The Doge’s palace in Venice is one of the most lavish and ornate centers of power the world has ever seen. Much of it is still in good condition today. At the heart of the palace is an unusual room lined floor to ceiling with drawers for thousands of documents. The documents kept here for hundreds of years, while precious, didn’t relate to money. At least, not directly. They listed the “status” of every person in the city. If you were a Venetian a few hundred years ago, one of these documents listed whose child you were, whose child they were, and how you were connected to royalty, merchants,
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