It is all a lie!! Accounting is not a one-man show: tracing accounting roots

Abstract

Many scholars of accounting have written and known accounting on one seminal view, which is a view that supports accounting as a field that only came into exists after Luca Pacioli’s double-entry system. This has given rise to the expression that accounting is a concept developed by Luca Pacioli in 1494. Traces of accounting origins have shown this is incorrect; accounting in Mesopotamia-accounting, in the ancient Egyptian, Greek, China, and Rome and other authors that wrote on the double-entry system before Luca Pacioli. The ultimate purpose of this research paper is to explain in-depth how accounting evolved through reviewing historical literature that existed before and after Luca Pacioli’s double-entry system. All research papers published in prominent accounting journals in English in the 90 years were scanned. The review focused on research papers that explicitly explored accounting evolution. The greater part of this research paper focused on the authors who contributed to modern accounting. The majority of published research papers in the accounting field focus on Luca Pacioli, as he is the father of accounting. These research papers pertaining to the field of accounting were categorised and analysed in more detail and qualitatively classified in accordance with selected dimensions. Only a minority of research papers have an explicit history of the other authors before Luca Pacioli. The conclusion is that the state of this research paper is clearly non-paradigmatic in nature.

Keywords: Accounting origin, Accounting Evolution, Accounting Theory, Accounting, Luca Pacioli