We develop our paper by defining "accounting history research" and posing six big picture questions about historical accounting evolution. The paper selectively summarizes accounting history over the past ten thousand years, organized around our six questions. This review provides useful examples that we draw upon for subsequent sections, but can also be used as a US accounting history primer. We explain how accounting history can inform scholars studying modern institutions by analyzing several exemplary research papers. The paper discusses numerous empirical studies using archival accounting data and suggests further questions that can build upon and extend published research. Finally, we discuss the implications of our evolutionary perspective for accounting research, and identify numerous research opportunities under each of our six big picture questions that will together help us build a coherent evolutionary theory of accounting.