Significant Historic Reference Points on Accountancy at Global Level

The analysis of the evolution of scientific research on accountancy is extremely important as one can only judge the present phenomena that characterize a certain field on the basis of a solid historical background. The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the evolution of accountancy from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, that is from the emergence of the various forms of writing and paper discovery to the use of logismography and, further on, the elaboration of balance sheet theories. It also seeks to emphasize the way various schools of accounting thinking regarded accountancy at different moments in history. The paper is divided into six different parts (except introduction and conclusions), each part corresponding to a certain period in accounting history