Euphrates valley began to grow sufficiently prosperous, in a period of high rainfall, to exchange their grain and woven wool for timber and precious stones from the people in the hills to the north. From about 7,500 years ago, a distinctive ‘Ubaid’ style of pottery, clay sickles and house design spread all across the Near East, reaching up into the mountains of Iran, across to the Mediterranean and along the shores of the Arabian peninsula, where fishermen sold fish to Ubaid merchants in exchange for grain and nets. This was a trading diaspora, not an empire: the domestic habits of the distant
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