Page 330 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

The Wide View (II) 277

largely a factor of its rarity, and its rarity is often proportionate
to its distance from its place of origin. Goods begin to move from
mart to mart, and on to more distant mart, first by a chain of
middlemen and later by organized long-distance caravans (or
caravels, for the movement at this organized stage may as well
be by sea as by land).
This organized long-distance trade was clearly well estab­
lished by the beginning of the Second Millennium between the
centers of civilized city-based life in the Near and Middle East,
between Crete, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus valley. And
already it had been stretching out, through the medium of the
megalithic missionaries, to the coasts of Europe.
We have seen how, in the first third of the millennium, the
beaker people spread the use of and trade in bronze over Europe
from their bases in Spain.
And in the last five chapters, through the web of wars and
intrigues and conquests and changes of dynasty, we have been
able to glimpse the spread of the activities of organized trading
houses and shipping firms, reaching out farther and farther and
dealing with ever larger and more varied consignments of goods.
This is the period of the ultimate spread of bronze, and
there can be no doubt that bronze was the bait which induced
many of the remoter peoples of the world to devote an increasing
amount of their time to producing and collecting commodities
that could be traded to the bronze-producing lands.
Bronze may well have spread far south into Africa during
these centuries. The recurrent border wars between Egypt and
the Sudan should not obscure from us the fact that between the
wars there was active trade, gold and ostrich feathers and ivory
and slaves being traded north against the metals and manu­
factured goods of Egypt. And often during this period state-
sponsored trading expeditions sailed down the Red Sea to the
unknown land of Punt. But in “black” Africa no independent
bronzeworking center seems to have developed. The bronze that
undoubtedly came south would be treasured, reused, and even­
tually worn out. It has not, at least, yet been found in archaeologi-
cally investigated sites south of the Sudan. But that trade
stretched south of the Sudan is attested by the single bead of