Episode 1: Unraveling the Origins: History of Money, Trade and the Rise of Sumerian Culture

Hello, history buffs! Get set to time-travel with us as we unravel the intriguing saga of money, banking, and trade from the dawn of civilization to the digital era. How did the end of an ice age unfold into agricultural revolution and the rise of Sumerian cities like Urik and Ur? How did these bustling metropolises sow the seeds of the Fertile Crescent and lay the foundations for modern civilization? Buckle up, as we trace these fascinating transitions that shaped our world.

Let's step into the vibrant Sumerian society of 4,000 to 2,900 BCE, where pottery was more than just an artistic expression and basin irrigation transformed agricultural productivity. How did a male-stratified culture navigate the complexities of marriage and social norms? Gain insights into the innovative approaches that catapulted the expansion of trade, the rise in taxes, and the evolution of craftsmanship. As we delve into the roles of the temple and palace in controlling resources and goods, you'll unearth the nuances of power dynamics in ancient societies.

The story doesn't end there. From the origins of cuneiform writing systems to the planning and organization of the temple and palace, we shed light on the evolution of complex economic calculations. How did climate change and the emergence of various professions shape the early dynastic period? Let's journey through the debt crisis of 2400 BCE, the advent of silver as currency, and the reign of Sargon the Great, the first emperor of Mesopotamia. Tune in and let's embark on this fascinating expedition through the annals of history. 

Note: This captivating exploration of our past is a must-listen for history enthusiasts, academicians, students, and anyone intrigued by the roots of our present-day economic and social structures.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome Podcast Listener. I am Mike D, and this is the History of Money, banking and Trade Podcast. My goal is to provide you with information pertaining to the history and evolution of trade, along with money, banking and credit, from ancient civilizations to the present. Through these historical discussions, I hope you are entertained and find that learning from past developments in money and banking makes it a lot easier to understand our current capital market structure and international trade, but, more importantly, why we got to where we are today, economically and politically. In the end, I really hope we both can learn a lot as we move through time, from ancient civilizations all the way through the development of financial innovations, along with the causes and solutions to the most recent market crashes. So let's go and take this journey together. Before I begin episode one, I wanted to give you a little background on my thought process for creating this. I really enjoy listening to podcasts and a few years ago I was searching for some information regarding the history of finance. At the time, I remember coming across some good podcasts that were very informative, but in the end I thought I could probably add a little bit to the subject matter. So I figured why not just start my own podcast because, in all honesty, I was reading a lot of materials and it was kind of a way of me to kind of put everything together that I'd read in the past. So it's more or less well, I'm going to put this stuff together so I might as least talk about it and maybe other people would enjoy it.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Now, my initial thought process was I was just going to talk about the American capital markets and the banking history in this country. But the more I read, the more I realized it's really hard to start with the Americas, because so much had taken place internationally prior to the Dutch settling the East Coast United States. So I kept on pushing it back further and further and further. Initially I was thinking I would start with, like the Medici family, for example, but I felt like I can go back even further. And as I was taking it back further and further and further, you get to the point where, like well, I can just take it right back to the beginning of written history, because the more you read about the people of Sumer and ancient Mesopotamia, the more you realize that these people had a lot to offer and they're the ones that really were the baseline for our modern society that we have today. Then you factor in other ancient societies in Egypt and Nubia and China and India, and you really start to think, okay, well, I can talk about all those, because they all were the beginnings of it all, and without those individual societies I'm not sure if we'd be where we are today. It's quite possible that we get to where we are today, but maybe it takes longer. But, more importantly, I just feel that our educational system really doesn't really focus much on the history of banking and trade and certain places like Mesopotamia and ancient China, for example. So why not talk about it?

Speaker 1: 3:18

Maybe this is something people don't know. In fact, it's something I didn't know. Now, before I begin the first episode, I really want to give a huge shout out to Dan Carlin, because when I found his work years ago I can't remember when it was I just remember being just absolutely amazed at how great it is and just being really excited every time he drops a new episode. Now I know I'm not going to be a Dan Carlin I don't think anybody else could be Dan Carlin but if I can produce something that a fan of Dan Carlin would enjoy or somebody that just wants to get some basic information on the history of trade and money and banking. Well then, that would be great and I'd really feel like I'm doing something positive in which others can really enjoy.

