Treats and treaty

Any prospect of a lasting peace treaty has to be tempered by the knowledge that this form of agreement goes back to 1283BC and the Egyptian-Hittite Peace Treaty or to the border agreement between the rulers of the city-states of Lagash and Umma in Mesopotamia in 2100BC.

Four thousand years of war would give anyone pause as to the efficacy of international agreements if peace accords are anything to go by, though one must allow for a number of border changes to occur over that time, significantly altering the landscape and affecting allegiances.

Trade has taken place for most of our recorded history. Obsidian was bartered  in the Stone Age.
Long distance commerce has been taking place for 150,000 years

The exchange of currency for favours is rooted deep in our past and slaves have been kept in the earliest records circa 1760BC
Slavery has been outlawed completely but human trafficking continues.

Homo erectus migrated across the Levantine Corridor and Horn of Africa about 1.8 million years ago, settling in Eurasia. Ancestors evolved into modern humans 200,000 years ago in Africa. 125,000 years ago, Homo sapiens sapiens reached the Near East from where they spread through Asia and Europe.

Refugees  were fleeing persecution and danger 3,500 years ago, during the flourishing of the great empires.

The Ancient Egyptians performed diagnosis, prognosis and medical examination. The Ancient Greeks added medical ethics with the Hippocratic Oath dating to 5th Century BCE.

The odd epidemic was enough to encourage cooperation in disease control.

Opium growth and use dates to 3,400 years ago when the opium poppy was cultivated in lower Mesopotamia.

The earliest law we have evidence for is The Code of Lipit-Ishtar (dated to 1860BC) The law courts of Athens drove society in the 4th and 5th century BC

True justice, while evolving from earlier legal systems, did not arrive until the 1200s: trial by jury, the right to face one's accuser, and swearing an oath were introduced as norms.

Intellectual cooperation is more difficult to establish since the further back one goes, the more simple and mechanistic is the assistance. Do we measure the engagement of the intellect by the standards of the day?