Long distance trade

We often think that ancient people lived in separation with little contacts to humans living in other parts of the world. This view is, however, incorrect because trade has been more or less global for thousands of years.

I wrote in May about ivory trade between Greenland and what is today Ukraine in medieval times. And last week I noticed a new scientific investigation showing that a Late Bronze Age shipwreck - from 3 300 years ago - found off the Turkish coast carried tin ingots, of which one third was produced of ores from Central Asia, thousands of kilometers from shipwrecks location. 

The finding added evidence on a vast, disparate and culturally diverse network of trade that relied as much on the participation of small regional communities as on large, centralized states during the Late Bronze Age. And which formed a basis for the economic development that ultimately - during the following millenia - led to the current world based on global trade and cultural exchange forming the basis of the current way of living throughout the world.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A new route for the Ukrainian crops
Ivory trade from Greenland to Ukraine
Vikings and the technological cutting edge