Speaker 1: 4:03

So up next, the very first episode of the history of money and banking and trade, the very beginnings of written history. We're talking about Sumer. So you may not realize this, but we are technically still in a much larger ice age. However, the last glacial period ended around 15,000 years ago. We typically refer to this as the end of the last ice age, as this is when glaciers around the world, especially those in the Northern Hemisphere, began to recede and temperatures and then more temperate zones began to warm. These warmer climates led to drastic changes in various ecosystems around the world. Now, shortly after the last ice age that many humans began to turn to domestication of agriculture as its main food source. Agriculture itself has no single simple origin. A wide variety of plants and animals have been independently domesticated at different times in numerous places, but it appears cultivating crops was developed at the closing of the last glacial period on a much larger scale.

Speaker 1: 5:08

In the early agrarian days, tribal people came together to form small settlements which grew into small towns, which eventually grew into small cities In ancient Mesopotamia, the Greek word for the land between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The first quote-unquote major cities were Urik and Ur, which were formed in Sumer around 3500 BCE. To give you an idea where Sumer is, it is in the southern Mesopotamian plains. Now, keep in mind, small towns have been settled in the Near East region prior to the Sumerian cities and these were much older settlements, possibly by thousands of years. Aleppo and Syria might be 10,000 years old, but these older settlements were just small towns, not cities like those found in Sumer. Urik may have had 40,000 people by 3100 BCE and may have reached 65,000 people by around 2000 BCE. For a frame of reference, in upstate New York is Connectedee, young Sound, ohio, and Kissimmee, florida, are all approximately 65,000 people.

Speaker 1: 6:10

And, like I said, sumer it's in the southern part of modern-day Iraq. To give you an idea specifically where that is, as a kid in school I remember the teachers telling us that this region of the world was referred to as the Cradle of Civilization or the Fertile Crescent. Ancient Mesopotamia was essentially divided into three distinct regions In the south is Sumer, which we're just referring to. This would be modern southern Iraq. To the middle is Akkad, and then Babylon, which would be, I believe, around 50 miles or so south of modern Baghdad and to the north, will end up being the settlements of Ashur and Nineveh, which will eventually turn into the Assyrian Empire.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Now to give you an understanding of the global populations, estimates range from, say, 7 to 10 million people were living globally around 4000 BCE. Around 3000 BCE, the estimates put the global population up to around 14 million people and about 27 million people around 2000 BCE. Just looking at the chart of estimates you can see how the populations kind of increased at a steady rate and ultimately this comes back to the fact that these early ancient societies were able to increase food production quite dramatically and by increasing food production, populations followed that. So you increase food, you're going to naturally increase the population. As such, the cities of Uruk and Ur, located in Sumer, along with the other Sumerian cities, began to rise quite rapidly from small settlements into small cities. Each of the cities would have had the temple as its main focal point. The temple itself was what was used to ultimately store the goods that were produced, and then from the temple they would redistribute the goods back to the people. And you might ask yourself well, what ultimately drove the increase in food production.

Speaker 1: 8:10

Well, in Sumer, its land consisted of rich alluvial soil which was deposited by rivers over thousands of years. Vial soil itself consists of loose clay, silt, sand and even gravel, which would have been deposited by the running water in a stream bed or on a floodplain. Silt itself is probably the most important aspect to this, because what silt does is it promotes water retention and air circulation in the soil. Sumer itself is not resource rich and lacked the most vital resources of the day. It lacked copper, tin and other stone and even timber.

