As capitalism and profit on capital only started on the steps to being the prevailing economic system in the fourteenth century, in pockets of Europe, I wonder what year it became "human nature" worldwide exactly - 1350? 1848?
Long distance trade and traveling merchants date back into the Bronze Age at least, and salt was probably traded in Europe during the Stone Age.
These transactions did not use money, but their basics do not differ much from contemporary trade - including the fact that trade centers and highly connected individuals could become very, very rich, almost unfathomably so when compared to their contemporaries.