By the late fourth millennium BCE, Sumerian scribes in cities such as Uruk used cuneiform script pressed into clay tablets to record transactions involving grain, textiles, metals, and livestock. These administrative records, among the earliest writing systems known, document loans, receipts, and contracts tied to long-distance exchange with regions lacking in timber, stone, and metal ores. Temple and palace institutions organized much of this trade, overseeing the movement of goods along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and into neighboring highlands. The tablets provide some of the oldest direct evidence of organized commercial activity anywhere in the world.
Relevance to Trade History
The cuneiform record demonstrates that systematic accounting and written contracts emerged alongside, and partly because of, the need to manage long-distance trade in resource-poor Mesopotamia.
Read the full story in our article Trade and Tribute in Ancient Mesopotamia.
Source: British Museum — Mesopotamia collection and cuneiform tablet research. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.