Afro-Eurasian Bronze Age Economic Expansion and Contraction Revisited

By developing systematic, albeit crude, information on the timing of economic fluctuations in Afro-Eurasia between 4000 and 1000 B.C.E., we seek further evidence about the scope and degree of interdependence in the world system's economic interactions. The empirical outcome suggests a variety of weak to moderate connections and waves of economic fluctuation that were especially and increasingly discernible in troughs of the contraction periods. By no means does this analysis resolve any or all questions about the antiquity or integration of the contemporary world system, but it supports the idea that world history is very much rooted in the continuity of ancient processes.