Some of the necessary preconditions for long distance trades to me would have been some of the basic needs which most merchants covered, like making sure that your way of transportation was properly saddled and fed. But some of the most important preconditions would be safety making sure that you would be protected against dangers from the environment but also from bandits trying to take their products by force. Another key thing they would have been the mapping out the route someone is taking to which would prove to be very essential in having it planned out before someone leaves to their destination, as shown in the book a “a reference to their most famous product, these land based trade routes linked pastoral and agricultural peoples as well as large civilizations on the continents outer rim (see map7.1).”(318) which describes and shows the large surface area that these vendors would have to travel. The last preconditions that i can think of would be vendors who are traveling through these roads would have to be careful because each different location would have a different set of rules which were not universal throughout all of the lands, which would make it very difficult on vendors with different policies in different cities.
Preconditions that I think to be useful for trades in the Americas would be some of the same key ones as the trade routes in the silk road minus the caravans of camels. Since trading would be completely routes wouldn’t be equivalent like the Silk Road’s like its mentioned in the book when they state “... nothing equivalent to the long-distance trade of the Silk, Sea, or Sand roads of the Eastern Hemisphere arose in the Americas, even though local and regional commerce flourished in many places.”(339). Plus the terrain was completely different than the one in Afro-Asia with dense rainforest that connected the two continents which is confirmed in the book when it states “Clearly, direct connections among the various civilizations and cultures of the Americas were less densely woven than in the Afro-Eurasian region.” (338), which forced them to go through Panama compared to the deserts of Asia and Africa which had more open area and didn't force vendors through a bottleneck.
In the Modern economic globalization some logistical issues that might become raised would be ones of tariffs and contraband entering a country. Since in the book its bring up the point that trading is not the same by stating, “Though never completely equal, the economic relationships, of earlier times occurred among much more equivalent units.”(342). Since in the modern era no one region dominates the trade industry but some do carry more weight on the market like India and China. With trading being compared to then and now one thing has stayed the same with no single power having full control over or exercising its political power over major trading networks. Which is backed up with a statement in the book phrasing that “Economic relationships among third-wave civilizations, in short, were more balanced and multicentered than those of the modern era.”(342), which is true considering how trade has changed over the years.
