A Comparative Study of Prices and Wages in Royal Inscriptions, Administrative Texts and Mathematical Texts in the Old Babylonian Kingdom of Larsa

International audienceMathematical knowledge and practices in Ancient Mesopotamia vary according to the milieus under consideration. This paper deals with the numerical data—prices and wages—used in texts produced in different contexts and for different purposes. It focuses on the corpus of the kingdom of Larsa (Tell es-Senkereh), in southern Mesopotamia, for which we have a large number of texts of various genres for the Old Babylonian period (twentieth-eighteenth centuries BCE). Three different types of texts that mention prices and wages are taken into account: royal inscriptions, mathematical texts and administrative texts. A comparison between prices and wages recorded in royal inscriptions and those provided by administrative and economic texts show that kings wanted to control prices and claimed to pay high wages to their workers, by providing data which are different from those found in texts of practice. In contrast, collections of laws reflect the determination of the sovereign to act as a just king. The numerical values mentioned in these texts are similar to those in the administrative texts and the mathematical texts which also rely on real numerical values. Since mathematical problems were inspired by the organization of the work for large construction projects ordered by kings at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennia BCE, they also rely on real numerical values

Environmental change and (Im) mobility in the South

In the past 3 decades, environmental and climate change have been perceived by many as severe threats to developing countries that also destabilize development efforts. Among many other challenges, settlement in coastal areas is exposed particularly to the impacts of a changing global climate. Many fear that states like Kiribati, the Maldives, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu might first become inhabitable and then disappear for good. The chapter looks into the relationship between environmental change and migration. It takes up major viewpoints and arguments and looks into potential environmental reasons that make people move. To get a better understanding of migration processes, the relationships between environmental change, livelihood security and migration are discussed. The chapter concentrates on challenges in the Pacific Islands region, where coping with, adapting to and recovering from environmental change and natural hazards are closely linked to people’s strategies to avert risk and create human security. Human insecurity, risk, and social, economic and environmental stress can better be managed when people diversify their sources of livelihood. Migration is embedded in such strategies. Societies of the Pacific Islands have a long and rich history of migration; a history, however, that never saw people of this part of the world as refugees. They always have been migrants that contributed to the destination countries they moved to. The idea of becoming environmental or climate change refugees is rather unwelcoming to the people of the Pacific Islands. They perceive that refugees and asylum-seekers in their direct neighborhoods are treated like people without strong rights. To help Pacific Islanders to prepare for a potentially more risky future means to help them acquire the skills that make them welcome citizens of future destination countries