Greece is in debt. It owes over 323 billion and counting! And as International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Christine Lagarde so rightly coined it… “a debt is a debt”. Of course, were it not for the ancient Greeks there may not have been anything to create debt with in the first place.

MATH

Were it not for Greece, there may not have been any calculations to calculate debt itself. The ancient Greeks developed the idea of proofs and mathematical principles from Pythagoras to Euclid’s vital importance even today in a broad range of fields such as in engineering, design, medicine, economics, architecture and more!

MONEY

Initially, people bartered at a time before money. Things weren’t consistent imto; the forst coins were developed in the kingdom of Lydia dring the Iron Age. Herodotus refers to Lydians as the first people to use gold and silver coins and establish retail shops. The first coins were made of an alloy of gold and silver and were first used by King Alyattes, father of Croesus, who became associated with great wealth. Each Greek city state soon developed its own coinage with pictures of gods, goddesses and heroes…

DEFAULT

Investopedia reports that back in the fourth century B.C., 13 Greek city-states borrowed from the Temple of Delos. Most of the borrowers, however, “never made good on the loans and the temple took an 80% loss on its principal.” As a reference point, Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great were alive during the fourth century.