Once the right infrastructure is put in place, many businesses place so much trust in their commercial shelves that they often do not think about just how important they are for the smooth operation of their business.

This is, of course, largely the point. Outside of making the right choice of racking and installing it in the most efficient way, shelving is something that is largely quietly appreciated. If it is being remarked upon, that can be a problem in itself.

However, shelving is an often-unsung historical hero, particularly when it comes to the history of business and industry.

Shelving was a large part of why the Arsenal of Venice was the most efficient and well-regarded shipbuilder in the world for centuries and ensured that the grain in the public warehouses of Ancient Rome would not spoil.

Effective shelving is a quiet but vital part of history, one which every business writes, but one of the oldest shelving units ever found not only made history but also preserved it in a way never thought possible.

Shelving And The Lost City Of Ebla

The ancient city of Ebla (also known as Tell Mardikh) was the power centre of one of Syria’s oldest kingdoms, one that was so old to be effectively lost to history, were it not for the shelving units that were commonly used in its bureaucratic and political hubs.

It was such an important trading centre in the Near East that it was destroyed and rebuilt twice, and in all three instances, it retained that position as the heart of a vast network of trade arteries that reached as far as Cyprus and Afghanistan.

In the second half of the third millennium BC, known retrospectively as the Age of the Archives, a location known as Palace G was the home of a wide range of documents stored on clay tablets, containing a mix of stories, rituals and a vast store of economic records, housed on solid, partly recessed wooden shelves.

Palace G was burned down around 2300 BC, according to archaeologists who ultimately had shelves to thank for finding these answers.

Whilst the details of the cause of the fire have never been agreed upon, with theories ranging from a natural disaster to the conquest by Sargon of Akkad or his son Narim-Sin, the nature of the destruction and the shelving managed to preserve history rather than destroy it.

Clay tablets can be baked to make them solid and extremely hard-wearing, and the nature of the strong wooden shelving and the nature of their eventual collapse pancaked and kept the tablets in order and in remarkably good condition.

When Ebla was rediscovered in 1974 by a team of archaeologists led by Paolo Matthaie, he discovered on over 1800 complete tablets an astonishing amount of information about how people lived and how people did business in the Early Bronze Age.

There were many records of trades between Ebla and other nearby kingdoms such as Ugarit, Canaan and Ugarit, and even a list of beers that were made and sold both inside and outside of the city walls.

It also revealed how the Sumerian language developed, being an education centre training people to be scribes, and its transition from a language made up of unspeakable logograms to one that could be both written and spoken.

All of this would not have been possible were it not for a set of hard-wearing shelves, which proves how important the choice of racking has always been throughout the history of business.