Economics

The people of Lepenski Vir, an important Mesolithic archaeological site located on the banks of the Danube in eastern Serbia, within the Iron Gates gorge, near Donji Milanovac, probably represent the descendants of the early European population of the Brno-Predmost hunter-gatherer culture from the end of the last ice age.

Archaeological evidence of human habitation of the surrounding caves dates back to around 20,000 BCE.

The first settlement on the low plateau dates to 7000 BCE, a time when the climate becomes significantly warmer.

Seven successive settlements will be built on the site, providing a rare opportunity to observe the gradual transition from the hunter-gatherer way of life of early humans to the agricultural economy of the Neolithic.

The remains of one hundred and thirty-six residential and sacral buildings dating from 6500 BCE to 5500 BCE demonstrate the increasingly complex social structure that influences the development of planning and self-discipline necessary for agricultural production.

What may well be the world's oldest saltworks was discovered at the Poiana Slatinei archaeological site next to a salt spring in Lunca, Neamt County, Romania.

Archaeological evidence indicates that salt production began there as long ago as 6050 BCE, making it perhaps the oldest known saltworks in the world.

Evidence based on discoveries in Solca, Cacica, Lunca, Oglinzi, and Cucuieti indicates that the people of the Precucuteni Culture were extracting salt from the salt-laden spring-water through the process of briquetage.

First, the brackish water from the spring was boiled in large pottery vessels, producing a dense brine.

The brine was then heated in a ceramic briquetage vessel until all moisture was evaporated, with the remaining crystallized salt adhering to the inside walls of the vessel.

Then the briquetage vessel was broken open, and the salt was scraped from the shards.

The salt extracted from this operation may have had a direct correlation to the rapid growth of this society's population soon after its initial production began.

Salt from this operation probably played a very important role in the Neolithic economy of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture through its entire duration.

The Vinca culture emerges around 5500 on the shores of lower Danube.

As in all prehistoric cultures, the majority of the people of the Vinca network are occupied with the provision of food.

The economy is based on a variety of subsistence techniques: arable agriculture, animal husbandry, and hunting and gathering all contributed to the diet of the growing Vin a population.

Vinca agriculture introduces common wheat, oat, and flax to temperate Europe, and makes greater use of barley than earlier cultures.

These innovations raise potential crop yields, and in the case of flax allow the manufacture of clothes in materials other than leather and wool.

There is also indirect evidence that Vinca agriculture made use of the cattle-driven plow, which would have had a major effect on the amount of human labor required for agriculture as well as the types of soils that could be exploited.

Many of the largest Vinca sites occupy regions dominated by soil types that would have required the use of the plow to farm.

Areas with less arable potential were exploited through transhumant pastoralism, where groups from the lowland villages moved their livestock to nearby upland areas on a seasonal basis.

Cattle was more important than caprids (i.e.

sheep and goats) in Vinca herds and, in comparison to the cultures of the period, livestock was increasingly kept for milk, leather and as draft animals, rather than solely for meat.

Seasonal movement to upland areas was also motivated by the exploitation of stone and mineral resources.

The especially rich permanent upland settlements established would have relied more heavily on pastoralism for subsistence.

The Vinca subsistence economy, increasingly focused on domesticated plants and animals, continued to make use of wild food resources.

The hunting of deer, boar and auroch, fishing of carp and catfish, shell-collecting, fowling and foraging of wild cereals, forest fruits and nuts made up a significant part of the diet at some Vinca sites.

These, however, were in the minority; settlements were invariably located with agricultural rather than wild food potential in mind, and wild resources were usually underexploited unless the area was low in arable productivity.

Afghanistan's first true urban centers arise in two main sites, Mundigak and Deh Morasi Ghundai.

Mundigak, near present Qandahar, has an economic base of wheat, barley, sheep, and goats, and may be a provincial capital of the Indus valley civilization.

Lothal, before the arrival of Harappan people in about 2400 BCE, had been a small village next to the river providing access to the mainland from the Gulf of Khambhat.

The indigenous peoples maintained a prosperous economy, attested by the discovery of copper objects, beads, and semiprecious stones.

Ceramic wares were of fine clay and smooth, micaceous red surface.

They had improved a new technique of firing pottery under partly oxidizing and reducing conditions—designated black-and-red ware, to the micaceous Red Ware.

Harappans had been attracted to Lothal for its sheltered harbor, rich cotton and rice-growing environment and bead-making industry.

The beads and gems of Lothal are in great demand in the west.

The settlers live peacefully with the Red Ware people, who adopt their lifestyle—evidenced from the flourishing trade and changing working techniques—and Harappans began producing the indigenous ceramic goods, adopting the manner from the natives.

