Speculation traces to Mesopotamia and its first bubble was the 1637 tulip mania.

Evidence

As variously traced by different observers’ accounts, the history of speculation goes all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia or, closer to its modern financial form (in the sense of stock trading) to medieval Europe. The 1637 tulip mania in the Netherlands is typically cited as the first occasion of a speculative bubble (de Marchi and Harrison 1994; also see de Goede 2005). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 381

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: The tulip mania origin story pairs with the reader’s earlier work on financialized morality (the greed/panic cycle).

Related

• The 1637 tulip mania marks the first recorded speculative bubble (similarity 0.96)