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Findings from 3,300-year-old Uluburun shipwreck reveal complex trade network
- lkrubner 4y agoAt one point Scientific American had an article which reported that the pigments used in the cave paintings in Spain, circa 25,000 BC, had come from Italy, suggesting goods were traveling long distances as early as 25,000 BC. Either one tribe was moving back and forth from Italy to Spain, on a regular basis, or there was a trade network. So to learn that there was an extensive trade network at the end of the Bronze Age is not nearly so exciting, even if the scale of distance is a bit greater. I mean, we already knew there was extensive trade at the end of the Bronze Age, I was taught that when I was in school.
- moloch-hai 4y agoWhat seems surprising is transporting big, heavy, valuable, militarily important ingots on routes through multiple cultural areas controlled by mutual enemies.
- warinukraine 4y agoUpvote if you were skimming and thought this headline was about Ubuntu.
- hunglee2 4y agoAmazing find. This was the first era of 'globalisation', where trade networks connected geographically dispersed and culturally diverse peoples in a mutually beneficial exchange. Whatever the initial event which triggered the Late Bronze Age collapse, it was consequent collapse of these networks which led long periods of cultural regression
- zasdffaa 4y agoI'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure there were wide exchanges of peoples happened thousands of years earlier (eg. stonehenge burials came from a wide range of europe - this from memory). Edit: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188 << The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown. Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe. The Neolithic inhabitants were descended from populations originating in Anatolia (modern Turkey) that moved to Iberia before heading north. They reached Britain in about 4,000BC. Details have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. The migration to Britain was just one part of a general, massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000BC that introduced farming to Europe >>
- steele 4y ago
- eternalban 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medes#Prehistory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medes#Prehistory A substantial portion of the indicated area in the map later became the Median empire. Above link discusses the "power vacuum" in that area before the establishment of centralized power, which would explain the lack of state involvement as there was no sovereign counter party to the trade treaty for the consuming power. This also may explain why the first Iranian dynasty were the Medes in that specific part of today's Iran (and not in the southern zone like the Persians who came to power later) - looks like it was most likely an outgrowth of economic activity. Also note that there was a significant Israelite community in that center dot in Iran (which was called Rhages and is now called Ray, now a suburb of Tehran). The Book of Tobit mentions the community of Israelites in Rhages and how Tobin sent his son Tobit to Rhages to get a proper wife. The book is ~2300 years old so 1000 years after the subject of the article, so not entirely conclusive but possible that a 'trade network' that spanned that zone in fact existed and had some cohesion (it was Israelite) and that is what facilitated this entire affair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Tobit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Tobit "Tobit's son Tobias is sent to retrieve ten silver talents that Tobit once left in Rages". Why did he leave it there? He was a trades man, that's why. - [edit] p.s.: fact checking this the Israelite tribe of this book was deported ~723 BC so my theory does not hold up.
- someotherperson 4y agoWe can actually see evidence of trade in that area dating back even earlier -- to the neolithic times. Specifically Mehragh[0] which has its neolithic agricultural tools completely matching the Mesopotamian ones. They also traded with Badakhshan[1] in neolithic times. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badakhshan#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badakhshan#History
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoAs is increasingly speculated, humanity has had sophisticated societies for far longer than a few thousand years. Zero chance we just sprung up out of the dirt one day. Guaranteed the ice age destroyed huge swaths of technically primitive but socially advanced civilizations. Two issues with this hypothesis: 1. Over 10,000 years few artifacts can survive degradation 2. There are political motivations for controlling the narrative around evolution and the birth of civilization
- rightbyte 4y ago3300 years ago the oldest pyramids were thousands of years old. Or do you mean in general and not tied to the article?
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoI'm more so discussing 10k+ years ago, with supporting evidence of sophistication thousands of years ago
- rightbyte 4y agoYe well they were probably not less intelligent than we are. And we can more or less only estimate their sofistication by their tools we find at burial sites etc. Obviously complex societies could have existed on a social level.
- someotherperson 4y ago> Ye well they were probably not less intelligent than we are It's important to emphasise that they were definitely not less intelligent, nor did they have different behaviour. You can take a child from 50,000 years ago and they would perform the same as the average child today. The modern homo sapien sapien reached its point as early as 160,000 years ago. The idea here is that we're expected to believe that modern humans -- like me and you -- sat idle for at least 80,000 to as much as 150,000 years before reaching a point in the last 10k years and suddenly forming civilizations (of which there are about six known, independent origin points around the globe). We lack evidence to the contrary -- sure -- but if we find evidence it will just be construed as a black swan event that would, in hindsight, be obvious.
- monero-xmr 4y agoTrade is built into our human nature. We all want stuff we can’t have, and no one can produce everything. Even if all the raw materials and all the skills and all the knowledge was possessed, there isn’t enough time for a single (person, city, country) to produce enough to fill all desires. So we trade to get what we want. This has been the case for all of human civilization and I am confident if you could peer into the earliest time periods the rocks sharpened during the Stone Age traveled far and wide as well. Trying to ban or artificially limit trade is like trying to limit the tides - you are battling against a decentralized force of human desire. This is the same reason you can’t ban drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling - and on the positive side love, children, religion - both categories of which have been attempted by various governments in recent and distant times. I like history because it shows us how stable we are as humans. The context changes but our desires and motivations do not.
- hungryforcodes 4y agoWe want to ban sex? Interesting-- explains the falling birthrates. :)
- SapporoChris 4y agohttps://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/05/asia/indonesia-new-code-passed-sex-cohabitation-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/05/asia/indonesia-new-code-p... This certainly seems to be a ban on sex outside of marriage.
- zasdffaa 4y agoStrange comment - nobody was suggesting banning trade (even weirder about banning sex).
- monero-xmr 4y agoThe recent rise in mercantilism / trade wars / tariffs / America (or insert country) First / China one child policies / China and Soviet state official atheism / Russia and China banning gays
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoReminder that this time corresponds with New Kingdom Egypt and the 18th Dynasty. The Great Pyramid had been around for about 1000 years by the time of the events discussed in the article. Even known civilization is very old.
- s3000 4y ago>the mines in ancient Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age were under the control of the Hittites, an imperial global power of great threat to Ramses the Great of Egypt What's the reason to call the Hittites a great threat to Ramses? They had the first known peace treaty [1] with Egypt which should lead to the opposite reputation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian%E2%80%93Hittite_peace_treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian%E2%80%93Hittite_peace...
- humantorso 4y agoYou usually don't sign peace treaties with allies?
- bandrami 4y agoYou don't sign peace treaties with people who aren't threats
- s3000 4y agoWhy would you sign a peace treaty if it doesn't turn a threat into something else?
- rmah 4y agoAm I the only one who finds it odd to describe an empire that covered turkey and the levant (syria/northern iraq) as "global"? To answer your question though, the hittites and egypt were fighting over the western levant. Areas of what is now Lebanon and NW Syria.
- pugworthy 4y agoThis article leads to some interesting reading about Oxhide Ingots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxhide_ingot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxhide_ingot), and how this shipwreck was the biggest find (?) of these so far. And you, probably like me, had a hard time not reading "Copper Oxide"
- bandrami 4y agoMaybe Nanni's copper consignment from Ea-Nasir was on that ship...