Dominance in Mesopotamia begins to pass around 2400 BCE from the Sumerians in the lower valley to the more northerly Akkadians, a Semitic people who have begun to dominate central Mesopotamia and possibly the northern region.

Akkadian influence soon extends west into Syria and east as far as Susa in present Iran.

Other Semitic-speaking population centers grow in Syria-Palestine, southern Arabia, and various smaller centers along the Arabian littoral.

Sumerian references to the Mar.tu ("tent dwellers"—considered to be Amorite) country west of the Euphrates date from even earlier than Sargon, at least to the reign of Enshakushanna of Uruk in the twenty-sixth century.

Caucasian-speaking groups dominate Asia Minor and most of the Iranian plateau.

The Ebla tablets are a collection of as many as eighteen hundred complete clay tablets, forty-seven hundred fragments and many thousand minor chips found in the palace archives of the ancient city of Ebla, Syria.

The tablets, which were found in situ on collapsed shelves, retained many of their contemporary clay tags to help reference them.

They all date to the period between about 2500 BCE and the destruction of the city in around 2250 BCE.

They are the oldest and the largest collection of tablets yet found from the ancient Middle East.

Two languages appeared in the writing on the tablets: Sumerian, and a previously unknown language that used the Sumerian cuneiform script (Sumerian logograms or "Sumerograms") as a phonetic representation of the locally spoken Ebla language.

The latter script was initially identified as proto-Canaanite by professor Giovanni Pettinato, who first deciphered the tablets, because it predated the Semitic languages of Canaan, like Ugaritic and Hebrew.

Pettinato later retracted the designation and decided to call it simply "Eblaite,” the name by which it is known today.

The only tablets at Ebla that were written exclusively in Sumerian are lexical lists, probably for use in training scribes.

The archives contain thousands of copybooks, lists for learning relevant jargon, and scratch pads for students, demonstrating that Ebla was a major educational center specializing in the training of scribes.

The purely phonetic use of Sumerian logograms marks a momentous advance in the history of writing.

Sumerian scribes developed a clumsy system that employed a mixed use of logograms and phonetic signs.

Drawing from the existing systems, the scribes at Ebla employed a reduced number of signs entirely phonetically, both the earliest example of transcription (rendering sounds in a system invented for another language) and a major simplifying step towards "reader friendliness" that would enable a wider spread of literacy in palace, temple and merchant contexts.

The tablets provide a wealth of information on Syria and Canaan in the Early Bronze Age, and include the first known references to the "Canaanites,” "Ugarit,” and "Lebanon.” The contents of the tablets reveal that Ebla was a major trade center.

One focus was economic records, inventories recording Ebla's commercial and political relations with other Levantine cities and logs of the city's import and export activities.

For example, they reveal that Ebla produced a range of beers, including one that appears to be named "Ebla,” for the city.

Ebla was also responsible for the development of a sophisticated trade network system between city-states in northern Syria.

This system grouped the region into a commercial community, which is clearly evidenced in the texts.

There are king lists for the city of Ebla, royal ordinances, edicts, treaties.

There are gazetteers listing place names, including a version of a standardized place-name list that has also been found at Abu Salabikh (possibly ancient Eresh) where it was datable to around 2600 BCE.

The literary texts include hymns and rituals, epics, and proverbs.

The Eblaite tablets from the Igrish-Khalam dynasty administration, written in Sumerian cuneiform script, record commercial treaties; bilingual vocabularies; lists of birds, fish, and stones; ritual and mythological texts; diplomatic letters; military dispatches; and lists of personal and place names.

The Eblaite texts name Ebla as the center of a commercial empire that radiates north to Anatolia, west to Cyprus, south to Canaan and Egypt, east to Persia, and southeast to Mesopotamia.

The wider debate over the end of Indus civilization continues, but evidence gathered by the archaeological Survey of India appears to point to natural catastrophes, specifically floods and storms as the source of Lothal's downfall.

A powerful flood submerged the town and destroyed most of the houses, with the walls and platforms heavily damaged.

The acropolis and was leveled (2000-1900 BCE), and inhabited by common tradesmen and newly built makeshift houses.

The worst consequence was the shift in the course of the river, cutting off access to the ships and dock.

The people built a new but shallow inlet to connect the flow channel to the dock for sluicing small ships into the basin.

Large ships were moored away.

Houses were rebuilt, yet without removal of flood debris, which made them poor-quality and susceptible to further damage.

Public drains were replaced by soakage jars.

The citizens did not undertake encroachments, and rebuilt public baths.

However, with a poorly organized government, and no outside agency or central government, the public works could not be properly repaired or maintained.

