Page 94 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

trading patterns, mediterranean 1871

changing routes. Always a cheaper and more efficient point to the existence of sea-lanes connecting mainland
option to land transport, cabotage was probably respon- Greece and Crete with Anatolia. Seaborne exchanges
sible for the bulk of total cargo transfers before the between Egypt and Mesopotamia, via port cities on the
advent of mechanized shipping. Such “ground-level” Levantine coast, date back to the fourth millennium BCE.
movement also saw goods relayed from port to port, and Metals and luxury items appeared to be the most valu-
hence across long distances, thus contributing effectively able trading commodities: Egypt and Mesopotamia
to the broader trading system.The vigor and unity of the exchanged gold and silver respectively. By the Bronze
Mediterranean world probably owed more to the sum Age (c. 2500 BCE), a sizable seaborne network had
effect of such unquantifiable and unpredictable local emerged. Crete and Cyprus were incorporated into a
trade patterns than to large-scale traffic. trading network with Egypt and the Levant. Minoan
Regional-level trade can be traced back to the Crete and Mycenaean Greece had, by the second mil-
Neolithic Era (perhaps as early as 7000 BCE, from when lennium BCE, created seaborne trading empires held
we can date the first signs of seafaring). Archaeologists together by trading colonies in distant parts of the
have also uncovered remnants of trading harbors that Mediterranean. Mycenaean settlements have been uncov-
ered in Sicily, Sardinia, and mainland Italy.
Bronze Age trading networks collapsed
somewhat mysteriously, as did most eastern
Mediterranean states and cities, around 1200
BCE. The revival was led by the Phoenicians,
who, from about 1000 BCE, built a trading
empire that stretched across the length of the
Mediterranean.The Phoenicians effectively cre-
ated the first Mediterranean trading system.
Their main interest was securing raw metals
from as far away as Rio Tinto in Spain, which
they exchanged for craft goods and luxury
items manufactured in the Levant. The Phoeni-
cians dominated the sea through a network of
settlements and emporia, and trade would serve
as the conduit for the dissemination of Phoeni-
cian culture, particularly across North Africa
and southern Spain. From about the eighth
century BCE, belated competition came from the
Greeks, who, following the Phoenician model,
established city-states and emporia mainly
across the northern Mediterranean coastline,

This photo shows the partially
excavated ruins of the old market
(agora) in Athens, Greece, in 2003
with the modern market above.