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Converting currencies in the Old World

Nature volume 411, page 437 (2001)Cite this article

Simple arithmetic underpinned trading throughout the Near East during the Bronze Age.

Abstract

Raw materials recovered from archaeological excavations in the Indus Valley, the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean reflect the existence of long-distance trading during the Bronze Age, which united these regions into networks of commercial exchange. As each region relied on a different set of weights for trading, a straightforward conversion system must have been in operation. Here we describe a simple and universal conversion system that could have provided an economic key to the trade networks of the Old World between 2500 and 1000 bc.

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Figure 1: Stone weights in the shape of ducks from the archaeological site of Yorghan Tepe, ancient Nuzi, Iraq.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Prehistoria, Universidad Complutense, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, 28040, Spain

    Alfredo Mederos

  2. Department of Anthropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Alfredo Mederos & C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky

Authors
  1. Alfredo Mederos
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  2. C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky.

Supplementary information

Table 1. Weight systems between the Third and First Millennium BC
Full size table
Table 2. Two examples of the continuous conversion of a fixed weight
Full size table

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Mederos, A., Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. Converting currencies in the Old World. Nature 411, 437 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35078143

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