Researchers investigating how the first writing arose identified the motifs on preliterate "cylinder seals" used in the trade of agricultural products and textiles.

Foreign trade was necessary to obtain raw materials ... and also slaves captured from the mountains surrounding Mesopotamia. (A typical word for slave was “mountain girl.”) ...

In East Africa a slave trade was well established before the ... soldiers in the Omani army and workers on the salt pans of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Many people were domestic slaves, working ...

A rchaeologist and scholar Giorgio Buccellati’s book At the Origins of Politics describes how Mesopotamia’s urban revolution in the late fourth millennium BC shaped a new mentality. The segmentation ...