Speaker 1: 8:50

In order to obtain these much needed resources, sumer needed a trade with peoples in Anatolia, which is modern day Turkey, and the Levant, which is modern day Israel, jordan, lebanon, palestine, Syria, basically the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. In addition, they traded with people in the Indus Valley and eastern Arabia, around modern day Bahrain and Qatar and Oman places like that. And the reason they were able to trade with all these different people was they were able to produce valuable foodstuffs in excess, and also they were able to produce other goods that people in the other regions highly coveted. And, of course, since Sumer and Mesopotamia in general were resource poor, they had no choice but to trade with these people in foreign lands, because without trade, it would have been virtually impossible for them as a civilization to basically live and thrive. Because this is a period known as the Bronze Age, and in order to be a part of the Bronze Age itself, you needed certain materials to make your tools and your weapons of war and your defense. And with regards to war and defense, as early as the mid-fourth millennium BCE, the Sumerians actually created garrison outposts up the Euphrates River to the north, which ultimately helped them secure trade that they can ultimately ship back to the south, into Sumer. However, these outposts were abandoned relatively quickly because they had not figured out a way to maintain a standing army, as they quickly figured out that this is a very expensive process and, as a result, sumer just could not afford to keep people garrisoned outside the Sumerian region of Mesopotamia.

Speaker 1: 10:36

And you know most of what we know about Sumer comes from Assyriologists, who are people that study ancient Assyria, along with other regions of Mesopotamia. What they have done is basically divide Sumer into several different time periods. The first time period I want to discuss is the Ubeid period, which was a period before the people of Sumer had developed a written language. So we're talking about a time period from anywhere 5500 to 4000 BCE to give you an idea, and most historians have suggested that this is when Sumer first started to get permanently settled. They're really not 100% sure who the people were that settled the area. Most believe the people in the region were settled by West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language, which is a non-Semitic, non-indo-european language, isolate. Really, in all honesty, no one really knows for sure where their language origins derive from, as it just is, unlike another language in the region. Also, not a lot is known about Sumer during his time period.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Archaeologists typically distinguish this time period by the pottery that they created in Sumer. Quite frankly, this is how archaeologists distinguish a lot of ancient settlements by their tools and their pottery that they find in dig sites. And also, it appears that Sumer pottery was a premium product, because in this time period the pottery that was found in Sumer was also found in other parts of the Near East outside of Sumer, and it appears that they were trading their pottery with other civilization as they most likely had a high demand for these. So if you're not making good product, most likely you're not going to find it in other regions. And because the fact that the Sumer pottery was found in other areas, it is believed that there was a high demand for this particular product.

Speaker 1: 12:34

And also, too, what they believe is that it's during this time period that we start to see the development of the Sumerian society that people kind of really got to understand, to give an idea of their culture. It was more of a male stratified culture. Marriages were typically arranged by the parents. They typically weren't legal until the groom delivered a bridal gift to their father, and by all accounts, it appears that premarital sex was frowned upon or at least discouraged. But they did allow for prostitution, which is often referred to as the world's oldest profession. It shouldn't be a surprise that this is a male dominated society and they allow for prostitution. And it's also during this time period that archaeologists believe that the Sumerians planted their crops by using the basin irrigation technique, which is basically planting crops in a flooded field by a single family. So what comes to my mind when I think about this technique is more or less the rice farmer that you would see potentially in parts of Asia where you have a flooded field and they're planting rice to cultivate.

Speaker 1: 13:45

And the next classified time period is the Uruk period, uruk being the city Now. This time period runs from 4,000 to 2,900 BCE. This is when farming productivity really starts to take off. This was most likely due to the fact that the people of Sumer switched irrigation techniques to a more complex form of irrigation called the furrow irrigation system, and this technique was basically a large, complex and unified structure requiring a command in place by the temple or the palace in order to coordinate the labor on a much larger scale. And the way it works is it's conducted by creating small channels along the length of a field to the direction of the slope. Water is applied at the top end of each furrow and it flows down the field under the influence of gravity. It is also during this time period that we see the development of certain tools as well. You combine the new irrigation method and tool, engineering and development in what you get as an explosion in farm productivity.

Speaker 1: 14:51

In fact, this productivity increase was as much as 500%, and this is, in reality, what changed everything for their society. The increased food production meant people can move away from farming and specialize into another craft or specialize their labor to produce non-nigrarian products. The people of Sumer were able to export their excess crops and other goods, while the temple and the palaces reinvested back into the city states through their defensive structures and irrigation expansion. So their increase in farming productivity, along with the development of the craftsmen, enabled the Sumerian society to increase its trade. Now, in the earlier days, most of the trade was actually within the city itself. As their productivity increased, we start seeing more trade happen with other cities even farther out from the city. They were also able to transport goods easily up and down the rivers of Mesopotamia, which further enhanced trade itself. In fact, artifacts from Sumer can be found as far away as Anatolia, to the north and out east into the Indus Valley, which I had mentioned previously.

