a cattle herd, together with the annual expected production of dairy fat and cheese.

Examples such as these leave no doubt that the Mesopotamians were pioneers in the development and use of scaffolded cognition. Their accounting systems were used to sort and store information, to formulate production standards, and to produce detailed plans for the future. These accounting and related calculative techniques served to define targets, focus attention, and channel action; all of which was made possible by the extensive use of information which was recorded and stored in external memory devices, namely clay tablets. Their accounting systems enabled them to achieve a high level of comprehension and control over the economic aspects of their lives. As Crosby [1997] has noted with respect to double- entry bookkeeping and Renaissance European merchants, accounting enabled the Mesopotamians (at least the ruling classes) "to achieve comprehension and, thereby, control of the moiling multitude of details of their economic lives" [p. 208].

It must be pointed out, however, that these claims regarding scaffolded cognition cannot be used to infer socio-political progressiveness. Indeed, as Nissen, et. al. point out, the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia were made possible by centralized planning and strict control over state-controlled laborers: "One of the unanswered questions", they note, "is whether the individuals in the labor force should be called slaves or whether they should be regarded as having simply restricted freedom" [1993, p. 70]. In a previous chapter, however, they cite evidence that strongly suggests slavery: "So-called inspection texts regularly report on large numbers of escaped laborers. In view of the total control the laborers were subjected to, it is not difficult to imagine why they tried to flee" [1993, p. 54]. Nevertheless, the advances in scaffolded cognition pioneered by the Mesopotamians has had a huge impact, for better or worse, upon the subsequent evolution of human cultures, at least in the West.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS

Within a few millennia, a very short period from an evolutionary perspective, human cultures have been totally transformed. They have been transformed from hunter-gatherer societies dominated by oral- mythic traditions, mimetic ritual and narrative thought to hierarchically-stratified, post industrial societies dominated by shared theoretic world-models, large scale theoretic artifacts and massive external symbolic networks [Donald, 2001, p. 26O]. While it may seem bizarre to claim that something as mundane as accounting played any significant role in this transition, it is an increasingly well documented fact that the development of writing was the salient catalyst in this transition, and that the first system of writing evolved from a system of keeping accounting records in ancient Mesopotamia. In fact, this early accounting system paved the way for writing by instigating revolutionary cognitive structures for processing visual/ symbolic artifacts and establishing a primitive but very powerful form of external (to the brain) memory.

Perhaps surprisingly, the evolution of writing did not involve any significant change in the innate biological brain. It did reflect a massive change in cognitive capabilities, but those enhanced capabilities are more aptly characterized as the product of cognitive scaffolding, that is, the use of external devices to leverage our cognitive abilities, to enhance memory, to focus attention, to assist in processing information, and to aid decision- making and guide action. The leveraging power of writing is captured very succinctly by Diamond [1999] in his description of its role in the patterns of conquest:

Writing marched together with weapons, microbes, and centralized political organization as an agent of conquest. The commands of the monarchs and merchants who organized colonizing fleets were conveyed in writing. The fleets set their courses by maps and written sailing directions prepared by previous expeditions. Written accounts of earlier expeditions motivated later ones, by describing the wealth and fertile lands awaiting the conquerors. The accounts taught subsequent explorers what conditions to expect, and helped them prepare themselves. The resulting empires were administered with the aid of writing. While all those types of information were also transmitted by other means in preliterate societies, writing made the transmission easier, more detailed, more accurate, and more persuasive [pp. 215-216].

But cognitive scaffolding has played a less dramatic, though perhaps more insidious, role in recent cultural evolution. And it is here that accounting can certainly be identified as one of the major players. Cognitive scaffolding has been employed in the service of fine-tuning and controlling much of the environment that we occupy on a daily basis - our schools, our workplaces, our governmental offices, and other major institutional settings. Accounting practices such as budgeting and performance standards in conjunction with the construction of abstract spaces of responsibility such as 'cost centers', 'investment centers' and 'profit centers' are prime examples of cognitive scaffolding deployed to focus attention and guide action. Such techniques and practices are usually thought of as relatively recent outcomes of the rise of management accounting. The fact is, however, that the ancient Mesopotamians pioneered the use of such techniques some 5,000 years ago. By the 3rd millennium B.C., they had developed a primitive form of cost accounting, elaborate techniques of budgeting and planning, and calculative techniques for devising labor standards.

