Bronze Age: how the market began
Göttingen University researchers investigate the spread of weighing systems across Western Eurasia 4,000 years ago
2021-06-29
(Press-News.org) Knowing the weight of a commodity provides an objective way to value goods in the marketplace. But did a self-regulating market even exist in the Bronze Age? And what can weight systems tell us about this? A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen researched this by investigating the dissemination of weight systems throughout Western Eurasia. Their new simulation indicates that the interaction of merchants, even without substantial intervention from governments or institutions, is likely to explain the spread of Bronze Age technology to weigh goods. The results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
To determine how different units of weight emerged in different regions, researchers compared all the weight systems in use between Western Europe and the Indus Valley from 3,000-1,000 BC. Analysis of 2,274 balance weights from 127 sites revealed that, with the exception of those from the Indus Valley, new and very similar units of weight appeared in a gradual spread west of Mesopotamia. To find out if the gradual formation of these systems could be due to propagation of error from a single weight system, the researchers modelled the creation of 100 new units. Taking into account factors such as measurement error, the simulation supported a single origin between Mesopotamia and Europe. It also showed that the Indus Valley probably developed an independent weight system. The research demonstrated that if information flow in Eurasia trade was free enough to support a common weight system, it was likely to be sufficient to react to local price fluctuations.
The weight systems that emerged between Mesopotamia and Europe were very similar. This meant that a single merchant could travel, for instance, from Mesopotamia to the Aegean and from there to Central Europe and never need to change their own set of weights. The merchant could trade with foreign partners while simply relying on approximating the weights. There was no international authority that could have regulated the accuracy of weight systems over such a wide territory and long time span. In Europe, beyond the Aegean, centralised authorities did not even exist at this time. The researchers conclude that the emergence of accurate weight systems must have been the outcome of a global network regulating itself from the bottom-up.
"With the results of our statistical analysis and experimental tests, it is now possible to prove the long-held hypothesis that free entrepreneurship was already a primary driver of the world economy even as early as the Bronze Age," explains Professor Lorenz Rahmstorf from the Institute for Prehistory and Early History, University of Göttingen. Merchants could interact freely, establish profitable partnerships, and take advantage of the opportunities offered by long-distance trade. "The idea of a self-regulating market existing some 4,000 years ago puts a new perspective on the global economy of the modern era," says Dr Nicola Ialongo, University of Göttingen. He adds, "Try to imagine all the international institutions that currently regulate our modern world economy: is global trade possible thanks to these institutions, or in spite of them?"
INFORMATION:
The study is a result of the EU-funded 'WEIGHT AND VALUE' project directed by Professor Lorenz Rahmstorf.
Original publication: Ialongo, N., Hermann, R., Rahmstorf, L. 2021. Bronze Age weight systems as a measure of market integration in Western Eurasia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105873118
Contact
Dr Nicola Ialongo
University of Göttingen
Faculty of Humanities
Institute for Prehistory and Early History
Nikolausberger Weg 15, 37073 Göttingen
Tel: +49 (0)551 39-25078
Email: nicola.ialongo@uni-goettingen.de
http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/dr.+nicola+ialongo/569681.html
Professor Lorenz Rahmstorf
University of Göttingen
Faculty of Humanities
Institute for Prehistory and Early History
Nikolausberger Weg 15, 37073 Göttingen
Tel: +49 (0)551 39-25081
Email: lorenz.rahmstorf@uni-goettingen.de
https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/569487.html
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-06-29
Keep your checklists handy because the 62nd Supplement to the American Ornithological Society's Check-list of North American Birds, publishing today in Ornithology, includes numerous updates to the classification of the continent's bird species. A few highlights from this year's supplement, detailed below, include species splits for Mew Gull, Barred Owl, and Sedge Wren, among quite a few others; a transfer back to an old genus for Ruby-crowned Kinglet; and a revision of the linear sequence of passerine families. The Check-list, published since 1886, is updated annually by the AOS's North American Classification Committee (NACC), the official authority on the names and ...
2021-06-29
RICHLAND, Wash.--Researchers have increased the lifetime of a promising electric vehicle battery to a record level, an important step toward the goal of lighter, less expensive and long-lasting batteries for future electric vehicles. The work is reported June 28 in the journal Nature Energy.
Such batteries--the goal of research groups the world over--are seen as an important part of the solution to reduce the effects of climate change, and scientists are exploring a dizzying array of options.
