On Tue, 8 Feb 2011, Jordan Hayes wrote:
> http://husky1.stmarys.ca/~gye/derivativeshistory.pdf
>
> "[...] To start we need to go back to the Bible. In Genesis Chapter 29,
> believed to be about the year 1700 B.C., Jacob purchased an option costing
> him seven years of labor that granted him the right to marry Laban's daughter
> Rachel. His prospective father-in-law, however, reneged, perhaps making this
> not only the first derivative but the first default on a derivative. Laban
> required Jacob to marry his older daughter Leah. Jacob married Leah, but
> because he preferred Rachel, he purchased another option, requiring seven
> more years of labor
Accepting the conceit that these are options, he's left out the most important part of of the contract, which is that at the end of his second term, Jacob was allowed all the lambs that were born spotted -- and gamed the contract (with the help of the lord) by putting some kind of magic wands in front of the ewes when they were mating which made their lambs come out spotted, so that he ended up with almost the entire output of yearlings rather than the small portion predicted by past odds.
Michael