Gli archeologi hanno trovato un sistema comune di pesi e misure lungo la rotta commerciale marittima delle grandi civiltà dell'età del bronzo, tra cui quella degli indù, del Bahrain e della Mesopotamia e dei porti del Mar Rosso egiziano.

Anche senza di loro, i porti da soli sono una prova evidente. Non ci sarebbe motivo di costruire grandi porti, in pietra e con deposito, senza commercio.

Layout di Lothal:

Come il commercio antico ha cambiato il mondo

The first long-distance trade occurred between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley in Pakistan around 3000 BC, historians believe. Long-distance trade in these early times was limited almost exclusively to luxury goods like spices, textiles and precious metals. Cities that were rich in these commodities became financially rich, too, satiating the appetites of other surrounding regions for jewelry, fancy robes and imported delicacies.

BBC - Storia primaria - Valle dell'Indo - Commercio e viaggi

Indus Valley cities lived by trade. Farmers brought food into the cities. City workers made such things as pots, beads and cotton cloth. Traders brought the materials workers needed, and took away finished goods to trade in other cities.

Trade goods included terracotta pots, beads, gold and silver, coloured gem stones such as turquoise and lapis lazuli, metals, flints (for making stone tools), seashells and pearls.

Minerals came from Iran and Afghanistan. Lead and copper came from India. Jade came from China and cedar tree wood was floated down the rivers from Kashmir and the Himalayas.

Civiltà in contatto

Le prime civiltà in contatto: Mesopotamia e l'Indo

Tavoletta in terracotta modellata raffigurante una barca sul fiume Harappan.

i. The emergence of the Harappan civilization in the Indus basin and the Akkadian empire in southern Mesopotamia in the later 3rd millennium BCE led to a radical transformation in which these two states acted like magnets, drawing the resources of the entire region preferentially towards themselves. While both states continued to obtain resources from places that could only be reached overland, a new maritime route through the Gulf became the centre of the network, allowing direct communications between Mesopotamia and the Indus and the bulk transport of commodities. This shift brought the cultures of the Gulf into the heart of the international trade network. In contrast, while towns across the Iranian plateau and in southern Central Asia continued to trade with each other, they were no longer central to the long-distance network, and many declined in prosperity.

ii. The presence of African crops in the Indus region by 2000 BCE reveals contacts of some sort between Africa and South Asia. Indirect and direct routes by which this transmission might have occurred were investigated: it became clear that by far the most probable mechanism was direct seaborne expeditions by the Harappans to the African coast.