Jan Bakker, Stephan Maurer, Jörn-Steffen Pischke, and Ferdinand Rauch: Trade and growth in the Iron Age: "The first millennium BC... the growth effects of one of the first major trade expansions... the systematic crossing of the open sea in the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians. A strong positive relationship between connectedness and archaeological sites suggests a large role for geography and trade in development even at such an early juncture in history...
...Seafaring in the in the Mediterranean started with hunter-gatherer societies around 10,000 BC; we know that humans began to settle islands at that time (Broodbank 2006). They also moved obsidian, a volcanic rock, over considerable distances. With the advent of the sail around 3,000 BC, ships had a considerable cost advantage over land transportation. Regional trade networks grew in importance in the Mediterranean during the next two millennia. However, most of this sailing was coastal. While sailors made open sea crossings where they were difficult to avoid, for example to reach Cyprus, Crete, or to cross from Albania to the heel of the Italian boot, coast hugging prevailed elsewhere. Only from around 900 BC did Phoenician and other sailors begin to systematically and routinely cross the open Mediterranean. A dense trading network began to emerge, and on the eve of classical antiquity, the Mediterranean was constantly criss-crossed by Phoenician, Greek, and other sailors. This was an expansion in scale and scope far beyond the trading activities which went on before....
We exploit the fact that open sea sailing creates different levels of connectedness for different points on the coast. The shape of the coast and the location of islands determines how easy it is to reach other points, which might be potential trading partners, within a certain distance. We create such a measure of connectedness for travel via sea. Figure 1 shows the values of this measure on a map and demonstrates how some regions, for example the Aegean but also southern Italy and Sicily, are much better connected than others.
Measuring growth for an early period of human history is more difficult as we have no standard measure of income, GDP, or even population. We quantify growth by the presence of archaeologic sites for settlements or urbanisations. While this is clearly not a perfect measure, more sites should imply more human presence and activity. We then relate the number of active archaeological sites in a particular period to our measure of connectedness. We find a large positive relationship between connectedness and archaeological sites. The effect of connections on growth in the Iron Age Mediterranean are up to twice as large as the effects Donaldson and Hornbeck (2016) found for US railroads. Although these results are unlikely to be directly comparable, the magnitudes suggest a large role for geography and trade in development even at such an early juncture in history...
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