The V.C.s of B.C. 公元前的风险投资 作者：Adam Davidson @ 2015-8-27

译者：淡蓝

校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）

来源：The New York Times Magazine， http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/magazine/the-vcs-of-bc.html One morning, just before dawn, an old man named Assur-idi loaded up two black donkeys. Their burden was 147 pounds of tin, along with 30 textiles, known as kutanum, that were of such rare value that a single garment cost as much as a slave. Assur-idi had spent his life’s savings on the items, because he knew that if he could convey them over the Taurus Mountains to Kanesh, 600 miles away, he could sell them for twice what he paid.

清晨，天刚蒙蒙亮，老汉Assur-idi给两头黑驴装上了货。货物有147磅锡，另有30件叫作kutanum的纺织品，kutanum异常稀有，一件衣物就相当于一个奴隶的价钱。这些货花光了Assur-idi 一生的积蓄，因为他知道，只要越过托罗斯山脉运到600英里外的卡内什，这些东西能卖出双倍的价钱。

At the city gate, Assur-idi ran into a younger acquaintance, Sharrum-Adad, who said he was heading on the same journey. He offered to take the older man’s donkeys with him and ship the profits back. The two struck a hurried agreement and wrote it up, though they forgot to record some details. Later, Sharrum-­Adad claimed he never knew how many textiles he had been given. Assur-idi spent the subsequent weeks sending increasingly panicked letters to his sons in Kanesh, demanding they track down Sharrum-Adad and claim his profits.

在城门口，Assur-idi遇到了个年轻的熟人Sharrum-Adad，说正好他也要去同样的地方。Sharrum-Adad主动提出可以带着老人的驴子们同行并把赚的钱带回来。于是俩人匆匆拟定了协议并写了下来，但他们忘记了记录一些细节。后来，Sharrum-­Adad声称，他当时并不清楚到底有多少件纺织品。在随后的几周里，日益恐慌的Assur-idi不断给他远在卡内什的儿子们写信，要求他们追踪Sharrum-Adad并收回应当属于他的利润。

These letters survive as part of a stunning, nearly miraculous window into ancient economics. In general, we know few details about economic life before roughly 1000 A.D. But during one 30-year period — between 1890 and 1860 B.C. — for one community in the town of Kanesh, we know a great deal.

这些保存下来的信件，为我们打开了深入了解古代经济的一扇窗，它令人惊叹、近乎奇迹一般。总体而言，我们对大约公元1000年之前的经济生活知之甚少。但是对这个近30年的时间段——公元前1890 到1860 之间——在卡内什镇的社会经济情形，我们却知之甚多。

Through a series of incredibly unlikely events, archaeologists have uncovered the comprehensive written archive of a few hundred traders who left their hometown Assur, in what is now Iraq, to set up importing businesses in Kanesh, which sat roughly at the center of present-day Turkey and functioned as the hub of a massive global trading system that stretched from Central Asia to Europe.

在一系列令人难以置信的考古发现中，考古学家们找到了周详的文书档案，里面记录了数百个离开家乡亚述（在今日伊拉克）的商人，在异乡卡内什做起了进口生意。当时的卡内什大致位于今日土耳其的中心，是从中亚延伸到欧洲的巨大全球贸易体系的中枢。

Kanesh’s traders sent letters back and forth with their business partners, carefully written on clay tablets and stored at home in special vaults. Tens of thousands of these records remain. One economist recently told me that he would love to have as much candid information about businesses today as we have about the dealings — and in particular, about the trading practices — of this 4,000-year-old community.

这些卡内什商人与贸易伙伴之间的来往信件，被小心仔细地写在泥板上，并储存在家里的地窖中。数以千记的这种记录因此得以保存。一位经济学家最近跟我说，要是他对当今的真实商业信息、特别是有关贸易的信息的了解，能有我们对这个距今4000年的社会的交易的了解一样多，那就好了。

Trade is central to every key economic issue we face. Whether the subject is inequality, financial instability or the future of work, it all comes down to a discussion of trade: trade of manufactured goods with China, trade of bonds with Europe, trade over the Internet or enabled by mobile apps. For decades, economists have sought to understand how trade works. Can we shape trade to achieve different outcomes, like a resurgence of manufacturing or a lessening of inequality? Or does trade operate according to fairly fixed rules, making it resistant to conscious planning?

