Bronze Age weight systems as a measure of market integration in Western Eurasia.

ABSTRACT: Weighing technology was invented around 3000 BCE between Mesopotamia and Egypt and became widely adopted in Western Eurasia within ∼2,000 y. For the first time in history, merchants could rely on an objective frame of reference to quantify economic value. The subsequent emergence of different weight systems goes hand in hand with the formation of a continental market. However, we still do not know how the technological transmission happened and why different weight systems emerged along the way. Here, we show that the diffusion of weighing technology can be explained as the result of merchants' interaction and the emergence of primary weight systems as the outcome of the random propagation of error constrained by market self-regulation. We found that the statistical errors of early units b

SUBMITTER: Ialongo N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8271817 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature