Blockchains are seen as a very recent and revolutionary technology. That is true for the digital version of the chain. But, what most people don't know is that blockchain have a unknown history that stretches back a thousand years. Back in 500 AD, the people of a small island in Micronesia, named Yap, developed a form of decentralized currency. With their system, each Yap villager kept a ledger that would keep track of who owned what amount of currency, who the currency came from, and when the transaction took place.
When currency was spent, each new transaction would be shared across the village to update every person's ledger - just like a very ancient form of modern cryptocurrencies. If someone tried to claim that they owned more money than we actually had, everyone could check their ledger and see the individual was lying. The only way the lie could hold up would be if the liar changed the majority of ledgers in the village without anyone noticing... which would be a very difficult task, to say the least.
These ancient blockchains didn't catch in other parts of the world where it would be hard to keep track of each and every transaction in real time. This has changed with the invention of computers and digital blockchains that can keep track of thousands of transactions at once with almost instant precision. To think this great technology all came from an old island nation over a thousand years ago...
