ORIGINS OF ACCOUNTING THEORY

Abstract

Everyone needs an accountant, or so the saying goes. But why would that be? Accounting’s history  can be traced back thousands of years to the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia and is said to have developed alongside writing, counting and money (Acaus, 2000). The early Egyptians and Babylonians created auditing systems, while the Romans collated detailed financial information.Some of the first accountants were employed around 300 BC in Iran, where tokens and bookkeeping scripts were discovered. Around the first millennium the Phoenicians invented an alphabetic system for bookkeeping, while the ancient Egyptians may have even assigned someone the role of comptroller (Acaus, 2000). Accounting as a practice has existed since the earliest times of humanity. The first simple accounting records are found in the writings of Babylonian, Chaldeans, Assyrians and Sumerians in Mesopotamia (Ahmeti, 2008). The time of theoretical accounting recognition is considered to be the year 1494, when Venetian mathematician Luca Pacioli published a book titled; Summary of arithmetic, geometry, proportions and proportionality . In addition to mathematical knowledge, Pacioli also wrote about the dual registration method and the accounting process. Despite Paciolli’s ‘s writing, there is still much discussion regarding the issue of dual accounting origin. In reviewing the literature, it is noteworthy that accountancy history is scarcely addressed; there are only a small number of books and works that cover the topic. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to take a historical look at accounting development from ancient periods to the present. This study, based on historians‖ records and archaeologists like Denise Schmandt-Besserat, has successfully described the origins and development of accounting from 3350 BC until today (Ahmeti, 2008). This paper therefore will have five sections. In the first section, I will highlight the contents of the paper by giving a brief synopsis of the origins of accounting theory. The second section will provide an overview of the concept of accounting theory. The third section will explore the origins of accounting theory from BC up to the present day accounting theory. The forth section will be the conclusion that will encapsulate the contents of the discussion.