Were Mesopotamians The First Brand Addicts

New Scientist ^ | 4-26-2008 | Jeff Hecht

[blam]

Were Mesopotamians the first brand addicts?

25 April 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Jeff Hecht

Product branding first emerged in ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of cities and writing. So claims David Wengrow, an archaeologist at University College London, who says that bottle stops stamped with symbols some 5000 years ago are evidence of the first branded goods.

Around 8000 years ago, village-dwelling Mesopotamians began making personalised stone seals, which they pressed into the caps and stoppers used to seal food and drink.

Originally these goods would have been traded directly with neighbours and travellers. But when urbanisation began - a little over 5000 years ago - city residents increasingly had to deal with products of uncertain origin.

Wengrow says the symbols in caps and stoppers came to play an important role in telling people about the quality and origins of products such as oils and wine.
He has described how the seals might have been used to ensure quality control, to give provenance for goods or to show that they conformed to a standardised system. By looking at the symbol on a wine stopper, says Wengrow, consumers came to know whether or not to trust that bottle (Current Anthropology, vol 49, p 7).

Many stoppers have been found in the ancient city of Uruk, now in Iraq, where some 20,000 people lived 5000 years ago. The symbol impressions are the first images produced mechanically in human history, says Wengrow. The images have long been regarded as works of art, but he believes that what we now consider art may actually have been promotional branding.

"I think Wengrow is onto something," says Mitchell Rothman, an anthropologist at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, although he is not convinced that the ancients were using branding

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[aft_lizard]

I think I saw Gilgamesh on the cover of an old Uruk Wheaties box once.

[billorites]

Nebuchadrezzar exclusively wore Nike.

[CarrotAndStick]

Aren't they Adidas shoes?

[Red Badger]

[Red Badger]

[SunkenCiv]

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