alt Hacker NewsThis is a very interesting discovery. I'm fascinated by ancient economics. But...
>The full apparatus of commercial civilization, operating without a theorist in sight.
I don't get this framing. Who thinks that markets are a product of theory? Why does the author keep hammering this point?
In any case... there are lots of commercial/numerical tablets available. Most of them, I believe. And... the records go all the way back to the beginnings of Summerian proto-writing. Cuineform was used for records before it was used for prose.
My hunch is that many/most assyriologists are more interested in political history, myth and suchlike. There is probably a lot of room for researchers who want to work on the economics.
The prompter of the LLM that authored the article thought that should be the central point of it. Conclusion that they were going for: we don’t need economics today and everything should be left to its own devices.
Interestingly, an LLM can totally dismantle this line of thinking (try with Claude).