An alternate history of the ancient world, three or four thousand years ago, in which Minoans build a global trading community based on mutual obligation and a trust-but-verify approach to communication. We meet people, human and imperfect people of the steppe, Central America, the North American plains, northwest coast, plus the piratical Sea People who prey on them, and see how the Minoan credo—pay attention, communicate, tell the truth (particularly to yourself), and trust-but-verify—can build a working world in which capitalism, global trade, and fairness are not contradictions in terms. There is still conflict—war and famine, fear and hatred, love and friendship, human dignity and human slavery—because people are people, but it is a marvelous vision of how the world might have been, perhaps once was, and might, still, one day be.