The heavily damaged warehouse was never repaired properly, and stocks were stored in wooden canopies, exposed to floods and fire.

The economy of the city was transformed.

Trade volumes reduced greatly, though not catastrophically, and resources were available in lesser quantities.

Independent businesses caved, allowing a merchant-centric system of factories to develop where hundreds of artisans worked for the same supplier and financier.

The bead factory had ten living rooms and a large workplace courtyard.

The coppersmith's workshop had five furnaces and paved sinks to enable multiple artisans to work.

The declining prosperity of the town, paucity of resources and poor administration increase the woes of a people pressured by consistent floods and storms.

Increased salinity of soil makes the land inhospitable to life, including crops.

This is evidenced in adjacent cities of Rangpur, Rojdi, Rupar and Harappa in Punjab, Mohenjo-daro and Chanhudaro in Sindh.

A massive flood in about 1900 BCE destroys the flagging township in a single stroke.

Archaeological analysis shows that the basin and dock were sealed with silt and debris, and the buildings razed to the ground.

The flood affects the entire region of Saurashtra, Sindh, and south Gujarat, and affects the upper reaches of the Indus and Sutlej, where scores of villages and townships are washed away.

The population flees to inner regions.

Archaeological evidence shows that the site continued to be inhabited, albeit by a much smaller population devoid of urban influences.

The few people who returned to Lothal could not reconstruct and repair their city, but surprisingly continued to stay and preserved religious traditions, living in poorly built houses and reed huts.

That they were the Harappan peoples is evidenced by the analyses of their remains in the cemetery.

While the trade and resources of the city were almost entirely gone, the people retained several Harappan ways in writing, pottery, and utensils.

ASI archaeologists record a mass movement of refugees from Punjab and Sindh into Saurashtra and to the valley of Sarasvati about this time (1900-1700 BCE).

Hundreds of ill-equipped settlements have been attributed to this people as Late Harappans a completely de-urbanized culture characterized by rising illiteracy, less complex economy, unsophisticated administration and poverty.

Though Indus seals go out of use, the system of weights, with an 8.573-gram (0.3024 oz. avoirdupois) unit, is retained.

These temples, built in the Late Bronze Age, continue into the Iron Age without hiatus, and will witness multiple rebuilding in the Early Iron Age.

Phrygia forms the western part of a loose confederation of peoples (identified as “Mushki” in Assyrian records) that dominates the entire Anatolian peninsula between the twelfth and ninth centuries BCE.

This early civilization borrows heavily from the Hittites, whom they had replaced around 1200, and establishes a system of roads that the Persians will later utilized.

The Phrygians excel in metalwork and woodcarving and are said to have originated the art of embroidery.

Phrygian carpets are famous.

Among the various Phrygian religious practices, the cult of the Great Mother (Cybele) predominates and is passed on to the Greeks.

Little else is known of Phrygian society.

The great shrines such as Pessinus own vast lands, the high priests being virtually autonomous rulers.

Society is probably feudal.

An intelligent and evidently cultivated elite (they are able to read and write) exists at Gordium and the important religious center at “Midas City” (modern Yazilikaya, Turkey), together with an important nucleus of craftsmen and merchants, some doubtless being foreigners—Greeks, Phoenicians, Syrians, and Urartaeans.

A staple industry is sheep rearing, which provides a fine wool much in demand in Miletus and other Greek centers of industry.

The neighborhood of Midas City harbors considerable forestland, and timber is clearly an important economic factor.

Another specialty is horse rearing, the Phrygians probably being, like many of the Indo-Europeans, an equestrian aristocracy ruling over other native peoples.

The Chernolian settlements in what is now northern Ukraine include both open and fortified sites surrounded by multiple banks and ditches.

Houses are usually surface-dwellings and of substantial size, around ten by six meters.

Artifacts found in settlements include stone and bronze axes, weapons, bronze ornaments, and iron tools.

Cultivated wheat, barley and millet are staples.

The economy is agricultural with added stockbreeding.

Bronze artifacts indicate significant contacts with Scythian nomads, and finds of finer ceramic wares suggest contacts with Thrace and Black Sea Greek colonies.

Inhabitants practice both inhumation under barrows and cremation in urnfields, the latter predominating in later periods.

The classical Chernoles period ends around 500 BCE, corresponding to a simplification in the material culture, interpreted to represent a pauperization due to the political domination of the forest-steppe communities by Scythians.

This latter stage see an increase in fortified settlements, perhaps representing a defensive measure against the nomads (with earthen ramparts, ditches and timber walls).

Despite the difficulties, settlement density actually increases, and the sociocultural traditions continue.