One of the biggest things I got from David Graeber's Debt, the First 5,000 Years was that many earlier societies ran on debt but generally that debt is traded back and forth or was never let to build.

Whether it was neighbours paying back a bit more than they owed or a bit less as a way to keep the relationship more formally tied (or more explicitly, if you paid exactly your debt it was seen as a way of severing a relationship) or it was kings declaring a jubilee, a wiping out of personal debt.