The Rational Optimist_ How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley [185]
p. 158 ‘a distinctive ‘Ubaid’ style of pottery, clay sickles and house design’. Stein, G.J. and Ozbal, R. 2006. A tale of two Oikumenai: variation in the expansionary dynamics of ‘Ubaid’ and Uruk Mesopotamia. Pp. 356–70 in Stone, E. C. (ed.) Settlement and Society: Ecology, Urbanism, Trade and Technology in Mesopotamia and Beyond (Robert McC. Adams Festschrift). Los Angeles, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
p. 159 ‘in the words of the archaeologist Gil Stein’. Stein, G.J. and Ozbal, R. 2006. A tale of two Oikumenai: variation in the expansionary dynamics of ‘Ubaid’ and Uruk Mesopotamia. Pp. 356–70 in: Stone, E. C. (ed.) Settlement and Society: Ecology, Urbanism, Trade and Technology in Mesopotamia and Beyond (Robert McC. Adams Festschrift). Los Angeles, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
p. 160 ‘The message those tablets tell is that the market came long before the other appurtenances of civilisation.’ Basu, S., Dickhaut, J.W., Hecht, G., Towry, K.L. and Waymire, G.B. 2007. Recordkeeping alters economic history by promoting reciprocity. PNAS 106:1009–14.
p. 161 ‘Merchants and craftsmen make prosperity; chiefs, priests and thieves fritter it away.’ Incidentally, I find it strange to recall that my education was utterly dominated by two stories: the Bible’s and Rome’s. Both were disappointing examples of history. One told the story of an obscure, violent and somewhat bigoted tribe and one of its later cults, who sat around gazing at their theological navels for a few thousand years while their fascinating neighbours – the Phoenicians, Philistines, Canaanites, Lydians and Greeks – invented respectively maritime trade, iron, the alphabet, coins and geometry. The other told the story of a barbarically violent people who founded one of the empires that institutionalised the plundering of its commercially minded neighbours, then went on to invent practically nothing in half a millennium and achieve an actual diminution in living standards for its citizens, very nearly extinguishing literacy as it died. I exaggerate, but there are more interesting figures in history than Jesus Christ or Julius Caesar.
p. 161 ‘Unlike hunter-gatherers or herders, farmers faced with taxes have to stay put and pay’. Carneiro, R.L. 1970. A theory of the origin of the state. Science 169: 733–8.
p. 161 ‘in the words of two modern historians’. Moore, K. and Lewis, D. 2000. Foundations of Corporate Empire. Financial Times/Prentice Hall.
p. 162 ‘As Sir Mortimer Wheeler wrote in his autobiography’. Quoted by Sally Greene in 1981, introduction to illustrated edition of Man Makes Himself. Childe, V. Gordon. 1956. Pitman Publishing.
p. 162 ‘the archaeologist Shereen Ratnagar concluded’. Ratnagar, S. 2004. Trading Encounters: From the Euphrates to the Indus in the Bronze Age. Oxford University Press India.
p. 162 ‘great wealth of the Indus cities was generated by trade’. Possehl, G.L. 2002. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Rowman AltaMira.
p. 162 ‘the so-called Norte Chico civilisation’. Haas, J. and Creamer, W. 2006. Crucible of Andean civilization: The Peruvian coast from 3000 to 1800 BC. Current Anthropology 47:745–75.
pp. 163–4 ‘Intensification of trade came first’. The Chinese case remains unexplored here for the simple reason that the key moment in China, the Longshan culture, remains too poorly known, especially in terms of how much trade occurred.
p. 165 ‘silver-based prices, which fluctuated freely’. Aubet, M.E. 2001. The Phoenicians and the West. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press.
p. 165 ‘the Uruk word for high priest is the same as the word for accountant’. Childe, V.G. 1956/1981. Man Makes Himself. Moonraker Press.
p. 165 ‘merchants from Ashur operated in “karum” enclaves’. Moore, K. and Lewis, D. 2000. Foundations of Corporate Empire. Pearson.
p. 165 ‘The profit margin was 100 per cent on tin and 200 per cent on textiles’. Chanda, N. 2007. Bound Together: