Page 76 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

trading patterns, ancient european 1853

Baltic Amber Reaches the
Aegean

. . . certain sacred offerings wrapped up in
wheat-straw come from the Hyperboreans into trading networks), to the great economic centers of the
Scythia, whence they are taken over by the ancient world.
neighbouring peoples in succession until they
get as far west as the Adriatic; from there they The Metals Trade
are sent south, and the first Greeks to receive The increased working in metal ores marked the end of
them are the Dodoneans. Then, continuing stone-based technology. One stone that became extremely
southward, they reach the Malian Gulf, across popular, where it was available, was raw copper. There
to Euboea, and are passed from town to town were a number of major deposits of copper in European
as far as Carystus. Then they skip Andros, the centers—in particular, the Balkans and the island of
Carystians take them to Tenos and the Tenians Cyprus. There were also smaller deposits elsewhere.
to Delos. When the frozen body of Ötzi, the Ice Man, was discov-
ered in a glacier on the Austrian-Italian border, he was
Source: de Sélincourt, A. (Trans.). (1972). Herodotus.The histories (Book 4. 30).
London: Penguin. found to be carrying a copper axe, which had been quar-
ried locally, and which he had (probably) worked himself.
Nevertheless, copper-producing regions became the
It is unlikely that such goods were taken directly from centers of trading networks. In many cases, these simply
the place of manufacture to the sites where they have followed the same patterns as those established in the
been found. In all likelihood, they were transported indi- Neolithic. Deep copper mines were already operating in
rectly through a series of relays.This kind of “relay trade” the copper-rich region of eastern Serbia in the fifth mil-
is the principal way in which goods were moved long dis- lennium BCE. Copper from the Balkans supplied a rich
tances for most of antiquity, and it remains significant culture across what is now Hungary, Rumania, and
that only luxury goods were capable of being moved in Yugoslavia. In the same way, copper from Cyprus sup-
this way, since only they could sustain the margins being plied the needs of the eastern Mediterranean. It was in
added at each point of exchange. this region that it was discovered that copper could be
alloyed with Anatolian tin to make bronze. This in turn
The Amber Route drove a demand for the much scarcer ore.
A good example of this early relay trade is amber, a com-
modity that was highly prized from the foraging era Tin
onwards, and the principal source of which, in Europe, The emergence of the demand for tin broadened the
was the Baltic region in the vicinity of the modern Russ- Mediterranean trading network.While there were sources
ian territory of Kaliningrad.Very sophisticated networks of tin in the Mediterranean world, the major source was
for the transportation and distribution of Baltic amber tin-rich Cornwall. Herodotus refers to Britain as “the Tin
were established during the Neolithic and continued Islands” (Cassiterides) and Cornish tin found its way to
into the classical period. Amber is found in the early the Mediterranean, either by a short sea trip to the mouth
Bronze Age graves of Mycenae, the middle Bronze Age of the Loire, then up the Loire and down the Rhone to
ship wrecked near Ulu Burun, and the magnificent tomb the coast, or by a long sea trip through Gibraltar to
of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen. southern Spain. Like the amber route, this tin route con-
The amber was transported along the coast of the nected the extremities of the European world through a
Baltic to the River Elbe. From there, it was taken far network of exchanges.
upstream. In southern Germany, it was transferred to Other highly prized metals were also being increas-
transport overland, making the journey through the Alps ingly traded over long distances. Spanish silver and Irish
and down to the Adriatic Sea. From ports on the Adriatic, gold both found their way into the Mediterranean trading
it was transported, mostly through cabotage (that is, local world. By the middle Bronze Age large amounts of metal