Where did insurance begin: who paid the merchant whose cargo was thrown overboard?

Imagine a ship tossing in a storm. The captain orders: "Heavy cargo overboard!" One merchant's sacks go into the water, while the others' are saved. Is that fair? The ancient seafarers said "no" and came up with a rule. This is one of the oldest written traces of the idea of insurance.

• The name of the rule. In Roman law it is called "Lex Rhodia de iactu" (the Rhodian law on jettison) and is preserved in a separate title (14.2) of Justinian's Digest.
• The essence. The loss of cargo thrown overboard to lighten and save the ship is made good by all those whose ship and cargo were saved: what was given for all is repaid by everyone's contribution.
• Not only jettison. Researchers write that the rule was also applied to a payment made to buy the ship back from pirates.
• The condition: there must be a result. If cargo was thrown overboard but the ship was lost anyway, no contribution was demanded, because the purpose of the sacrifice had not been achieved.
• Its origin is debated. Scholars still disagree on whether the rule really came from the island of Rhodes or whether Roman jurists developed it themselves.
• Its legacy today. Marine insurance has the concept of "general average": the cost incurred to escape a common danger is shared by all the interested parties. Researchers regard it as a continuation of exactly this ancient rule.
• Why did it appear and how was it calculated? In seaborne trade a single storm could ruin a merchant completely. Under the logic of the rule, no special instrument was needed for the calculation: the saved values were added up and the loss was divided in a simple proportion (see the example below).
• The link with insurance. This is not yet a policy, and there is no insurance company yet. But the core idea is the same: one person's large loss is divided into small shares among many.

Example (prepared by the author, hypothetical figures). The ship "Shamol" is worth 300 million soum, and the owners of the cargo on board are Bahodir with goods worth 60 million and Dilnoza with goods worth 40 million soum. The total value to be saved is 400 million soum. In a storm Dilnoza's cargo worth 20 million soum was thrown overboard.

Contribution rate: 20 ÷ 400 = 5%. Dilnoza lost 20 million, but she herself also contributes 2 million and receives 18 million from the others. As a result, everyone loses 5 per cent of their value, and the loss does not fall on one person.