History and ethnography show many patterns of trade, exchange, and the acquisition of goods. Some involve gift giving in the context of activities involving kin or social partners; these may not require an equivalent return. In some other cases, goods and materials are obtained by force or the threat of force, and the donor may gain little or nothing in return. Goods may be exchanged for nonmaterial rewards, such as an increase in status or protection against foes. In a high proportion of cases, however, transactions are on a reciprocal basis, in which each party feels that they profit by the transaction, though the goods exchanged may seem to the outsider quite unequal in their value: glass beads for gold, for example.
The Sumerian and Harappan civilizations were comparable in their organizational and economic complexity. Furthermore, it seems that it was the Harappans who took the initiative in the trade between their countries, rather than the Sumerians, despite the fact that Sumer and Akkad had a great need to engage in trade to obtain the goods necessary for daily life (such as metals) and for other, prestige purposes, such as the embellishment of temples and the enhancement of royal status. The Harappans' export of timber to Babylonia is of great significance in this context. While small quantities of precious commodities like lapis lazuli or obsidian were easily moved over long distances, the transport of relatively low-value, high-bulk goods, of which timber is an excellent example, is likely to be undertaken only in the context of a well-developed trading network, between roughly equal partners, and for substantial profits. One would expect the society to whom the trade was of the greater
Importance to be the one that invested the labor in transporting such bulky goods. In later times, when the Mesopotamians obtained timber from the Levant and elsewhere, they undertook expeditions to fell and transport the timber themselves. The epic tale of "Gilgamesh and Huwawa" shows that this was the normal procurement method in early times also. Yet during the later third millennium, the Sumerians were content to rely on supplies brought to them by the Harappans. This implies that the Harappans had strong motives for trading and as traders were at least as organized and accomplished as the Mesopotamians, if not more so.
The trade in lapis lazuli seems to support this interpretation. The Harappans expended considerable efforts to acquire this stone, even establishing a special procurement center, yet this was almost entirely for trade with Mesopotamia, given that they themselves made little use of it.
These considerations, coupled with the attested presence of resident Harappans in Sumer, make it certain that the Harappans were trading with southern Mesopotamia for their own profit and that through this trade they acquired commodities important to them, despite the paucity of evidence for these imports. This contradicts the frequently expressed belief that the Harappans gained far less from the trade than the Sumerians. The Harappans were therefore clearly an impressive mercantile society engaged in substantial seaborne trade.
World History
