Trade

In these villages are some farmers who live on what grows in the soil. They have cows which graze in the fields. The cows can be milked. The milk can be drunk, but it doesn’t keep for very long. However, if they make cheese from the milk, this will keep, sometimes for several years.

So, milk can be made into food, which keeps longer, rather than letting the milk go bad. But to make cheese they need salt, and there is no naturally occuring salt nearby. When a cow is slaughtered, it provides several hundred kilos of meat. This feeds the villagers for a long time, if the meat doesn’t get spoiled by bacteria or mould. The meat must be preserved, and this also needs salt.

But there is no salt where they live. The farmers have a problem. In these villages, they live by fishing. They have no fields, so they can’t keep cows. They have neither meat nor milk.

And they have no leather from the cows to make clothes. However, they can extract salt from the ocean. Salt is important for everyone. If fish or meat is salted, it can be preserved. People can avoid having to throw away food they have worked hard to produce.

And they can store food, so that have something to eat when fish can’t be found, or if the harvest fails. In the farming villages, people have meat, milk, and leather, but no salt. In the fishing villages, people have salt and fish, but no meat, no milk, and no leather. How will the villagers go about getting what they need? The inhabitants of this village decide to take what they need.

They sneak into one of the fishing villages and steal some salt. The inhabitants of the fishing village do the same. They steal meat and leather from the farming village. Conflict develops between the villages. Now they need to protect themselves from each other.

Some of the workers in each village have to build walls and make weapons, instead of producing food. The villages are now protected by high walls, but they produce less food. And here they can’t preserve their food. They still have no salt. And here they have no leather and can’t make clothes.

So just grabbing what they need, does not solve the villagers’ problems. What else could they do? The people in these two villages try swapping goods with each other, peacefully. Leather for fish, meat for salt. They engage in barter trading.

Trade enables the inhabitants of both villages to get what they need to survive. Both villages benefit from trading. The benefit is mutual. Thousands of years ago, people begin engaging in barter, to their mutual benefit. Very early on, they begin to travel long distances to exchange their goods.

The traders mostly follow particular roads: trade routes. Along the trade routes, places develop where people meet to trade with each other. These places become centres of trade. In these places, people don’t just exchange things. They also swap knowledge and ideas.

People learn from each other how to achieve bigger harvests, or build better houses. Trade often creates wealth and abundance around the centres of trade. It creates possibilities: to engage in music, art, or science. And knowledge spreads where people meet. Before there were good roads, a raft or a boat was the most efficient way to carry a heavy cargo over a long distance.

Therefore many trade routes follow rivers, or go over lakes and seas. The centres of trade are often situated near a coast or a river. Even today, if we highlight the world's bigger cities on the map, we see that they are often near the water.