贸易是我们所面临的所有重要经济问题的中心点。无论是不平等、金融不稳定、或是工作前景等问题，一切都可以归结到对贸易的讨论上：与中国的制造品贸易，与欧洲的债券交易，以及通过互联网或移动应用的交易。几十年来，经济学家尝试弄清贸易是如何运转的。能否通过塑造贸易来实现不同的结果，比如复苏制造业，或是减少不平等？还是说，贸易运转遵循着固定的规则，根本就抵制有意的计划？

Economists, creating models of trade, have faced a challenge, because their data have derived exclusively from the modern world. Are their models universal or merely reflections of our time? It’s a crucial question, because many in our country would like to change our trading system to protect American jobs and to improve working conditions here and abroad. The archives of Kanesh have proved to be the greatest single source of information about trade from an entirely premodern milieu.

创建贸易模型的经济学家们因仅能从现代世界里获得数据而面临着挑战。他们的模型是普适的抑或仅是我们这个时代的反映？这个问题很关键，因为我国的很多人想改变我们的贸易体制，以保护美国的就业或是改善国内国外的工作环境。卡内什档案被证实是有关发生于彻底的前现代环境中的贸易的最大单一信息来源。

In a beautifully detailed new book — ‘‘Ancient Kanesh,’’ written by a scholar of the archive, Mogens Trolle Larsen, to be published by Cambridge University Press later this year — we meet dozens of the traders of Kanesh and their relatives back home in Assur. Larsen has been able to construct family trees, detailing how siblings and cousins, parents and spouses, traded with one another and often worked against one another. We meet struggling businessmen, like Assur-idi, and brilliant entrepreneurs, like Shalim-Assur, who built a wealthy dynasty that lasted generations.

在一本精美详细的新书《古代卡内什》中，我们将遇到数十个返回亚述的卡内什商人和他们的亲戚。此书由研究该档案的学者 Mogens Trolle Larsen著述，今年晚些时候将由剑桥大学出版社出版。 从Larsen描绘出的家族中，可以看到兄弟姊妹和他们的表亲之间，父母和夫妻之间相互交易的细节，以及时常针锋相对的细节。我们遇到了奋争的商人，比如Assur-idi，和杰出的企业家，比如建立了延续数代的富裕世家的Shalim-Assur。

In 2003, while covering the war in Iraq, I traveled to many ancient archaeological sites; the huge burial mounds, the carvings celebrating kings as relatives to the gods, all gave the impression of a despotic land in which a tiny handful of aristocrats and priests enjoyed dictatorial control. But the Kanesh documents show that at least some citizens had enormous power over their own livelihoods, achieving wealth and power through their own entrepreneurial endeavors.

2003年，在报道伊拉克战争时，我走访了很多古代考古遗址；其中有巨大的坟岗，为礼赞作为神灵亲属的国王而做的雕刻，所有这些给人一种很深的印象：在这片专制的土地上，只有极少数贵族和祭司享受着独裁统治。但是卡内什的文件显示，至少有一些市民对他们自己的生计拥有巨大的支配力，并通过他们自己创业的努力获得了财富和实力。

The details of daily life are amazing, but another scholar, Gojko Barjamovic, of Harvard, realized that the archive also offered insight into something potentially more compelling. Many of the texts enumerate specific business details: the price of goods purchased and sold, the interest rate on debt, the costs of transporting goods and the various taxes in the many city-states that the donkey caravans passed on the long journey from Assur to Kanesh. Like most people who have studied Kanesh, Barjamovic is an Assyriologist, an expert in ancient languages and culture. Earlier this year, he joined some economists, as well as some other Assyriologists and archaeologists, on a team that analyzed Kanesh’s financial statistics.

