A Splendid Exchange

Global Trade: A Venerable and Storied History

In today’s global economy, everyone is accustomed to buying goods from other countries – electronics from Taiwan, vegetables from Mexico, clothing from China, cars from Korea and skirts from India. Most modern shoppers take the “Made in (some other country)” stickers on their products for granted. Long-distance commerce was not always this common, although foreign trade – the movement of goods from one geographic region to another – has been a vital factor in human affairs since prehistoric times. Thousands of years ago, merchants transported only the most precious items – silk, gold and silver, spices, jewels, porcelains and medicines – via ancient, extended land and sea trade routes, including the fabled Silk Road through central Asia. Moving goods great distances was simply too hard and costly to waste the effort on ordinary products, although people often carted grain and other foods over shorter distances from farms to market towns.

Numerous signs provide clues about ancient, long-distance trade, a fundamental human activity for millennia. In Mesopotamia, where copper is not indigenous, archaeologists uncovered copper...