Cryptology Before Horse?

Cart before the horse? Merkle trees (invented 1979); patent granted (1982) US4309569A; patent expired Sept 1999. Wikipedia has blockchain-like protocol evolving from 1982 onward (Cryptographer David Chaum). In 1992, Haber, Stornetta, and Bayer incorporated Merkle trees blockchain-like protocol into the design. Git (initial release April 2005) 15 years ago. Github started operation (February 2008); 12 years ago. Bitcoin 0.1.0 (January 2009) 11 years ago. We know Satoshi Nakamoto was/is a Unix/Linux user. We can surmise also a Git user. Thus cryptology before blockchain makes sense (horse before cart)... A coda. Laying out the timeline also infers more that I intended. No worries the Alphaville analysts can't see the forest for the [Merkel] trees. page