日常生活的细节是令人惊叹的，不过另一位来自哈佛的学者，Gojko Barjamovic，意识到这些档案还提供了一些有可能更引人注目的东西。其中许多文本列举了具体的贸易细节：某一货物买进和卖出的价格，借债的利息，货物运输费用，以及驴队在亚述与卡内什之间长途跋涉中所经过的众多城邦的不同税费。像许多研究卡内什的人一样，Barjamovic是一个亚述学家，是古代语言和文化专家。今年早些时候，他加入了一支由经济学家、其他亚述学家和考古学家的组成的团队，对卡内什的金融统计数据进行分析。

The picture that emerged of economic life is staggeringly advanced. The traders of Kanesh used financial tools that were remarkably similar to checks, bonds and joint-stock companies. They had something like venture-capital firms that created diversified portfolios of risky trades. And they even had structured financial products: People would buy outstanding debt, sell it to others and use it as collateral to finance new businesses. The 30 years for which we have records appear to have been a time of remarkable financial innovation.

团队分析描绘出的经济生活画面先进得令人惊奇。卡内什的商人们使用的金融工具，与当今的支票、债券和股份公司十分相似。他们有些东西就像风险投资公司，创建了针对有风险贸易的多元化投资组合。他们甚至有结构性理财产品：人们会购买未偿债务，将其卖给他人或用于抵押以便为新业务融资。我们手里有记录的这30年表现为一个有着卓越的金融创新的时期。

It’s impossible not to see parallels with our own recent past. Over the 30 years covered by the archive, we see an economy built on trade in actual goods — silver, tin, textiles — transform into an economy built on financial speculation, fueling a bubble that then pops. After the financial collapse, there is a period of incessant lawsuits, as a central government in Assur desperately tries to come up with new regulations and ways of holding wrongdoers accountable (though there never seems to be agreement on who the wrongdoers are, exactly). The entire trading system enters a deep recession lasting more than a decade. The traders eventually adopt simpler, more stringent rules, and trade grows again.

与我们自己最近的过去相比，我们不可能看不到其中的相似之处。在档案记录的30年里，我们看到一个建立在实体货物上的经济——银、锡、纺织品——转变为一个建立在金融投机上的经济，这样的转变助长了泡沫，随后又突然破灭。金融崩溃后，一度曾充满了诉讼。亚述的中央政府不顾一切地试图拿出新的法规和办法，来迫使那些肇事者承担责任（虽然关于谁是真正的肇事者似乎从未有过一致意见）。整个贸易体系陷入了一个10年以上的严重衰退。商人们最终采取了更简单、更严格的规则，由此贸易再次增长。

In 1962 A.D., as our modern era of globalization was just beginning, the economist Jan Tinbergen — who would later share the first Nobel in economic science — noted something curious: Trade within and between countries followed a mathematical formula. He called it the Gravity Model, sort of an E=mc2 for global business. It comes with an imposing formula: Fij = G(Mi x Mj)/Dij. Which, simplified, means that trade between two markets will equal the size of the two markets multiplied together and then divided by their distance. (The model gets its name from its mathematical similarity to the equation in physics that describes gravitational pull.)

公元1962年，正当我们这个现代的全球化时代开始之际，经济学家Jan Tinbergen——后来的第一届诺贝尔经济学科学奖获得者之一——注意到一些令人好奇的事：国内贸易和国际贸易遵循一个数学公式。他称之为引力模型，有点像全球贸易的E=mc2。这是个气势宏伟的公式：Fij = G(Mi x Mj)/Dij。简单的说，就是两个市场之间的贸易等于两个市场规模相乘然后除以两个市场之间的距离。（该模型因与物理学中描述引力的公式数学上相似而得名）

Since Tinbergen first published his finding, others have tested it on thousands of trade routes around the modern world, as well as on trade records going back a couple of centuries. In extreme cases (for example, trade between warring countries or during periods of sanction), the formula can fail to predict the volume of trade, but over all the model works extremely well. It’s a striking finding, suggesting that, for all the debate about trade agreements and currency rates, import duties and World Trade Organization disputes, trade tends to follow its own rules.

自Tinbergen 首次公布他的发现以来，很多人已在数以千计的环绕现代世界的贸易路径、以及几个世纪以来的贸易记录上对之进行了验证测试。在极端情况下（例如交战国之间或是制裁期间的贸易），这个公式在预测贸易量时可能失败。但总的来说，该模型运作十分出色。这是个令人震惊的发现，这表明，不管人们在有关贸易协定和货币汇率、进口关税和世贸组织争端等方面如何争论不休，贸易仍趋于遵循其自身的法则。

Economists were drawn to the Kanesh archive because it offered an unprecedented chance to see how well the Gravity Model applied in an economy entirely unlike our own. This was trade conducted via donkey, through a land of independent city-states whose legal and cultural systems were totally dissimilar to any we know. But still, the model held up: Ali Hortacsu, a University of Chicago economist on the Kanesh team, says that the trade figures between Assur and Kanesh matched the formula almost perfectly. ‘‘It was a very nice surprise,’’ he told me.

