Significance of Trading in Ancient Mesopotamia
... What you’re picturing is early Ancient Mesopotamia. ... Although Ancient Mesopotamia never reached such staggering numbers in their trading, they did learn to use trade as a tool to develop their society. ... Thus, trading played the critical role that allowed Mesopotamian citizens to further develop their society. Although trading was eventually critical to the growing Mesopotamia society, trading did not increase until the latter part of the fourth millennium B. ... Trading, on this larger scale, though, can be recognized archeologically in many different ways. ... For example, the lack of copper in the Mesopotamia regions means that all copper in the region came from trading (see figure 1. ... Because we are able to uncover evidence of trading in Mesopotamia, we are able to see how it played a critical part in the development of the region. As author Susan Pollock points out in her book, Ancient Mesopotamia: The Eden that Never Was, “No society has ever existed in isolation; Mesopotamia’s limited natural resources offered an incentive to develop connections with its neighbors, many of which inhabited regions much more richly endowed with resources” (222). As a result of trading among neighboring regions, more people began to demand traded goods. ... Many archeologists believe that early trading was in control of the temples because surplus materials, used for trading, where often held by the temples (Van De Mieroop 187). ... Later, it seems that trading was turned over to more independent trading cities. Set-up in primary resource extraction areas, these cities became central to the trading industry when, “long and devastating wars between eastern and western powers, often fought out on Mesopotamia soil” (Van De Mieroop 240). Because trading was eventually taken over by these trading cities, traded goods became easier to access for all of Mesopotamian citizens. Trading goods soon became household items for many of the Mesopotamian citizens.