Speaker 1: 15:58

And as this economy was growing and growing and growing, what was happening is the temple and the palaces were able to tax the population, and you know I understand that when you mention the word taxes people tend to wince a little bit. Right, nobody likes paying taxes. But in the grand scheme of things, especially during this time period, the taxes were very important because this was a tool to basically reinvest back in to the society at large and, as such, the taxes were basically just a reinvestment right. So you make excess monies in your business and you have a choice you could take it and spend it or you can reinvest it back into the business. Some people would rather you spend it, some people would rather see you reinvest it, and in this time period I view it more as a reinvestment. And in fact the reinvestment was vital to the survival of the city itself, because war was common back in these days, cities were close by. If you did not reinvest it into your defenses, or at least reinvest it back into your productivity, well, your city was most likely going to be taken over by another city.

Speaker 1: 17:08

In fact, the way it worked was the temples and the palaces themselves pretty much dominated and controlled the majority of all the distribution and production of the goods that were produced from the lands and the herds and the workspaces. The workspaces themselves operated as a early factory is the best way to look at it. So ultimately, the temples and the palaces own the majority of the lands and the assets of the particular city. Now, there was private land ownership, but it was typically not useful farmland, so it appears that it was marginal at best when compared to the two principal sectors of the economy the institutional, which was the temple, in the palace, and then there was also the village base, which was basically communal lands that the people of the city would farm and cultivate and use that for themselves. Ultimately, the temple and the palace would have controlled that land as well, because they're the ones that would have obviously dictated the taxes, along with the redistribution of the excess goods, and, in addition, anything that you produce would have needed to be stored somewhere. So if you produce barley, for example, that has to be stored somewhere and ultimately that storage would have actually taken place at the temple. So the fact of the matter is is, even if you had produced your own goods, you still would have relied upon the temple or even the palace to protect those goods.

Speaker 1: 18:52

So basically what I'm getting at is during this time period there wasn't really privatized land ownership in these early days of Sumer, and even when you go outside the area of Sumer to say, like Northern Babylonia, you really don't see an existence of privatized land ownership either. So there wasn't a land market with prices set by supply and demand. So ultimately the sale and purchase of land was rarely, if at all, a modern market phenomenon. So in other words, people in this era did not do any kind of calculation of income streams to come to a fair market price. So land sales essentially did not exist on the market. That would have been set by supply and demand. Instead, if there was a land sale, they were often made under duress, so for example, a military attack or droughts.

Speaker 1: 19:51

So basically a land sale itself would have been the result of something bad happening, or at least something that would have been totally out of your control. That would have adversely affected the actual desire of the land itself. So I mean, who wants to buy land from somebody when that land was just taken over by a foreign king? Who wants to buy land from somebody when there's a severe drought and you can't produce anything from it? And, like I said before, the fact of the matter is these land sales that would have occurred would have typically been not very good farmland to begin with, or at least it wouldn't have been good land to raise a herd of sheep or anything that would have been a grazing animal.

Speaker 1: 20:33

And also during this time period like I said, this was the URK period, which had been like 4,000 to 2,900 BCE we start to see the importation of slaves from the surrounding hill country and this concept of slavery will be a central theme to the rest of the economies in all the different regions going forward. And, in addition, it is also during this time period that we start to see more urban planning take hold. You know, as the populations and the economy were growing larger and larger and more complex, the idea of urban planning became more and more of an importance, as a central authority needed to figure out how to best distribute the people and make the city just more efficient in its basic layout. But in the grand scheme of things, it was the economy growing that ultimately pushed each society into a general direction that it needed to go into in order to sustain the actual growing economy and the growing number of people. One way to do this was to invent a form of tracking all the different moving parts, whether it be the population growth or the economy. In order to do this, the Samarians needed to invent writing.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Writing itself was a new concept by time Uruk and Uruk grew into a city. Writing came to be around the same time pottery was invented. Originally, writing was nothing more than the small clay tokens that predated even the ancient city of Uruk. These clay tokens appeared in prehistoric sites throughout the Near East. This was a time as early as 7000 BCE. These were used by people in different cultures before the invention of writing. These clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or other commodities, such as barley or even jars of honey. The writing on the tokens were nothing more than just a picture of the specific item itself. The person viewing the token could have easily figured out that the token meant the person had a specific number of cows, because a cow head would have been drawn on the token. But what the Samarians did is they took this writing system a big step further by replacing the tokens with clay tablets in which the scribe used a stick called a stylus to carve into the wet clay tablet which was then baked and hardened. The stylus itself had two distinct sides One was a sharp end and the other was a round end, so ultimately the stylus, because it had two different edges. This allowed the scribe to easily put in lines and dots which were ultimately used to create the cuneiform writing. And the cuneiform writing really modernized writing considerably as it went basically from pictograms to complex syllables using wedge shaped characters.

