Another Bronze Age civilization with sophisticated commerce system is Indus Valley Civilisation [1],[2],[3].

The wikipedia entry somehow is outdated [4]. Perhaps some of the new findings are too controversial for the editors, meanwhile reseacher receiving death threat [5].

[1] The Indus Script and Economics. A Role for Indus Seals and Tablets in Rationing and Administration of Labor:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00049

[2] Indus civilisation reveals its volumetric system:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/Indus-civilisation-re...

[3] The Indus Script-Computational Analysis and Interpretations (2020) [video]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF_nJ4vfG-A

[4] Indus Valley Civilisation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation

[5] Rajesh Rao: Computing a Rosetta Stone for the Indus script [video]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwYxHPXIaao

Right, and that's also true of physical inventions that you might think are a straightforward application of scientific knowledge. The steam engine is a good example -- it was produced by tinkering, and we devised a theory of how it works much later.

Probably for the vast majority of human inventions, the thing exists long before the theory of the thing. I think that feels counterintuitive in part because examples to the contrary are very conspicuous -- e.g., the A-bomb. But inventions like that, where a theory is meticulously worked out then applied, probably only happen when you have to follow that path for whatever reason -- for the A-bomb, because of enormous capital expenditures. Yet there are countless inventions that came to be only because someone noticed an interesting effect and built something around it (off the top of my head, the microwave is another example), without creating a theory beforehand.

> It's interesting that commerce/business was this sophisticated in the Bronze Age.

That trade would have records is not surprising. That trade would follow patterns based on distance is not surprising, especially since transport costs were very high in that era. Hence the "gravity model".

The surprise here is in organizational form. The article describes a limited partnership contract, with partner investments and a cap table. It's impressive to see that so early. It requires a legal system, or strong social pressure, able to enforce a private contract that complex.

Most early commercial organizations were built around families. Corporations are generally considered to have first appeared in the 1300s, and were rare until the 1700s. I don't think the Roman Empire ever developed the concept of a corporation. Traders, bankers, and merchants existed, of course, but not private organizations larger than one owning family. Although it's hard to tell; not much Roman business info survives.

Everyone points to Ea-nasir, but that's a meme. Meanwhile, Diocletian outlawed price gouging and standardized prices across a variety of goods:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices

From Polanyi, Finley, and Weber to Austin and Malkin, we've come a long way in recognizing the sophistication of ancient economic thought.

You forget to mention life and biology, earth and geology, universe and cosmology.

> The article weirdly makes a big deal out this.

Ctrl+F "This matters"; of course it's because it's LLM-generated BS which is designed to produce sensationalist slop. (There are about 30 other tells reinforcing this but this one seems to be in literally every single LLM-generated article produced by current models)