Trade in the Early Bronze Age Ancient Mesopotamia and the East Harappan Civilization Oxus Elam YouTube

Several of you have asked about interactions between the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and the lands to the east. So I thought that in this video we could go over some of the evidence supporting such links besides what we've already covered in recent programs. For the most part, the various early settled societies of ancient Mesopotamia that formed along the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers were largely self-sufficient when it came to their basic needs. For food, they cultivated wheat and barley, ate a portion of the animals that they domesticated, and often supplemented their diets with dates and fish if they were available. As long as there was no famine, most settled peoples living during the late 5th and 4th millennia BC had a relatively stable food supply and sufficient shelter, which were two of the basic things that every person needed. However, as societies became more complex and with the invention or adoption of new technologies such as farming tools and weapons made out of copper and later bronze, the early city-states of Sumer needed access to the raw materials that their societies demanded. The problem was that such resources were not naturally available in southern and central Mesopotamia, which roughly made up the lands of Sumer and Akkad, respectively. They had to be imported from the surrounding territories. Copper often came from mines throughout Anatolia and the mountains and deserts of Iran to the east, while tin, to a lesser extent, also from mines in Anatolia and Afghanistan. But along with commodities that had everyday practical uses, a new market for luxury goods also developed. As social hierarchies and a ruling minority, whether it was a powerful priesthood or chieftains and kings, came to govern their respective societies, many from this elite class often wished to display or reinforce their higher status by possessing markers of wealth and esteem, or in acts of piety, donate such objects to temples that honored the divine beings they worshipped. One common marker of higher social status is the possession of things that are rare, difficult to obtain, or unusually beautiful. In Mesopotamia, the first examples of such objects with all three of these characteristics were stones of varied colors and rare metals such as gold and silver that could be used to create or embellish finished goods. Demand for such goods in large quantities likely first developed amongst elites in the ancient urban centers of Mesopotamia, for this is where the earliest examples of fine, luxury objects utilizing such rare commodities were first discovered. As Sumer and Akkad were almost totally devoid of such commodities, it became necessary to source them from other parts of the world. Much of the gold that found its way into the metal workshops of Mesopotamia during the 4th and 3rd millennia BC came from mines in Iran, Afghanistan, and later on, parts of India. Silver was much more plentiful, especially in northeastern Anatolia. However, acquiring such materials and transporting them to southern Mesopotamia proved to be extremely challenging. To say that trade with foreign lands in the early Bronze Age was difficult is a huge understatement. Many of these items and rare commodities came either from or through the country of Elam, whose inhabitants controlled many of the overland trade routes that caravan trains used for traveling between Sumer, Akkad, and the lands further to the east, such as those occupied by the Oxus and Harappan civilizations. One of the most precious items during the Bronze Age was a vibrant, rare, blue-colored gemstone used primarily for decorative purposes. We know of it today as lapis lazuli. The people of Mesopotamia loved lapis lazuli. They used it for making jewelry, figurines, religious statues, votive objects, little trinkets and amulets, among other things, and believed that it had special powers that protected its owner from evil. The most famous examples of lapis lazuli put to use are in items that were discovered in the so-called Royal Cemetery of Ur. Most of the objects here date to around 2600 BC, and along with lapis lazuli, contain gold, silver, and carnelian. There were several ancient sources of gold, silver, and even carnelian, but for lapis lazuli, there was only the mountains of Badakhshan, in what's today northern Afghanistan and Tajikistan. This area is about 1400 miles away from ancient Sumer, and that too, only if one were able to fly in a straight line. The windy land routes through the mountains and harsh deserts of Iran on the way to Mesopotamia would probably double that distance and take several months to complete. And this is not counting the delays that would have occurred due to bad weather, sandstorms, and the numerous dangers posed by bandits and marauders. So, how did lapis lazuli, carnelian, and other commodities of high value get from the towering mountains of the east to the urban centers of Sumer, Akkad, and even further west? The short answer is, through trade networks that crossed over the Iranian plateau and Zagros mountains into the land of the two rivers, or by sea, after being loaded onto ships at ports along the Arabian Sea, and then sailing through the Persian Gulf to the cities of southern Mesopotamia. For the time being though, let's focus strictly on the land route and items such as lapis lazuli and carnelian, which, because they're much less common and with fewer known sources, are a lot easier to track than gold, silver, and more common metals such as copper. There were several ways via land in which lapis lazuli and carnelian could have reached Sumer and Akkad. One is that traders and merchant companies from Mesopotamia might have actually made the long and perilous journey east in order to obtain them. However, most scholars believe that this method wasn't very common. A second way was that such goods might have been passed on from one settlement to another. For example, carnelian could have been mined in the Hindu Kush mountains and then bought by Harappan traders who then passed it on to a network of merchants that operated throughout the many cities and kingdoms that once existed between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. In fact, the Harappan trading colony discovered in 1976 at Shotugai in Afghanistan was probably established for this very reason. A third possibility is through what is often called central place trade. In this, producers send their goods to some commercial center or emporium from which the final users obtain them, either by direct missions or through further intermediate settlements. One possible example of this could have been the town that once flourished at the site of Shari Sukhta, in what's today the eastern edge of the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan. Meaning, burned city, Shari Sukhta was once a bustling commercial town on one of the main land routes between the Harappan civilization and destinations further to the west. Archaeologists discovered a workshop there containing blocks of lapis lazuli up to two kilograms in weight, along with some tools used for stone working. Chips and beads made of lapis lazuli were also found there, along with carnelian, the latter which probably came from the Hindu Kush mountains. A bit further to the northwest in the Albrose mountains of northern Iran is the site of Tepe Hisar, which, similar to Shari Sukhta, had workshops where traces of lapis lazuli and carnelian dating to around the 4th and 3rd millennia BC were discovered. Archaeologists have concluded that these two sites were probably set up for the same purpose, that is, to facilitate trade in lapis lazuli and carnelian between east and west, but along different trade routes. This was a smart idea, because the Iranian plateau during the Bronze Age could be an unstable place, not just due to the bands of roving warlords and hostile mountain tribes, but also with the different kingdoms and principalities in that area going to war with each other, which at times may have blocked passage via the traditional trade routes. Such states often competed with each other for control over parts of the lucrative east-west trade between the great river systems of the Indus, Oxus, and Mesopotamia. Due to such unpredictability and political factors well beyond their control, traders needed several possible routes to transport their goods across Iran. The largest and most dominant of these various kingdoms and states were part of Elam, whose main cultural and commercial centers were the cities of Anshan and Susa. Another may have been what 3rd millennium Sumerian and Akkadian texts referred to as the Kingdom of Marhashi, which some believe may have been the same, or at least linked to, the relatively recently discovered Jiroft civilization of southeastern Iran. Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this short program and learned a bit about international trade in the ancient world, and if you'd like more content like this, please let me know in the comments. Thanks so much for watching. 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