ABSTRACT
The earliest civilizations were established by the late fourth and the third millennia BC in parts of Asia and North Africa. The three large alluvial systems of the Tigris-Euphrates, the Nile and the Indus supported three great ancient civilizations. These communities formed part of a unified economic system, in which markets and trade, communications, currency and a range of services were all present. The growing prosperity that followed agricultural improvements led to population growth and there began to be fears that yet further population growth would in the end negate the growth in productivity. The emergence of the post-industrial society took place within the living memory of the baby boomer generation' but it is already giving way to a new phase of social and economic development that is widely referred to as the post-scarcity society'. In the final analysis the whole market system will have to adapt as the economics of abundance comes into collision with the economics of sustainability.
