Communists actually do say that. Marx called it "primitive communism". The trend in economic history has been the opposite of what you say. In the 70s it was

Communists actually do say that. Marx called it "primitive communism". The trend in economic history has been the opposite of what you say. In the 70s it was fashionable to emphasize how different ancient economies were from modern. See for example Moses Finley's Ancient Economy. The trend of recent scholarship has been to show that things in the old days are more like today than we thought. It's made the Industrial Revolution harder to explain, because all of the institutional details that seemed like they were important get pushed further and further back in time. Anyway, I thought the quote was odd because it was such a large worry for such a small point. It's interesting that standardized weights and measures didn't require a central government. I have trouble believing that this would radically change anyone's perception of the trade-offs between governments and markets, but the authors are clearly worried that their research is going to give ammunition to someone they don't like.