Routine trade doesn’t have many ‘important’ events likewards because running smoothly is just normal life. Only one instance of merchants trading poor quality copper is noteworthy, because it didn’t change the trajectory of a violent conflict.
This reminds me. You often hear it said “history is written by the victors,” and while there’s truth to that, I much prefer “history is written by those who wrote it down.”
Because writing was, for most of history, an expensive and time-consuming process that only a few had access to, there are some big implications from that. One of which being that nobody was very inclined to write down the mundane day-to-day because it just wasn’t worth it and few had any interest in preserving it.
There is a lot more peaceful trade and cooperation in history than war, but because war is so disruptive and notable it makes the history books.
That, and war makes for better narratives.
Routine trade doesn’t have many ‘important’ events likewards because running smoothly is just normal life. Only one instance of merchants trading poor quality copper is noteworthy, because it didn’t change the trajectory of a violent conflict.
This reminds me. You often hear it said “history is written by the victors,” and while there’s truth to that, I much prefer “history is written by those who wrote it down.”
Because writing was, for most of history, an expensive and time-consuming process that only a few had access to, there are some big implications from that. One of which being that nobody was very inclined to write down the mundane day-to-day because it just wasn’t worth it and few had any interest in preserving it.