The history of annuities, from divination to gambling to probability

Annuity contracts, as financial instruments for hedging risk, began long before the development of mathematical probability.  Indeed, the history of annuities begins with divination, the practice of seeking knowledge of the future by supernatural means.  This lecture will describe how humans progressed from divination to gambling, and then to probability, which led to rigorous mathematical rules for the pricing of annuity contracts.  
  
Along the way, we will encounter such stalwarts as:

• The Shona people of southern Africa and the indigenous Andean people, both of whom practiced divination; 
• Michael Scot, the Scottish astrologer/sorcerer and whose name appears in Dante's "Divine Comedy";
• Gnaeus Domitius Annius Ulpianus, Roman lawyer, human rights pioneer, first preparer of mortality tables; 
• Gunvor Olavsdatter, who bought a "corrody" in return for "accommodation, best-quality food, and 2.7 liters of beer daily (and more beer at festivities)"; 
• and Huygens, Leibniz, Euler, Gauss and other mathematicians who developed formulas for annuity pricing.

Bio
https://science.psu.edu/stat/people/dsr11