As soon as humans got tired of nomadic life they decided to be settle at a place. For this This new mode of stationary life took a form of society and, they needed to develop some new concepts. One of such concept is property, after all nomadic man never needed to own land. They started identifying a "piece of land", a "group of cattle" and set of farming tools as something to be possed or controlled by someone. The underlying idea is of " ownership". The idea of ownership soon found acceptance and people developed acceptable norms in owning things usually called property. In a nutshell property is something that someone "owns". Over the time people's extent of ownership grew and so did the list of items that can be owned. Precious metals, stone become something people started owning. As time passed social standing of an individual was proportional to his property. What attracted people to own something is the characteristics of properties i.e properties have (1) economic value and (2) wealth generating potentials. Later ownership and extent of ownership became a social status symbol. As the society progressed a new category of properties are discovred such as "mines". With the advent technology entirely new category of properties came into being. For example the invention of printing press created authors and they are given ownership to their writing by means of "copyrights". The invention, steam engine that heralded industrial revolution was owned by James Watt as a patent. With the advent of electronic age chip design become a new property. Computer age created "computer programs" as new personal and industrial property. Information age and knowledge age are ushering a new category of idea-based properties.
