Ancient Civilization – Economy

March 8, 2012

In Humanities, me and my partner looked at 3 different ancient civilization, which was China, Greece, and Egypt, to find out the economy of these civilizations. Also, we were supposed to find out the similarities between the 3 civilizations with economy and how it’s connected to our era.

This is a picture of my chart I made to research about the 3 civilization with the topic we are on(Economy) and the similarities.

 

 

 

In China, economy started when people started to want luxury goods that was made in China. The ancient Chinese people used to collect the goods like fishes  to trade for better things like luxury goods, but soon they began to exchange silk, clothing, tea and spices for gold, silver, glass, wool, pearls, animal furs and other luxury. They also used camels and horses to carry around things to sell to people in Korea and Japan. The trading purpose made people’s lives more comfortable. Their money was called the copper coins. It had holes in the middle of the coin and had some kanji’s on it (it is kind of similar to the 5 yen japanese coins). Meanwhile, while the people were using it, the shortage of copper in the Sung Dynasty (960-1280) led to the creation of paper money. This currency was convertible into cash or salt. The copper money that continued being used are less important.

The Egyptian Civilizations traded, educated, and farmed. Trading started in the fourth century B.C.  The Egyptian Civilizations traded with countries around the Mediterranean Sea, Aegean Sea, and the Red Sea.  The items brought from other countries were silver, iron, horses, copper, leopard skins, and spices.  The main products from Egypt were gold, wheat, and barley. The Egyptian Civilizations traded, educated, and farmed. Trading started in the fourth century B.C.  The Egyptian Civilizations traded with countries around the Mediterranean Sea, Aegean Sea, and the Red Sea.  The items brought from other countries were silver, iron, horses, copper, leopard skins, and spices.  The main products from Egypt were gold, wheat, and barley. The Homonia (OMONOIA) coins are jointly issued by two cities.

The Greece Civilizations did not have the same idea of an economy that we have. In Greece, the “eco” part of economy is from the Greek word for house, “oikos”, and the “nomy” part is from their word for law. They used to trade things such as species, fabric, metal, wood and grain. Before 600 B.C., there were no money. Instead, they bartered something with each other. This was a system of trading goods and /or services for other goods and/or services. R=When money was made, the type of money was called drachma. Their currency was widely used because, of the large trade network that they developed. Athenian coin could be used in other Greek cities and it didn’t have to be exchanged for the local currency.
The similarities of economy between the 3 civilization is that they all traded the variables and expensive things since the trading process is similar. All of these 3 civilizations traded expensive things like species and fabric such as silk. Also, the idea of what economy is, are all similar that it connects to trading and law like the idea we have right now.

As you can see, all of the civilization we looked are mostly similar to each other and has the almost the same base topic on economy.

If you compare the economy right now and the ancient civilizations, we still have the same idea of economy in our daily lives. We do have laws and rules between the country and the world, and also we trade something for something we need or want when necessary .

Posted by Keina
Filed in Humanities
1 Comment »

One Response to “Ancient Civilization – Economy”

  1. Mr.T said:
    March 15th, 2012 at 1:22 am
    Reply

    Hey KS,
    Pretty good work!
    What was the one big idea you came to understand about our unit?
    Was there anything that really surprised you or that you found really interesting to learn?
    Thanks for the reflection,
    Mr.T



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