Surpluses of food allowed for the development of spe-
cialization in the workplace. In most early societies, every-
one needed to know how to do everything, from how to
make bows and arrows to how to fashion a clay pot. Perhaps
the earliest division of labor was between the genders, at its
most simplistic a matter of one gender doing the hunting
and farming, while the other dealt with producing baskets
and other household goods. Even then, there was pressure
to know how to do many tasks. For instance, in sub-Saharan
Africa, most women made and fi red ceramics at home, quar-
ried the clay for building homes, tended gardens, and cared
for children. With the burden of caring for crops every day
lift ed from some members of societ y, it was possible for them
to master a manufacturing craft , such as metalworking or
creating pottery.
Th ose who manufactured nonagricultural goods could
trade their products for food. In southern Mesopotamia this
became essential by about 1000 b.c.e. Even though Meso-
potamia had at one time exported grains, its soil had been
poisoned by salt from rivers, and increasing populations
made it impossible to produce enough food to feed everyone.
Th e Mesopotamians were able to feed themselves by trading
goods made of metal to other people who had excess grain
but lacked the Mesopotamians’ expertise in metalworking.
Ancient Mesopotamian goods were distributed throughout
the Near East and into central Asia and as far east as the In-
dus River valley. Nonetheless, cultures that made fi ne manu-
factured goods that they could trade for food or other goods
struggled with the barter economy, in which sellers had to
fi nd someone who had what they wanted and who wanted
what they had to sell.
A solution to this was the cash economy. In a cash econ-
omy sellers do not need to fi nd someone who has exactly what
they want, because buyers will give sellers money, which the
sellers can then use to buy what they want from other sellers.
Historians and archaeologists oft en judge the maturity of an
economic system by whether it developed a cash economy,
which allowed trades to be made quickly and enabled people
or organizations to accumulate enough money to invest in
building factories, as happened in ancient China, or to invest
in consumer goods such as houses, medical care, and good
clothes.
Th e study of ancient economies has pitfalls for modern
observers, because ancient peoples had their own cultural pri-
orities that aff ected how they treated goods and trade. Th ere
is the example of the Chinese, who refused to wear wool be-
cause their barbarian neighbors were oft en shepherds. Th ey
denied themselves the benefi t of a warm, sturdy fabric simply
because they were prejudiced against people who happened
to care for sheep. Among the Celts, minting coins did not al-
ways mean that they had a cash economy, because the coins
were oft en symbols of a chief ’s power and were given to fol-
lowers to symbolize their obligations to their chief. Even so,
the study of ancient economies is one of the best ways to learn
how ancient peoples valued their worlds.
AFRICA
BY MICHAEL J. O’NEAL
For thousands of millennia the concept of an economy, as the
term is understood in modern life, would have been entirely
foreign to Africans. “Wealth” consisted primarily of an abun-
dance of food. “Capital assets” included only the few portable
possessions that nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers could
carry with them from one encampment to another. “Labor”
consisted of the daily search for food by hunters, fi shermen,
and gatherers, who found nuts, berries, fruits, acorns, roots,
and leafy vegetables. “Economic incentive” was a rumbling
belly.
Money was nonexistent. “Banks” meant those who had
surplus resources and were willing to share them with oth-
ers. “Corporations” were formed by small tribal bands whose
members worked cooperatively to fi nd food, haul it back to
the encampment, and prepare it for consumption as well as
to perform other tasks, such as gathering fi rewood and water.
“Stockholders” were those who accumulated a herd of live-
stock. Th e “price” of a good consisted of the time it took to
fi nd it and, perhaps in the case of hunting, the injuries and
even deaths that resulted from tangling with wild animals.THE EARLY STONE AGE
Until the Neolithic Revolution and the spread of agriculture,
which began in roughly in 10,000–8000 b.c.e. or later in some
parts of the world, the economic systems of Africa were sim-
ple. If economics can be defi ned as the science of scarcity—of
time, money, resources, labor—then the ancient Africans
combated scarcity with unceasing labor. Th e chief economic
activity was the hunting and gathering of food. Secondary
activities included fi nding or building shelters, storing food,
maintaining fi res, and caring for children. Th e basic units of
both production and consumption were the family. About the
only specialization of labor was along gender lines. Men did
most of the hunting, while women did most of the gather-
ing, though these gender roles were not strictly adhered to;
women, for example, oft en functioned as hunters by combing
shallow waters for such food items as shellfi sh, and men oft en
assisted with the gathering of fruits, nuts, and so on.
What tools Stone Age Africans had for such tasks as
digging and carving game were not produced by a separate
class of craft workers. Individuals made their own stone tools,
arrow points, and the like, though archaeological evidence
shows that some of these items were oft en shared, suggesting
that some individuals may have been seen as more skilled in
making them. Land did not have to be allocated for produc-
tion, for no one owned the land or claimed land-use rights.
Th ese small communities of people, who largely inhabited
the savannas of East Africa until they spread out through the
continent, were largely egalitarian, meaning that they shared
all resources equally. Th us, food was taken back to the en-
campment for everyone; kills were not attributed to any one
person, so the food was available to all. Moreover, no elite342 economy: Africa