Speaker 1: 23:36

You know, if you were to ask the teenage Mike D why was writing invented, I'm pretty sure I would have said well, it's obvious. Because these kings and queens of the day wanted to memorialize their ideas and let everybody know how great they were. They wanted people of centuries or thousands of years later to know that they were the great thinkers and that they made these great military attacks and expanded their empire. Basically, they wanted to brag about themselves. That's how I thought writing would have started, but in reality it was completely different. Instead, writing was developed as a more or less a need to track more complex business transactions. They needed to be able to write these down.

Speaker 1: 24:21

It appears that cuneiform writing was most likely the unintended outcome of ancient accounting systems and contracts, and this was all due to the fact that the ancient Sumerian economy had grown so much. So if you take a step back, you can see that the increased productivity meant more transactions. So as the Sumerian cities grew and evolved, a new class of priests and craftsmen grew as well, and as a result, the urban economies grew, and this growth spurred additional trade from the specialized craftsmen. They were able to sell their products for the excess weed or barley or any other commodity that was being produced. So as this trade grew within the city and then with other cities. Writing was needed for the increased economic planning and the taxation, and ultimately it was the temples in the palace that were responsible for the central planning. And this planning itself was greatly enhanced by the development of the cuneiform writing systems, and the Sumerian economies greatly depended upon the ability of the palace and the temple to centrally plan and redistribute goods that they produced to the people.

Speaker 1: 25:34

As the cities grew, the central planning became more complex, and this complexity relied upon the central planners, ie the temple and the palace, to be able to plan out for longer periods of time. For example, if a city had 20,000 people, the central planners of the temple needed to determine how many sheep or goats are needed to produce the amount of meat for the people. In addition, the central planners also needed to account for population growth and the growth of the livestock to keep up with the population growth increases. What the central planners needed to do is determine the growth rate of the flock and the herds, along with how many will be slaughtered, and then reconcile that versus the growth rate of the population, and from there they can determine how much meat will be available to the population over a given period of time Now. I think this is something that most people wouldn't kind of really think of when you think of central planning back in those days. But this was very, very vital to essentially get this math correct, because if they did it wrong, they could end up with massive shortages and shortages could be the difference between life and death. And if they also got it wrong, on the opposite end, they could be allocating too many resources to increase the population of the flock. So it's interesting that the serialogists have actually found tablets where they actually seen these kind of calculations that were being performed. In addition, when these serialogists were reviewing these tablets, they noted that there was a growing raw labor force of weavers and pottery makers. There was also boat manufacturing, herders and laborers casting of metals and fashioning wood. So they can see how the population grew from simple farming to a more complex economy that would incorporate non-farming craftsmen.

Speaker 1: 27:31

And in addition, it's also worth noting that ascribe itself became a very prestigious job in Mesopotamia. Scribes typically came from the wealthy class of Mesopotamia. So to become ascribe, a boy had to go to school for many years to learn how to write using cannea form. I've read that it took up to 12 years of formal schooling in order to become ascribe. So it would kind of make sense when you think about it in order to become ascribe, someone has to pay for that education. The only way you're going to pay for that education is if you come from a wealthy family. In addition, you know, when I read 12 years of formal schooling, I wonder if that 12 years kind of set the benchmark going forward for schooling in the United States for a high school education. It might be just an interesting coincidence that the ascribe would be in school for 12 years and an American kid would go through 12 years to complete their high school education.

