Long before coins, people carried volcanic glass hundreds of kilometres to swap it
Obsidian, a glossy volcanic glass that flakes into razor edges, was scarce around the Mediterranean, so Stone Age people moved it as far as 900 kilometres. It became a status material, nicknamed the rich man's flint. Such networks show that swapping goods ranks among humanity's oldest habits, far older than money.
The word itself hints at movement. Hanseatic merchants brought trade into English from Low German, where it meant a track or course, and it shares a root with the Old English verb for treading. Prehistoric exchange ran on gifts rather than currency. Researchers have traced ostrich eggshell beads being passed along 50,000 years ago and obsidian networks from 15,000 years ago, with obsidian changing hands in New Guinea from 17,000 BCE. Anatolian sources supplied the Levant, Iran and Egypt, while the islands of Melos and Lipari fed some of the widest-reaching trade the region knew.
Distance grew with civilisation. In the third millennium BCE Sumerians in Mesopotamia traded with the Harappan cities of the Indus Valley, the first long-range routes, and Ebla anchored a network into Anatolia. Phoenician sailors went as far as Britain for tin to make bronze, founding trading posts the Greeks called emporia. Along Mediterranean coasts, better-connected spots hold more Iron Age sites, suggesting trade shaped where people settled. Later, Roman naval dominance let cargo cross the sea with little fear of pirates.
Asia built vast sea lanes early. Austronesian peoples ran the Maritime Jade Road, shipping jade mined in Taiwan and worked largely in the Philippines across Southeast Asia. From around 1500 BC seafarers linked the region with southern India and Sri Lanka, spreading outrigger boats, coconuts, bananas and sugarcane, and Indonesians carried cinnamon to East Africa, eventually settling Madagascar.
The underlying logic is specialisation. When regions concentrate on what they make best and swap the surplus, both can gain. Openness has swung widely, rising from 1815 to 1914, collapsing in the Great Depression and climbing again from the 1950s, and many economists think it now stands higher than ever before.
Source: Trade
