Finds from the Bronze Age indicate that market economics may have originated earlier than previously believed

Bronze Age Europeans earned and spent money in much the same way we do today, indicating that the origins of the “market economy” are much older than expected.

That’s the controversial conclusion of a new study that challenges the view that elites were the dominant force in Bronze Age economies and suggests that human economic behaviour may not have changed much over the past 3,500 years or more.

“We tend to romanticize European prehistory, but the Bronze Age was not just a fantasy world where townsfolk and peasants served their needs as a backdrop for great lords,” he said. Nicola Ialongo “It was a very familiar world, with family, friends, social networks, markets, jobs, and ultimately having to figure out how to make ends meet,” says Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Bronze Age Europeans, from 3300 to 800 BCE, were not meticulous bookkeepers like people in other ancient societies, such as those in Mesopotamia. But Ialongo and Giancarlo Lago Researchers at the University of Bologna in Italy suggest that the treasure trove of metal they left behind may hold important insights into their daily lives and the roots of modern economic behavior.

Lago and Ialongo analyzed more than 20,000 metal objects from Bronze Age burials in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Germany. These metal objects came in many different forms, but around 1500 B.C. they began to be standardized by weight, which is how they were classified. Many experts These are distinguished as a type of pre-monetary currency.

“The discovery of widespread systems of measurement and weight allows us to model things that have been known for centuries in ways that have never been modeled before,” Ialongo says. “This not only gives us new answers to old questions, but it also gives us new questions that no one has asked before.”

The team found that the weight values ​​in their vast sample followed the same statistical distribution as the daily expenses of a modern Western household: small everyday expenses, represented by lighter pieces, dominated the consumption pattern, while larger expenses, represented by heavier pieces, were relatively rare. This pattern is similar to that found in the average modern wallet, with many small bills and very few large bills.

Lago and Ialongo interpret their find as evidence that the Bronze Age economic system was regulated by market forces of supply and demand, with everyone participating in proportion to how much they earned. This hypothesis contrasts with the influential view put forward by anthropologist Karl Polanyi in the 1940s, who characterized the modern economy, based on monetary gain, as a new phenomenon distinct from ancient economies centered on barter, gift exchange, and social status.

Richard Brunton A researcher from Purdue University in Indiana called the study credible: “I think this argument will stimulate debate among archaeologists and economic anthropologists who have been based for decades on erroneous assumptions about the antiquity of market economies,” he said.

“I think this paper adds useful fuel to that criticism,” Brunton says, “and to me it sheds entirely new light on the function of bronze deposits and the potential use of bronze coins as a unit of exchange.”

but, Erica Schonberger Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland are skeptical of the team’s conclusions. “It’s dangerous to assume that ordinary people in premodern times used money in normal economic activities,” says Schonberger. “For example, medieval English peasants only got money for selling their produce when lords began to demand money in lieu of rents or taxes in kind. They gave most or all of that money directly to the lords. They sold to get money, but they didn’t use it to buy things they needed. We’re still a long way from modern economic behavior.” [in the Middle Ages].”

Lago and Ialongo hope that their work will inspire other experts to carry out similar studies on artefacts from different regions and cultures. They suggest that market economies are a natural development across time and cultures, and that such systems are not something new or unique that has emerged in Western societies over the past few centuries.

“Technically, we haven’t proven that the Bronze Age economy was a market economy,” Ialongo says, “we simply have no evidence that it wasn’t. And we’re just pointing out a contradiction: why is everyone so convinced that there wasn’t a market economy when everything we see can be explained by a market economy model? In other words, if the simplest explanation works well enough, why should we have to imagine a more complex one?”