AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary
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The flat curve of Assur
Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).
Claim (verbatim)
The flat curve of Assur. The term structure of interest rates meets Old Assyrian merchant finance: Kanesh-trade interest was customary rather than market-clearing, so the yield curve is flat — annualized rates independent of maturity — while risk was priced instead in default-penalty clauses that do scale with term.
Prediction clause (verbatim)
Across >= 150 Kultepe loan tablets stating both rate and term, the regression of annualized interest on log maturity has a slope within +/-2 percentage points of zero (against a customary level near 30% per year) with R^2 <= 0.05, while the odds of a punitive default clause at least double per doubling of loan term; a conventional upward-sloping yield curve kills it.
Kill-dataset (verbatim)
Kill: the Old Assyrian Text Project loan corpus in the Larsen and Veenhof editions.
Provenance
Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5
Generated by a fresh Fable-tier instance at maximum effort with generation-first blindness (no repo/web/DB access); titles-only knowledge of existing items, embedded in titles_supplied per the batch-2 lane rule; prompt pre-committed in docs/GOAL_CONJECTURES_BATCH3_20260705.md (b043140). Novelty unverified by construction. titles_supplied stripped to the committed sidecar conjecture_fresh_fablemax_batch3_titles_supplied_20260705.md at import (schema additionalProperties:false; relaxation queued).
Novelty / leakage triage
Adjacent (closely related prior work exists)
The Veenhof-school Old Assyrian credit literature richly documents the factual substrate (30-60% customary rates, monthly compounding, default escalation) and one Belleten article on interest-payment procedures is likely close (abstract-only in the dossier); the rate-vs-maturity yield-curve regression was not located as performed.
- Michel, 'The Old Assyrian Trade in the Light of Recent Kültepe Archives' — The credit-practice scholarship
- 'Interest payment procedures applied by Assyrian merchants', Belleten 69/255 (2005) — Closest single article; abstract-only
Predictions
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