On 12/17/2012 4:47 PM, John Médaille wrote:
>
> ... This description of the distribution system of ancient Egypt 
> sounds very much like the distribution systems of Summer and Babylon, 
> and indeed, the distribution system of a village tends to be communal 
> rather than market driven. This leads to a thought: do all market 
> systems originate as black markets? Is it something that generally 
> grows up on the fringes of society and trade with foreigners, rather 
> than something at the center of social order, as they are today?
>

John,
There is much in the anthropology literature that addresses your 
questions. The view that trade grew up on the fringes of society is also 
found in Marx.

Karl Polanyi, et al Trade & Market In The Early Empires

Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics

Stanley Diamond In Search Of The Primitive.

Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

George Dalton, "Karl Polanyi's Analysis of Long-Distance Trade and His 
Wider Paradigm," Jeremy A. Sabloff and Clifford Charles 
Lamberg-Karlovsky, Ancient Civilization And Trade.

Éric Tymoigne and John F. Henry, "Primitive Trade Relations: A Proposed 
Solution"


 From Marx:

it is simply wrong to place exchange at the center of communal society as the original, constituent element. It originally appears, rather, in the connection of the different communities with one another, not in the relations between the different members of a single community.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm#4

the exchange of products springs up at the points where different families, tribes, communities, come in contact; for, in the beginning of civilisation, it is not private individuals but families, tribes, &c., that meet on an independent footing. Different communities find different means of production, and different means of subsistence in their natural environment. Hence, their modes of production, and of living, and their products are different. It is this spontaneously developed difference which, when different communities come in contact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products, and the consequent gradual conversion of those products into commodities.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch14.htm