Interest, risk, insurance etc. are such intrinsic economic concepts that it is hard to believe they didn't naturally originate in some form in the earliest human societies. While I'm sure the word risk and formal methods of actuary can be traced to the era mentioned by the author, I'm more hesitant to believe that the "idea of risk" was invented there.
Re-invented, anyway. It was well-understood in India a thousand years before, and in Sumeria thousands of years before that. it got re-invented each place and time it was needed.
These kinds of articles always make me wish there were some sort of "financial history book" (or series) that tracked the flows of capital through history and endeavors. We see so much of how ideology and politics evolved, but history of capital flows in any specificity is (or, seems to me) so opaque.<p>I expect someone to point out that opacity is natural given the sensitive nature of the subject. Consider how much commonly known history is made up of once dire secrets.<p>Then again, perhaps it's all out there. I guess a good place to start would be US, UK and French treasury reports on actuals. Maybe with python that becomes a more manageable task.
Oh and if risk is indeed your jam then look no further than Nassim Taleb's Real World risk institute. I've spoken to some alums of this course and they swear by it! Of course you could read his books too but I think he makes his books stupidly long for no reason.