From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 27529
Date: 2003-11-24
> Brian Scott wrote[...]
>> Everything that I've read indicates that goods moving
>> long distances were typically passed along from hand to
>> hand over interlocking local or perhaps regional trade
>> networks. Some of this short-distance trade of course
>> went by water. So what? It hasn't much to do with
>> international trade in Vancouver harbor.
> Actually from the Uruk period (3,500 BCE) very long
> distance trade routes were established, by trading
> enterprises of surprising complexity. It has been shown
> how goods from the Cochin Coast of India or from
> Badakhstan in Afghanistan were carried to Uruk via
> companies of "ships of Melluhha" - operating out of the
> Indus. By there they went overland via individual Sumerian
> merchant houses to Byblos (their cylendar seals
> controlling the traffic), to be carried again by Ship to
> Egypt in the Naqada III period. In this way Lapis Lazuli
> from Afghanistan made its way to Egypt (and Mozambiquan
> rezins found their way into Sumerian tombs).