One solution on the horizon is a lithium-metal battery for electric vehicles. These ...
2021-06-29
(San Antonio, June 29, 2021) - UTSA criminology and criminal justice professors Michael R. Smith and Rob Tillyer working in collaboration with University of Cincinnati Professor Robin Engel examined racial and ethnic disparities in the use of force by the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD). One of the nation's largest county police departments, the FCPD serves Fairfax County, Va., a major metropolitan county near Washington, D.C.
The team presented the results of its 18-month study today to the Public Safety Committee of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. ...
2021-06-29
The historic 2020 hurricane season, with its record-breaking 30 tropical storms and hurricanes, left in its wake hundreds of deaths in the United States, tens of billions of dollars in damages, and one important question: Is this what the future will look like?
While most climate scientists agree that hurricane severity, at least in terms of rainfall, will likely increase as the planet warms, there remains uncertainty about the future frequency of hurricanes. Today's climate models offer a range of possible futures, some predicting an increase in North Atlantic hurricane frequency, others a decrease. These conflicting results beg the question: are these ...
2021-06-29
HOUSTON - (June 29, 2021) - When you think about trade and market relationships, you might think about brokers yelling at each other on the floor of a stock exchange on Wall Street. But it seems one of the basic functions of a free market is quietly practiced by fungi.
New research from a Rice University economist suggests certain networks of fungi embrace an important economic theory as they engage in trading nutrients for carbon with their host plants. This finding could aid the understanding of carbon storage in soils, an important tool in mitigating climate change.
A research paper entitled "Walrasian equilibrium behavior in nature" is available online and will appear in an upcoming edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ted Loch-Temzelides, ...
2021-06-29
Among low-income, uninsured, or publicly insured women ages 25-64 years who were not up to date on cervical cancer screening, 72% perceived financial barriers to screening. The most commonly reported barriers were screening appointment costs (71%) and follow-up/future treatment costs (44%), according to a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women’s Health. Click here to read the article now.
Screening is effective at reducing the incidence of and mortality associated with cervical cancer. However, disparities exist in cervical cancer incidence and mortality and in cervical cancer screening based ...
2021-06-29
Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) is a rare cancer involving dendritic cells, a type of white blood cell that usually helps defend against infections. The current standard of care for LCH, chemotherapy, cures fewer than half of patients.
"Our research team focuses on identifying the causes of LCH so that we can develop better therapies for patients," said Dr. Rikhia Chakraborty, assistant professor of pediatrics - hematology and oncology at Baylor College of Medicine.
Most cells in LCH lesions are not abnormal dendritic cells but other invading immune cells, such as T cells, that are recruited to sites of disease. The contribution of T cells and other immune cells to LCH disease is not known. Chakraborty and her team at the Texas Children's Cancer Center Histiocytosis Program characterized ...
2021-06-29
Mate choice is important for females, who often invest much more energy in offspring than males. However, being too selective is a bad idea, as they might end up not mating at all. Biologists have wondered for a long time how females optimize their chances. Scientists at the University of Groningen have performed experiments with fruit flies that reveal the explanation: mating induces a behavioural change in female flies that makes them more choosy than when they are virgins. The results were published on 21 June in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The fourteenth-century French philosopher Jean Buridan described a donkey who starved to death because he couldn't choose between two bales of hay. Evolutionary biologists have their own version of this decision-making ...
2021-06-29
University of Colorado Boulder researchers have discovered that minuscule, self-propelled particles called "nanoswimmers" can escape from mazes as much as 20 times faster than other, passive particles, paving the way for their use in everything from industrial clean-ups to medication delivery.
The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describe how these tiny synthetic nanorobots are incredibly effective at escaping cavities within maze-like environments. These nanoswimmers could one day be used to remediate contaminated ...
2021-06-29
Research from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has found a missing piece in the puzzle of optical quantum computing.
Jung-Tsung Shen, associate professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, has developed a deterministic, high-fidelity two-bit quantum logic gate that takes advantage of a new form of light. This new logic gate is orders of magnitude more efficient than the current technology.
"In the ideal case, the fidelity can be as high as 97%," Shen said.
His research was published in May 2021 in the journal Physical Review A.
The potential of quantum computers is bound to the unusual properties of superposition -- the ability of a quantum system to contain many distinct properties, or states, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Bronze Age: how the market began
Göttingen University researchers investigate the spread of weighing systems across Western Eurasia 4,000 years ago
