Global Antiquity

Starting about the middle of the first millennium BCE, continental East Asia experienced an unprecedented economic florescence as the Bronze Age redistributive economy gave way to a full-fledged market economy. In this new economy, metallic currency was beginning to play an important role. Technological innovations and intensification in the rural sector enabled significant demographic growth: the number of cities multiplied, and as their function morphed from elite ceremonial centers to densely populated hubs of mass-production and trade, a new urban culture came into being. Rather than depending on an individual’s descent and kinship, social divisions were now mainly wealth-based, and...