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==Insurance in Mesopotamia==

The earliest documented evidence for insurance derives from Mesopotamia, including the northern and southern regions. Insurance likely develops by the 3rd millennium BC, but most of our earliest texts about early forms of insurance derive from the early 2nd millennium (around 1800 BC). In this case, bottomry (Figure 1), a system where the owner of cargo would borrow money and pay that money back after the safe arrival of the cargo, was developed.<ref> For more information on bottomry and how it developed, see: Thoyts, Rob. 2010. ''Insurance Theory and Practice''. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge.</ref> The system may have been utilized by ship merchants mostly or even adopted for trade caravans consisting of donkeys or pack animals. In the case of shipping, if a ship reached its destination, then the loan taken for the shipment would be given back with interest.

==Insurance in China==

Perhaps roughly contemporary with early forms of insurance in Mesopotamia, another form of insurance seemed to have existed in China. This was similar to the risk sharing concept in Mesopotamia, where merchants also seemed to have been the early practitioners of insurance.<ref>For methods of risk sharing in early insurance in China, see: Eeckhoudt, Louis, Christian Gollier, and Harris Schlesinger. 2005. ''Economic and Financial Decisions under Risk''. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, pg. 45.</ref> Similar to the Old Assyrian colony example, the idea was that any loss of cargo would not be disastrous to any individual if the property was shared during transport. Merchants would divide their goods between themselves and ships would carry roughly an equal amount of cargo in groups. Therefore, if a ship sunk or was destroyed then the merchant who owned that boat would not lose too much of value from one boat, as some of the cargo could reach its port.

==Summary==

We can see that insurance began as something mostly used as coverage for owners of trade vessels or cargo. Simple forms of insurance included risk sharing, such as that in ancient China, where goods would be spread out between owners of vessels to a more developed lending system developed by the Babylonians and Assyrians. In the mid-first millennium BC, we see the rise of the insurance firms, in the form of the Murashu family firm representing the best known example. Significant developments after that emerges again as more trade within the Mediterranean begins to thrive in the late Medieval period. At this time, insurance begins to be a more independent economic sphere. It is only after the Great Fire of London, however, do we then begin to see the spread of the idea or concepts of insurance to other areas such as general property and other areas. After the 17th century AD, the concept of insurance begins to then spreads to northern Europe and beyond during the Renaissance.