Introduction: Between Two Civilizations

In the 3rd millennium BCE, Southwest Asia witnessed the emergence of a new socioeconomic system in which independent states became reliant, if not entirely dependent, upon other states for the maintenance of their elaborate social, cultural, and religious behavior (Fig. 1.1). In what was arguably the world's first foray into "globalization," complex societies arose in the Middle East, northwestern South Asia, and southern Central Asia based on the control of localized production (both craft and subsistence) and the long-distance trade of those products (e.g., Kohl 1979, 1989; Lamberg-Karlovsky 1996; Ratnagar 2004; Possehl 2007). It was a delicate system -one that eventually collapsed around 2000 BCE due to environmental, demographic, and sociopolitical factors- but the exchange of ideas and people along this network continued for thousands of years and ultimately led to the interconnected world of globalized economies that we are experiencing today.