Why our spending habits aren’t so different than people 3,500 years ago

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Spending habits today are "not substantially different" from that of our ancestors 3,500 years ago, according to a new study.

The surprising findings suggest that the "market economy" has existed for thousands of years, say researchers.

Archaeologists looked at how much Bronze Age people used to spend to sustain their daily lives.

The study involved the analysis of more than 20,000 metal objects from more than 1,000 hoards that were buried in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Germany between around 2,300 BC and 800 BC.

The researchers, from the Universities of Göttingen in Germany and Salento in Italy, used a statistical technique to determine if the analyzed objects were multiples of a unit of weight.

Their findings, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior , show that, from around 1,500 BC, metal objects were intentionally fragmented in order to obtain multiples of the weight unit of roughly 10 grams – a unit which was used everywhere across Europe.

That indicates that metal fragments circulated as money, according to the research team.

They then analyzed the statistical distribution of the daily expenses of prehistoric European households – meaning they observed how much was spent in various amounts – and compared it with modern Western economies.

The researchers found that the weight values of metallic money in prehistory had the same statistical distribution of the daily expenses as a modern Western household.

Small everyday expenses made up the "vast majority" of spending, while larger expenses were comparatively rare.

Using simulations, the research team showed that the most likely scenario to explain the prehistoric data is to imagine an economic system regulated by supply and demand, in which everyone participates proportionally to how much they earn. In other words, a market economy.

The researchers explained that the prehistoric economy is commonly imagined as a "primitive" system based on barter and on the exchange of gifts, with the market system appearing as some kind of evolutionary milestone at some point during the making of "advanced" Western societies.

However, the new study challenges this notion by showing that not only did the market exist before formal coinage was invented, but even long before any form of state actually appeared in Europe.

Dr. Nicola Ialongo, of the University of Göttingen’s Institute for Prehistory and Early History, said: “We are used to thinking of the market economy as a product of modernity, an innovation that deeply changed people’s lives and minds as soon as it appeared.

“Our results suggest that it may have always existed.

"In a way, one could even think of it as one of the many behavioral traits that define us as humans: like warfare and marriage.”

Co-author Dr. Giancarlo Lago, who conducted the research while at the University of Salento, added: “To be honest, we were quite surprised by our results.

"Our findings defy some long-established beliefs among archaeologists, economists and anthropologists.

"They also suggest that many of the differences that we see between ‘Western’ and supposedly ‘primitive’ cultures are not as substantial as we might think.”

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