I was scrolling through YouTube the other day and heard someone casually say, “Bulla seals were basically the first futures contracts in history.” That line hit me.
As a trader, anything even slightly linked to market history gets me excited. So I went down the rabbit hole, and what I found was wild.
Bullae were these clay balls used in ancient Mesopotamia, as far back as 8000 BC. Yes, that’s older than candlesticks, RSI, or even gold as a currency. Inside them? Little clay tokens representing stuff like grain, cattle, or oil, kind of like a primitive invoice. The outside was sealed, and that seal acted like a contract. You break it, you prove the deal.
What blew my mind is how similar it felt to futures:
• Delivery is expected in the future
• Terms fixed now
• Sealed by trust (and literal clay)
Sounds familiar, right? It’s like FNO before clearinghouses, brokers, or SEBI. They were serious financial tools: Proof, trust, and custody all baked into a lump of clay.
They even had personal seals like signature stamps, and some had real fingerprints still on them. No joke.
I just had to share this with the trading community. Because let’s be honest, we love stories like this. It’s not just about charts and profits. It’s about knowing that what we do has roots thousands of years deep.
Markets have always been about Trust, Contracts, and Belief in future delivery.
Would love to know if anyone’s ever heard of this before or found other insane stories from market history.