>>62263657close, but not quite. Real history is much more subtle. First off, 'trading' is sort of a myth. Yes, foraging societies traded goods with each other based on available resources, often decorative, but when agriculture and civilization started in the middle east, commerce was almost like it is now: big contracts, huge shipments of needed resources to specific areas.
We have clay tablets that describe that minor households with tons of certain resources (like murex shells or Cedar wood) that was needed in places like Egypt or the Turkish mountains were traded for each other for staples like grain/wool/animals, etc.
Most of the citystates were self sustaining, sort of like monasteries, wealth was generally determined by how many domestic animals one had, which would have to be fed by grain grown on your farmlands, which would have to be grown and taken care of by your servants/slaves, all of this had to be protected as your property by a great man/leader Lugal like the ancient Sumerian kings. They kept track of everything and traded goods with other cities and religious shrines throughout the middle east using clay wedges representing goods like sheep that they kept in a clay pot or envelope. They started pressing the wedges into the side of the clay envelope, then finally they just made clay contracts using the symbols, which became cuneiform.
All commerce started out as debt between city-states, the government (the Lugal and his administration) and the heads of households who had significant amounts of land/animals/slaves-servants. What important people owe other people is all that ever mattered.