Speaker 1: 28:29

Another thing, too, is the Sumerian people became very literate people. They were able to constantly increase their productivity. In large part, their productivity increases were the direct result of great advancements and inventions that had their roots in the Sumerian culture. So, for example, the invention of the wheel, the irrigation system that we talked about previously, the plow and various other tools, including saws. And for the Sumerians, one of their more important or favorite inventions was the fact that they invented beer. Beer ended up being a very vital economic engine in those days. So often people would have their little brew houses and their little bars that they had and people would trade certain commodities. For the beer Also too, don't forget, beer is important because it was brewed in a way that would have actually boiled out some of the harmful microorganisms, so in a way, obviously it could be safer than drinking the water. But for the purposes of the evolution of money, banking and finance to occur, the most important inventions were arithmetic, cuneiform script and trade. At the end of the Uruk period, we see climate change start to occur as well. So what happens is this brings an end to the wetter and warmer climates, and this obviously won't be the first time, or even the last time, that a society was changed due to climate change outside of its own control. This particular climate change would be even worse for people in the Sahara Desert region of Africa.

Speaker 1: 30:05

Now the next time period I want to discuss is the early dynastic period, which begins sometime around 2900 BCE, and it is when Sumer starts to be ruled over certain dynasties where a kingless is maintained. The distance between cities is quite small, as I kind of mentioned previously, so conflicts could easily start over just control over resources such as water and farmlands. A strong leader could easily rise up and take control of several city states relatively easy, just on the sheer fact that getting from one city to the next wouldn't take much time at all. In fact, because they're so close. These conflicts were constantly popping up and sometime around 2400 BCE, a major revolt happened in Lagash and even a few other city states, in which the commoners overtook the hereditary elites, who were often from the priestly class. This occurred because the commoners ended up being in so far in debt that they felt they had no choice but to rise up and start, essentially, a revolution. You know, when I say that these hereditary elites came from the priestly class, you have to understand that it was the priestly class that were obviously in the temples, and the temples were early banking basically started. So it's not a real stretch to think that the early priests were almost somewhat early proto-bankers. As you know, throughout history the banking class were typically the ones who were often the wealthiest people in the town or close to the wealthiest people.

Speaker 1: 31:40

What happened was it appears from the text that the commoners were so far in debt that they had to sell their kids off to slavery just to pay off the debt that they incurred. This is something that we will see over and over again in history. A great example is the Goths. The Goths were on the border of the Roman Empire, and what happened is, once they were allowed into the Roman Empire, they would often have to sell their kids off to the Romans. Not because of debt in this particular case, but because they were literally starving to death, and selling their kids off to the Romans would be a last resort in order to actually get enough food to survive the week. What happened is the revolts. It appears that they kind of really scared the Mesopotamian leadership. As a result, the royal edicts were passed during this time period, and what that meant is they would cancel all debts, they would free debt-ridden servants and restore land to the cultivators who had lost it underneath the economic duress that was caused by the debt itself.

Speaker 1: 32:40

And it is also during this time period of the revolts and l'gache that we start to see silver resemble in all-purpose money, silver as a medium exchange. It developed slowly over the centuries, over much of the third millennium economic exchange, and sumer was essentially facilitated by a form of money through a redistributive system, through the temples in the palace, like I mentioned previously. In addition, there was also small-scale barter at local levels. A substantial part of the rural rents, taxes and other agriculture exchanges were usually paid in kind with a special purpose currency, and that meaning it was paid through barley or wheat or whatever commodity that you were producing at the time. In addition, it could also be paid through labor services. So basically, the way it works is, instead of getting paid dollars or euros back then which you were doing as you were being paid with some kind of commodity like barley, or you would offer your services as a laborer in exchange for certain fixed rations of grain or oil or even wool.

