Accounting is thousands of years old; the earliest accounting records, which
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dates back more than 7,000 years ago, were found in Mesopotamia (Assyrians). The
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people of that time relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of
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crops and herds. Accounting is evolved, improving over the years and advancing
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as business has advanced. Early accounts served mainly to assist the memory of
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the businessperson and the audience as for the account was the proprietor or record
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keeper alone. Cruder forms of accounting were not inadequate for the problems
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created by a business entity involving in multiple investors, so double-entry bookkeeping first emerged in northern Italy in the 14th century, where trading
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ventures began to require more capital than a single individual was able to invest
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something. The development of joint stock companies created wider audiences for ac- counts, as investors without firsthand knowledge of their operations relied on
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accounts to provide with the requisite information. This development resulted in a
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split of accounting systems for internal (i. e. management accounting) and external ( i. e. financial accounting) purposes, and subsequently also in accounting and disclosure regulations and a growing need for independent attestation of external
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accounts by auditors. Today, accounting is even called "the language of business" be cause it is the vehicle for reporting financial information about a business entity to many different groups of people.