In the centuries before Egypt's political unification, communities along the Nile in Upper Egypt and Nubia exchanged goods such as ivory, ebony, incense, gold, and ostrich-eggshell beads. Grave goods recovered at predynastic cemetery sites indicate these materials traveled along the river corridor and adjoining desert routes well before any centralized state controlled trade. Scholars describe this as one of several regional exchange systems that later fed into the more formal trade administration of dynastic Egypt.
Relevance to Trade History
Shows an early African river- and desert-based exchange corridor that anticipated the state-organized trade networks of dynastic Egypt.
Read the full story in our article How Early Communities Exchanged Goods Before Currency.
Source: World History Encyclopedia. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.