by Quentin Morris

Created on: December 14, 2008

Business has existed for as long as humans have been able to meaningfully communicate with each other. It is process which spans millennia and which, if documented in full, would run to hundreds of volumes. From simple direct exchange, to the invention of money, to virtual' companies on the internet today, business has evolved a lot over the course of thousands of years but the fundamental principle has remained the same to gain wealth through production and distribution, whatever form this may take. This article will mention only the highlights and most important innovations in the long and fascinating history of business.

Earliest recorded transactions

It is clear that man has probably been doing business for as long as he has existed. However the earliest documented evidence of a well structured, serious business network is found in China around 1500BC. The Chinese, through their sea-faring prowess, established trade routes all over Eastern Asia. This business consisted mainly in trading luxury goods such as silk and turquoise and made China powerful and wealthy. There is similar evidence of trade networks across the Mediterranean involving the Greeks, Egyptians and Abyssinians. Pre-Homeric clay tablets, miraculously preserved through fires at the palace of Knossos on Crete and at other locations on mainland Greece, have been instrumental in aiding our understanding of trade in the area. Written in Linear B, a very early form of Greek, they represent the accounts of the palace and record grain and livestock sales and profits made.

The fall of the Roman Empire

However business proper, defined as not just as a way of providing but as a social economic organization[1], developed much more recently, within the last 1000 years or so. This system was only able to emerge once the strangle-hold of monarchs, despots and other singularly powerful individuals began to be lifted. Only once a laborer was able to keep a share of the profit generated by his effort was business able to flourish. This new type of society emerged in Western Europe. As the Roman Empire fell around 500AD a power vacuum was created and the hordes that filled it were independent thinkers who, in order to survive, began to perform business transactions between each other. The process was a long and difficult one but the seeds of business were sewn.

Merchants

The rise of the mercantile classes was the next significant stage in the development of business. This took place during the Middle Ages as the

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