Many of the general histories of Europe and England can be used to advantage by the teacher or student of the history of commerce. The only work, however, which can receive special mention here is Traill’s *Social England; chapters contributed by various writers cover the history of commerce from earliest times to 1885.
Maps.—The student must look to the general historical atlas for help in studying the history of commerce. He will find that the more elaborate atlases are hardly worth the extra expense for his purposes.
William R. Shepherd, **Historical Atlas, N. Y., Holt, revised ed. 1921, includes considerable economic material, is provided with a full index of places, and will serve all ordinary needs.
The outline maps of the McKinley Publishing Company (Philadelphia), and the Rand McNally Co., will be found valuable for the use both of teacher and class.
In many cases a modern atlas is more desirable than a historical atlas. Longmans’ **School atlas, N. Y., 1901, is an admirable work, which should be in the hands of every student, and the Century **Atlas is indispensable for reference purposes.
THE ANCIENT WORLD
CHAPTER II
ORIENTAL PERIOD
6. Prehistoric commerce. Ancient Egypt.—The origins of commerce are lost in obscurity. Before people are sufficiently civilized to leave written records of their doings they engage in trade; we can observe this among savage tribes at the present day, and we know that it held true of the past, from finding among the traces of primitive man ornaments and weapons far from the places where they were made. Such evidences, interesting as they are, belong to the prehistoric period, and this sketch of early commerce must begin with the peoples who had acquired the art of writing and have left us records from which we can gain some idea of their history.
First among these peoples, in point of time, were the Egyptians. Three thousand years before Christ, at the time when the great pyramids were built, this people had already attained a developed civilization, which, in the opinion of modern scholars, can be traced back even thousands of years more. The Egyptians, however, were not a commercial people. Their main resource was agriculture, and though they developed some of the industrial arts to great efficiency they used the products for direct consumption rather than for trade. Their country, a strip of the Nile valley over five hundred miles long, and but a few miles wide, was so much alike in its different parts that it offered little inducement to internal exchange over great distances; while its isolation by deserts was a bar to the growth of foreign commerce. The sea, in this early period, was a hindrance, rather than a help, to communication.