Speaker 1: 33:52

It's during this time period, around 24, 2500 BCE, that we start to see silver become more and more accepted. It was made in payments through weight. If you were going to accept silver, you would have to have a reliable weighing system where you can weigh out the silver itself and you would compare that to whatever you're going to trade with. Also, silver was paid to cover certain debts, so if you were in debt you could discharge your debt by paying with silver. But keep in mind silver will not be coined for 2000 more years. We won't see this until we get into the 450 BCE time period in Lydia. So we're well off of coinage, but it's still important to note that silver was starting to be viewed as a medium exchange, so you wouldn't have to rely on carrying a ton of barley or whatever that you're going to trade for copper or tin.

Speaker 1: 34:50

And within 100 years of the uprising in Lagash, sargon the Great, or Sargon of Akkad, stepped on to the scene as the first true emperor in ancient Mesopotamia, as he conquered all the known city states from the Persian Gulf all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. And he did this for 56 years, until 2279 BCE Now Sargon. He came from the Akkadian region, which was a region just north of Sumer, and he did not speak a Sumerian dialect. He spoke a different dialect, the Akkadian dialect. Now, this was a different language. Now, this came from a Sumeric language tree and, like I said prior, the people of Sumer came from a language isolate. Both are extinct languages now, but in the grand scheme of things, there was essentially two languages that were going on at the same time in the Sumerian region. In fact, it sounds like the Sumerian people were a mix of Sumer and Akkadian and they kind of lived side by side and they kind of really adopted a similar culture as they lived and worked with each other, but in the long run, the Akkadian language and writing would supplant the Sumerian language and the Akkadian language would thrive and live on where the Sumerian language would basically wither away and die.

Speaker 1: 36:13

Sargon is often referred to as the first true king in history or at least written history, that is and the reason why they refer to him in that terms is because he was the first ruler to ever conquer foreign lands that had different languages and different customs and people that worship different gods. So he was able to unite all sorts of different people with different cultures and backgrounds, basically under one flag. In addition, he conquered Elam, which was to the east in modern day Iran. The thing about conquest is it's an interesting thing, right, it is thoroughly destructive for the conquer. You can potentially lose your life, obviously, but if you survive the conquest, you might lose your career, your farmland or even your language or your culture or your gods that you worship. So many bad things can happen and a lot of times it almost feels like nothing good can come out of it if you are conquered.

Speaker 1: 37:15

And for Sargon to conquer foreign lands, he had to figure out how he was going to feed and pay his large standing army of 5,500 men. So, yes, think about our armies now and think about an army back then 5,500 people, that was an extraordinary large amount of people. Since there really wasn't a way to pay for his troops, his soldiers basically had to wait until harvest to raid and plunder and loot the conquered for food and other valuables that they could eventually be consumed or traded when they went back to their homes. You think about it. You're a peaceful farmer, you're just trying to create a means to provide for you and your family, and then, all of a sudden, sargon and his Akkadian forces just appear out of nowhere and take all your belongings and potentially kill your children or your spouse. So when you look back at it, nothing really good has come right.

Speaker 1: 38:09

But in the grand scheme of things, what happens is when you conquest and you take over other lands, you start to fuse cultures and these fuse cultures often create essentially new societies and a new culture that is derived out of all this conquest, and in the long run, things can be actually improved. But that means nothing if, in order to improve, you are essentially killed, or your family is killed or you're wiped out. So in the short run, conquest is just horrendous. But when you start taking the 30,000 foot view of it, it almost appears that conquest kind of really pushed societies forward and made things better in the long run. But, like I said, that's an easy and arrogant thing to say from someone who is safe and not under direct threat of being conquered or had family slaughtered. So Sargon's conquest started to fuse cultures together.

Speaker 1: 39:06

But one thing it did and it may not appear to be that important was Sargon standardized weights and measures and by doing so he enabled trade to be more efficient, as it moved from primarily trading with cities nearby to trading more efficiently with cities far and away. So now when you trade from a city near the Persian Gulf to a city near the Mediterranean, you are able to make the trade more efficient knowing that you are going to be working on the same standardized weights and measures. So this increased trade efficiency meant an overall increase in economic output and also increased specialization. Another thing Sargon did was he broke the power of the priesthood and the noble families. The priesthood were replaced by a Canadian governor's, handpicked by Sargon, and, like I said, there is kind of a link between the bankers and the priesthood. And also, too, what Sargon did is he had the new priesthood redistribute a lot of the wealth back to the people. So this was kind of viewed, I guess, in my view, as a great publicity stunt. He was able to gain the loyalty of the commoners by doing this. Whether he wanted to do it to gain more support or if he generally wanted to do, I don't know and I don't think anybody would ever know, but in the grand scheme of things this was an amazing political move on his part. Also, too, with Sargon appointing priests and priestesses to oversee the temples, this basically tied him, sargon, to the divine right. So if you have the ability to appoint people in the temples, then that ability must come directly from the deity that is overseeing the city or the deity that's overseeing a certain aspect of life. So Sargon ultimately was able to tie himself to the divine.

