[netcan]

This is a very interesting discovery. I'm fascinated by ancient economics. But...

>The full apparatus of commercial civilization, operating without a theorist in sight.

I don't get this framing. Who thinks that markets are a product of theory? Why does the author keep hammering this point?

In any case... there are lots of commercial/numerical tablets available. Most of them, I believe. And... the records go all the way back to the beginnings of Summerian proto-writing. Cuineform was used for records before it was used for prose.

My hunch is that many/most assyriologists are more interested in political history, myth and suchlike. There is probably a lot of room for researchers who want to work on the economics.

[kubb]

The prompter of the LLM that authored the article thought that should be the central point of it. Conclusion that they were going for: we don’t need economics today and everything should be left to its own devices.

Interestingly, an LLM can totally dismantle this line of thinking (try with Claude).