In sum, the ancient Mesopotamian accounting practices played the key role in the development of writing and the use of these early accounting techniques were highly instrumental in pioneering some basic aspects of cognitive scaffolding that are so evident in the contemporary post-industrial world. Having said this, however, it must be reiterated that these claims for ancient accounting are not to be taken as unadulterated claims of praiseworthiness. They are claims concerning the actual course of events, even though that course of events has, in many ways, been far from laudatory. As Diamond [1999] notes, "Early writing served the needs of political institutions (such as record keeping and royal propaganda), and the users were full-time bureaucrats nourished by stored food surpluses grown by food-producing peasants" [p. 236].

Acknowledgments: The author is very appreciative of the helpful comments of the two anonymous AHJ reviewers, one of whom provided especially challenging, but extremely constructive, comments. The result is an immensely improved manuscript.

Submitted July 2002

Revised August 2003

Revised April 2004

Accepted May 2004

1 This claim has recently been challenged by Gnter Dreyer, a German archaeologist, who purports to have found evidence of a slightly earlier form of writing in Egypt. In a review of this development, Mattessich [2002] points out that Dreyer's claim has yet to be "thoroughly evaluated and assessed by Egyptologists, Assyriologists and archaeologists in general" [p. 202], and that preliminary evaluation "casts doubt on Dreyer's claim" [p. 203]. SchmandtBesserat's claim, on the other hand, has been documented in great detail [Mattessich, 2002, p. 203].

2 As Donald [2001, p. 35] points out, Jaynes' [1976] theory links consciousness to language. More recently, Dennett [1991] has made a sophisticated argument for a language-based theory of consciousness. For contrary theories - i.e., that consciousness does not require language, and that certain non-human species exhibit consciousness, see Churchland [1995] and Damasio [1999].

3 Ong [1982, p. 2] for example, asserts that "Human society first formed itself with the aid of oral speech".

4 Harris also rejects the scriptist view, but he suggests that the nature of writing has not yet been fully understood. He argues for a rethinking of writing from the standpoint of what he calls integmtional semiology. From an integrationist perspective, signs are used to integrate activities, either one's own individual activities or social activities. The semiological value of signs thus "depends on the circumstances and activities in which, in any particular instance, they fulfill an integrational function" [Harris, 2000, p. 69]. From this perspective, "there is no simple, universal relationship between the written sign and the spoken sign of the kind that Saussurean semiology postulates" [p. 81], and semiological meaning "emerges from theintegration of activities" [p. 92].

5 The Mesopotamians went on to develop several different numeral systems that were used in differing contexts [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 27]. The most important of these was the sexagesimal place value system, widely associated with signs for the numbers 1, 10, 60, 600, and 3600. The sexagesimal system, invented sometime around 2000 B.C., "afforded Babylonian scribes the means to develop general methods of computation similar to those we use today" [Nissen, et. al., 1993, p. 143]. They could add, subtract, multiply, divide, use fractions, etc.

6 Quartz and Sejnowski note that the name neural constructivism "reflects the Piagetian view that there is an active interaction between the developing system and the environment in which it is embedded" [1997, pp. 538-539]. They further point out that, "Like Piaget's theory, ours also emphasizes the constructive nature of this interaction..." [1997, p. 539]. But neural constructivism does not depend upon Piaget's view that "a universal endogenous process guides the construction" [Damerow, 1988, p. 129].

7 The evidence presented in their 1997 article is primarily in terms of growth in the number of synapses, and the spread of dendritic and axonal connections as a result of environmental interactions during development. But they make clear in their 2002 book that our constructive learning mechanism continues to change throughout life. If you learn to play the piano as an adult, the structure of your brain is altered [2002, p. 41]. When a blind person learns Braille, the visual cortex is "transformed into one for processing touch information for Braille" [2002, p. 40], And when (me becomes more and more adept at playing a new computer game, evidence suggests that special brain circuits are developed; circuits devoted to the game [2002, p. 245]. Furthermore, this perspective is quite consistent with Damerow's conclusions regarding ancient Mesopotamian accounting and the cultural evolution of arithmetical thinking; i.e., that it suggests "a substantial influence of culturally transmitted representations on the emergence of cognitive structures in ontogenetic development" [1988, p. 150].

8 Donald's precise differentiation of the ESS and the EXMF is as follows: "The ESS is distinguished from the EXMF on the basis of its availability and permanence. The term ESS applies to all memory items stored in some relatively permanent external format, whether or not they are immediately available to the user. The EXMF is a temporary arrangement of some of the material in the ESS, for the use of one person. Thus, I may have a whole library of material available for a project, but I can remove only a few items and arrange them for my immediate needs; the former is part of the ESS, while the latter constitutes my EXMF for the moment" [1991, p. 306].

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Source: Accounting Historians Journal, The