How did ancient trade work? How did people know where to go if

>>3095451
Most of the routes where bound to the prevailing winds, monsoon winds and th currents. For Europeans likely the most defining moment was when the Portuguese learned the volta do mar maneuver late in the 15th century.

>>3095451
>How did they know where to go
Use the stars and constellations as landmarks.
>Know when to turn
Tradewinds and lots of luck and hope. Sailors didn't always have a long life expectancy
>Take a long time to go a couple hundred miles
It took a few weeks to cross the Mediterranean, yeah. That's why sailors kept pickled eggs that lasted forever and drank their own piss when the water ran out.
>How could it be profitable
You need to see it as exploiting the regional differences in value. For instance, in Northern Europe it was really hard to find or make purple dye. A piece of purple cloth was worth a fortune. Down in Syria they made tons of purple cloth from grinding up shrimpy things, so it wasn't worth quite as much there. A merchant could go down to Syria, spend his life's savings on purple cloth bought at the "Syrian Price", go up to Germany or Sweden or whatever, sell it to all to the noblemen and royals up there for the "Northern Price", and have enough money to last him for ten years before he goes and does it all again. You could do the same thing selling anything people really, really wanted that was plentiful somewhere else. Selling wood in a desert, selling fine ceramics from the orient, selling iron in a deficient place like Japan, selling spices to Europe, or even doing the Transatlantic thing and just selling shitloads of slaves you captured basically for free. Asl ong as you're selling something worth a lot you're in good shape.

>>3095451
Most of the stuff was not sent directly from the place of production to the final place where it's been found. There were a lot of middlemen involved. It's not that hard to sell things to your neighbours.

>>3095451
>how see
Landmarks
estimation based on speed of boat

>travel time
Average around 5 knots per hour or about 10 km per hours
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/TAPA/82/Speed_under_Sail_of_Ancient_Ships*.html

>how profitable
Buy cheap, sell high

Like a bucket chain.


Part of the beginnings of the global trade network involved the Europeans destroying the ancient, peer to peer, networks, and replacing them with networks centered on the home country.

>colonialism
>Ancient