Breaking News! Making and testing Bronze Age balance scales

Hermann, Raphael; Steinhoff, Judith; Schlotzhauer, Philipp; Vana, Philipp

doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102444

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Importantly, however, handheld balance scales always include a certain amount of human bias: The scales are in equilibrium when the human eye determines the beam to be perfectly horizontal. This is entirely down to each individual's perception, which is liable to error (53). This perception bias was already known in antiquity and is the topic of disputes between trader and customer in multiple depictions from the Egyptian Old Kingdom (54,55).…”

Section: Quantification Of Error Based On Experimentalmentioning

confidence: 98%

Bronze Age weight systems as a measure of market integration in Western Eurasia

Ialongo

Hermann

Rahmstorf

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Weighing technology was invented around 3000 BCE between Mesopotamia and Egypt and became widely adopted in Western Eurasia within ∼2,000 y. For the first time in history, merchants could rely on an objective frame of reference to quantify economic value. The subsequent emergence of different weight systems goes hand in hand with the formation of a continental market. However, we still do not know how the technological transmission happened and why different weight systems emerged along the way. Here, we show that the diffusion of weighing technology can be explained as the result of merchants’ interaction and the emergence of primary weight systems as the outcome of the random propagation of error constrained by market self-regulation. We found that the statistical errors of early units between Mesopotamia and Europe overlap significantly. Our experiment with replica weights gives error figures that are consistent with the archaeological sample. We used these figures to develop a model simulating the formation of primary weight systems based on the random propagation of error over time from a single original unit. The simulation is consistent with the observed distribution of weight units. We demonstrate that the creation of the earliest weight systems is not consistent with a substantial intervention of political authorities. Our results urge a revaluation of the role of individual commercial initiatives in the formation of the first integrated market in Western Eurasia.

show abstract

Section: Quantification Of Error Based On Experimentalmentioning

confidence: 98%