Abstract:

Trade and social stratification appeared more or less simultaneously in different parts of the Eastern Mediterranean prior to the advent of agriculture-based village economies. This formulation places trade at the head of a list of factors that favored the adoption and dispersal of agriculture, and contrasts with previous views that regarded the development of complex societies as the consequence of the chance innovation or evolution of agriculture. The evolution of complex societies was instead the cause of agricultural origins. Trade among Eastern Mediterranean societies provided the incentives for experimentation with domesticates to produce surplus wealth for trade or to support craftsmen who produced commodities for trade.

Author: Curtis Runnels, Tjeerd H. van Andel