卡内什档案之所以吸引经济学家们，是因为它提供了一个前所未有的机会，来验证当引力模型应用到一种完全不同于现有情形的经济体时的契合程度。这种贸易借助驴进行，经过一片由独立城邦组成的地区，这些城邦的法律和文化体系与我们所知的一切均完全不同。只是，这样的贸易情况下该模型仍然屹立：Ali Hortacsu，卡内什团队的芝加哥大学经济学家，说亚述和卡内什之间的贸易数据，与上述公式匹配得近乎完美。“是个十分不错的惊喜。”他跟我说。

The Gravity Model may seem like bad news for people who want the economy to be fairer. I have spoken to countless activists and concerned friends who see global trade as a choice, something a specific set of politicians and businesses decided to impose on the rest of us, through all those confusing acronymic trade deals: GATT, Nafta and (probably, soon) the T.P.P. To me, though, the model suggests that these deals have less impact than either their boosters or their detractors imagine.

对那些想要更多经济公平的人们来说，引力模型可不像是啥好消息。我曾跟无数将全球贸易视为一种选择的活动家和关心公共事务的朋友们交谈过，他们认为全球贸易只是特定政治家或者企业决定通过一堆令人迷糊的首字母缩写贸易协定：GATT、Nafta 和（可能很快就签订的）T.P.P.而强加给其余人的。然而对我来说，这个模型表明：此类协定对于贸易的影响，比支持者或是批评者想象的都要少。

There is a natural tendency for different regions to trade at fairly predictable volumes. However much politicians might want to change those outcomes, they have only crude tools at their disposal: They can stop trade through blockades, slow it through tariffs or try to jump-start it with trade agreements. What they can’t do, at least not reliably, is shape it with precision to achieve their preferred outcomes.

不同地区之间以基本可以预测的总量发生贸易，这是一种自然趋势。无论政治家多么想要改变其结果，他们都只有一些很原始的工具可用：通过封锁停止贸易，通过海关放缓贸易，或是通过贸易协议助推贸易。他们无法做到的，或者至少无法确切做到的，是有目的的精确塑造贸易以达到他们期望的结果。

But despite trade’s intractability, we still have a lot of room to address the impact of trade on our economy. Trade with China and other nations may be all but inevitable, but growing wealth inequality and disproportionate pain (blue-collar workers losing their jobs, investors reaping a fortune) are not. There is much we can do within our borders to address the unequal impact of global trade. We can educate children for more competitive careers, train displaced workers for new industries or even directly compensate those who fail to benefit from global trade.

尽管贸易难以驾驭，我们仍然有巨大的空间来处理贸易对我们经济的影响。与中国或者其他国家的贸易可能不可避免，但可避免的是日益增加的财富不均和不成比例的痛苦（蓝领工人失业，投资者获得利益）。在国界以内解决全球贸易导致的不平等，我们可做的事太多了。我们可以教育自己的孩子，以利于其从事更具有竞争力的职业，培训下岗工人进入新产业，甚至可以直接赔偿那些在全球贸易中丧失利益的人们。

That, in fact, is what the people of Assur did, 4,000 years ago, as Barjamovic pointed out to me. Trade brought enormous wealth to a dozen or so families. But rather than hold all of it for themselves, the wealthy were made to redistribute a high percentage of their earnings through taxes and religious foundations that used the money for the public good. This way, the wealth created by trading with Kanesh made nearly everybody — at least every free citizen — better off.

就像Barjamovic向我指出的那样，这些其实就是亚述人在4000年前所做的。贸易给数十个家庭带来了巨大的财富。但富人们并未将所有的财富据为己有，通过交税和交纳用于公益的宗教基金，他们将自己所获财富中的很大比例进行了再分配。以这种方式，通过与卡内什进行贸易而创造的财富，几乎使每一个人——至少是每一个自由城民——都过得更好了。

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