Tag: ancient-civilizations
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The Ancient World’s First Maritime Trade Network
Today’s commercial shipping networks are many and complex and have evolved over centuries. In the last 50 years they have exploded in volume and extent, shifting eastwards at considerable pace. But what was the world’s first sustained shipping network? Economic Powerhouse of the Ancient World It was undoubtedly the one emanating from northwest India’s Indus-Sarasvati…
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Cataclysms of Antiquity: Unraveling the Black Swan Events of Ancient History
The notion of a “black swan” popularised by philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb, describes rare, unpredictable events with profound and often catastrophic consequences. In the annals of ancient history, such events—cataclysmic floods, cosmic impacts, and vanishing rivers—may have reshaped human civilisation in ways we are only beginning to comprehend. Younger Dryas: A Cosmic Catastrophe? The Younger…
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Phoenicians: Saviours of Civilisation
In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond asked how much effect geography had on ‘history’s broad pattern’. He concluded that all societies had inventive people but some environments provide more starting materials and favourable conditions. He concentrated on domestication and the axis of the continents. I contend that ports were the favourable conditions that continued…
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Why Maritime Societies Drove (and Drive) Innovation
My career in maritime trade in London, Tokyo, Singapore and Dubai showed me how pro-active ports are crucibles of innovation. I explore this in a 3-book series, How Maritime Trade and the Indian Subcontinent Shaped the World- Ice Age to mid-8th century, The Millennium Maritime Trade Revolution 700-1700- How Asia Lost Maritime Supremacy and The…
Nick Collins 