Speaker 1: 41:07

And, like I said previously, the society of Sumer and Akkad were very much centrally planned by the palace and the temple and, as a reminder, mesopotamia in general lack a lot of basic raw materials. The idea of military conquest was really prompted by military rulers such as Sargon to basically boast that they could extend long distance commerce, which could ultimately bring back the valuable goods that are needed within the society, because the only thing that people in Akkad and Sumer were really producing were commodities such as wheat and barley and the craftsmen who are producing wool and other kind of potteries and whatnot. So they did not have basically any raw materials that they would have needed to allow the society itself to grow and thrive. And one of the tools that was utilized by the Sumerians and Akkadians was the invention of the first maps. That would have been invented around 2300 BCE. The maps themselves would have covered a small region of, say, northern Sumer and Babylonia during the Akkadian Empire, and these maps would have detailed certain trade routes and they would have also been used as reference points during military campaigns or hunting and expiration. These maps would have been made in a circular format and they would have depicted mountains, rivers, canals and even swamps and, of course, the cities and or the trade routes that the map reader would have wanted to utilize. But ultimately it was the trade routes that would have been the most important aspect of the map themselves, and this trade would have occurred as far away as in Bahrain, in the south and up north into Turkey, and even the Eurasian steppe would have been involved with trade and, of course, egypt, because Egypt was a powerhouse during this time period. And from the east, in the deserts of modern day Iran and Pakistan, we would have seen trade come in and then wood would have actually flowed in from the Levant and, most importantly, tin was flowing in to the region.

Speaker 1: 43:27

I mentioned tin and copper in passing, but I have to really let you know how important tin was. Tin was extremely valuable as it was extremely rare. Tin itself was the key ingredient in bronze, which was used in tools and other weapons, and bronze itself was a mixture of 88% copper and 12% tin. Around that maybe it might be a little less, maybe it might be a little bit more, but those are the numbers that I read. And since tin was an essential metal and it was rare, it was extremely valuable and very expensive. There was some tin found in Elam, which is modern day Iran. The biggest deposit would have been located in modern day Afghanistan. Now we know today that in the British Isles there is large deposits of tin, but obviously back in the Sumerian and Akkadian days this would not have been known because, quite frankly, the British Isles were not even known. They wouldn't even know that a world would have existed outside of this particular region.

Speaker 1: 44:33

Under Sargon, the area had basically stabilized. The rule, from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, resulted in increased trade throughout the Akkadian Empire. The trade was efficient, it was flowing in, it was flowing out and, as a result, the Akkadian Empire was at its zenith and once Sargon had died, his empire basically began its slow decline and within 125 years of his death, the empire he built would have basically been gone away. But I find it interesting is, even though the Akkadian Empire only lasted for, say, 125 years, what Sargon did was he set the benchmark going forward and essentially what happened is all the kings that would come after him in the Mesopotamia region would always compare themselves to Sargon's rule. But in reality Sargon's legacy could never really be duplicated. But what he did is he laid the groundwork for trade to develop even further.

Speaker 1: 45:40

For the purposes of this podcast, sargon's reign ultimately enabled trade to become much more efficient and much more widespread, and this will allow economies to grow within the region. It will allow for more trade with Nubia and out to the east and to the Indus Valley. While Sargon's reign might not be as well known as other people's reigns, but his impact was massive. It really helped set the stage for how human civilizations will evolve and behave going forward. I want to thank you for taking your time to listen to this first episode. I really hope you found it to be entertaining and enjoyable. If you like what you hear, you can visit us at patreoncom slash history of money banking trade and also you can help this show out a ton by leaving a 5 star review. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon.