You guys know how much I like history and will take any opportunity to bring it to the forefront.

I apologize this was suppose to be posted on 15 April, the day we file our taxes with the IRS.

We all bitch and moan about paying taxes but the idea of imposing taxes has a very early history…..for now we believe the idea of taxation began in Mesopotamia around 3300BC and has continued until today.

Taxes are a familiar part of modern life, showing up in paychecks, receipts and annual filings. Yet even in our digital era, traces of older systems persist. When archaeologists recently uncovered a 2,000-year-old pyramid-shaped structure in the Judean Desert—believed to be a Ptolemaic tax collector’s post—they weren’t just digging up the past. They were brushing dust off a blueprint of ancient governance.

“Most governments were quite highly motivated to extract as much revenue as possible within perceived political constraints,” says Taisu Zhang, a professor of law at Yale Law School.

What remains today, such as stone inscriptions, clay tablets and bamboo records, tells a story far beyond administration. These tax relics reveal how early states governed, what they valued and how they balanced power with the burden on taxpayers. From Sumer to China, civilizations devised ingenious, and sometimes bizarre, ways to track, collect and enforce taxes, leaving behind vivid clues of how they funded their ambitions—and proved that even in the Bronze Age, nothing was certain but death and taxes.

The clay tablets of ancient Sumer represent some of the earliest examples of economic record-keeping. In the city of Uruk, scribes used reed styluses to press proto-cuneiform symbols into wet clay, documenting grain, livestock and labor owed to temples. Each mark stood for a tangible asset—a bundle of wheat, a head of cattle or a day’s work. By around 2,600 B.C., in the city of Lagash, the system had grown more sophisticated, with some tablets recording instances of tax evasion and penalties for non-payment.

The Standard of Ur, a wooden box inlaid with lapis lazuli, shell and red limestone, offers a striking visual of early resource distribution. One side shows nobles at a feast; the other, soldiers and laborers—an implicit hierarchy supported by the upward flow of goods. Though not a literal tax record, the artifact reflects a redistributive economy likely sustained by tribute or taxation.

https://www.history.com/articles/tax-artifacts

Taxation is nothing new….while it can be a burden to those that are unfortunate to be taxed while others get a free ride (thinking the US wealthy)….they are a needed revenue for any government to continue to ‘serve’ the people they represent.

It would not be such a burden if EVERYONE paid their taxes but unfortunately there are some that do not and that is okay for some.

I hope you made the deadline for the IRS.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”