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north-west coast of India, Barbaricon (on the western mouth of the Indus), Barygaza
(relatively near Harappan Lothal), Muziris and Arikamedu, on India’s southwest and
southeast tip respectively, and a port at the mouth of the Ganges. Many of the
Roman-period ports, or later ports at or very near the same sites, continued to be
important in later periods. When the Indian Ocean at its greatest extent was brought
into trade connections with the Red Sea and Persian Gulf corridors, Mogadishu,
Zanzibar, Kilwa on the east coast of Africa, Quilon at the southern tip of India, and
Malacca on the Malay Peninsula became important ports of call.
How early did this commodities exchange get under way and what was traded?
Archaeological and epigraphic evidence at Sumer attests to trading connections
between Mesopotamian cities—connected with the Mediterranean system via the
Levant and Egypt—and the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley in the third mil-
lennium bce. In particular, Harappan seals with their still-undeciphered Indus Valley
Script, worked carnelian beads, and chert weights have been found at Mesopotamian
sites (Ratnagar, 2004 and Keay, 2000). Additionally, Sumerian texts refer to trade
with a land of Meluhha, a likely reference to the Harappan culture, given that the
goods listed are those associated with India, for example, carnelian, wood (such as
teak), and lapis, which could have been mined in Afghanistan, carried to Lothal, a
Harappan port in the region of modern Gujarat, and then shipped to the Persian Gulf
(Thapar, 2004: 79–88). Another feature of this early Persian Gulf–Indus exchange is
the arguable reliance of Indus cities on metals from the west, particularly copper from
Bahrain or Oman, and perhaps tin (Ratnagar, 2004: 128 and Cork, 2011: 86–87).
Ratnagar has suggested that the systematic exchange between Mesopotamia and
Harappans first brought silver into the Indus region, and that silver may well have
been traded as a kind of proto-currency; that is, the Mesopotamians were procuring
silver from regions to their north-west to trade in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea
for the goods which Harappan civilization brought to the exchange (Ratnagar, 2004:
193–200). In his review of the evidence for Bronze Age Indus–Arabian exchange,
Christopher Edens has noted the disparity between the relatively high incidence of
finished Harappan goods in Arabia as opposed to the comparatively infrequent occur-
rence of finished Arabian goods in the Indus region, again suggestive of a sort of trade
imbalance (Edens, 1993: 355). Scholars debate whether this Bronze Age exchange
between the Persian Gulf and the Indus can be characterized as proper “market”
exchange or more incidental “peddling;” weighing the extensive evidence, Ratnagar
has made a compelling case for “xenia”-type exchange, in which local elite of Indus
cities hosted foreign merchants who brought goods to trade (Ratnagar, 2004: 306–
312). Whatever the exact nature of the exchange (balanced or not, “peddling” or
more formalized), climate change c. 2000 bce and perhaps even Harappan over-use of
resources contributed to a disintegration of this thriving Indus Valley civilization, and
hence a waning of trade between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean.
Trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean reached a high point
during the Roman Empire, when Mediterranean markets hungered for the spices
and other commodities that Indian Ocean exchange brought. In this later period,
the goods that Mediterranean markets desired from the Indian Ocean included:
frankincense and myrrh from Arabia; sesame seeds, cinnamon leaf (malabathron),
amomum, bdellion, costum, long pepper, and spikenard from India; cloves and