It Came from Mesopotamia!: Urban History (Part One)

In this lecture

• Covers the origin of cities about 5500 years ago through Industrialization

– This obviously covers many different eras

• NOTE: Earlier eras do not entirely disappear just because rulers change or empires fall

– The infrastructure and land use preferences often remain, long after any particular political configuration.

– Furthermore, past eras often have long reaching effects on the urban system (both within countries and region, as well as globally)

» Colonialism, for example, is (mostly) long gone but, its impact on cities’ internal land use, and the hierarchy of the world urban system, remain profound

• Explains what makes a place urban

• Explains preconditions for cities to emerge

• Describes earliest locations of cities as well as city state empires of antiquity

• Describes why Europe developed city-based economy and how industrialization impacts this.

Definition of City

• Though the book gives several definitions of what separated cities from earlier human settlements, but the most complete is V. Gordon Childe’s

• Size: Significantly larger settlements than b4

• Structure of Population: Includes…

– Occupational Specialization (crafts people, priests, artists, administrators

– Residence not kinship defines citizenships

– Social stratification

• Public Capital: Spending by authority on monuments and public works

• Records and Exact Science: Need to understand a society when not everyone was immediately known to you led to writing and math

• Trade: Though trade existed before, establishing and defending permanent trade routes important to sustain cities

Preconditions for Urbanization

– Transition from mobile food collecting (hunting, fishing, gathering) to agriculture

• This regularity and increased volume of food allowed more population density

– A favorable (but not too favorable) environment with regular water supply, mild climate, manageable topography, and fertile soil

• Often the reason given why many Pacific islands were fairly non-hierarchical, with small villages and limited organized ag is that fish and native edible plants were so plentiful versus small populations that cities were never necessary

– Innovations like water management (ie irrigation), selective plant and animal breeding, food transport and storage

– Complex organizational structures mediating exchange among villages

Theories of Urban Origins

• Agricultural Surplus: Only after farmers produced more than needed to feed families could a fixed population be supported; only after surplus was complex administration needed; only after administrators emerged did monuments emerge and the need for craft people

– People argue against it as too simplistic; say that bigger changes had to take place in society for administration to emerge than just surplus

• Hydrological Factors: Most early cities emerged along rivers than flood annually and controlling that flood key to agriculture; this required cooperation and thus society emerged

– Again argued as too simplistic and out of the blue; also does not explain Meso-American cities which did not emerge on rivers; many societies manage flood with out cities

Theories of Origins (cont.)

• Population Pressures – Increasing populations led to competition for mobile resources, which led people to settle on more marginal land and develop agriculture in order to feed themselves

• Trading Requirements – Argue long-distance trade expanded first, then that required standard meeting places with standard rules

• Defense needs – Related to population pressure, cities emerged to defend scarce resources (although not all early cities walled)

• Religious causes – Argues that cities grew around altars and only religious imperative could have forced the transformations in society necessary for cities

• Comprehensive explanation – Most people now accept it was a combination of these factors and that probably the origin of each of the early urban centers was slightly different.

Earliest towns and cities

• Developed independently in five regions of the world (also roughly the sites of earliest ag).

• Many of them had both planned districts and unplanned (also called organic) districts

• Mesopotamia (between Tigris and Euphrates): Rich alluvial soils (ie soils left by river flooding) home to competing, fortified city Sumerians states like Ur from about 3000 BCE onwards (although earliest emerge around 3500 BCE)

• Had social stratification (including a military class), massive irrigation projects, well established trade routes

• Around 1885 BCE, the Babylonians get control

• Ur around 1700 BCE had…

– A wall, 25 ft high and 77 ft thick oval shaped about .75 mile at its longest

– Center was for palaces of royal officials; northwest corner was religious area that had the tower/temple, courts, tax collection office and home to the rulers and priests

– Rest was suburban, largely organic (meaning unplanned), with lots of courtyard homes that let in light and circulated air

Earliest (cont.)

• Egypt (The Nile Valley): Again rich alluvial soil, but unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt was internally peaceful and hard to invade, thus very stable

– Cities did not get as large, most laborers lived and worked in agricultural villages

– Their cities had fewer defenses, and were less permanent, with capitals moved at the whims of each pharaoh (including Thebes, Akhetaten)

– Few public buildings, houses left – only the tombs and monuments

– Akhetaten has best preserved urban footprint

– Center was walled temple and palace; military, storage and government nearby; most of rest was scattered slums with two better organized suburbs to north and south, plus a workman’s camp to the west.

– Blocks were rectangular; typical middle class house had walled exterior with a porch and central living room

Earliest (cont.)

• Indus Valley/Harappan (now Pakistan)

– Again fertile alluvial (flood) soils and irrigation; two capitals with one ruler around 2500 BCE (Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro)

• Both capitals had the same town planning approach with a grid and a citadel to the west of the city (mostly administrative and storage, not religious)

• Little is known about the civilization because its symbol script has not been deciphered.

• North China/Huang He/Shang

– Irrigated agriculture (although a much moister area than other early sites)

– Capital at An’yang, which had a central palace; houses for the rich on platforms, the poor in pits; all found structures oriented towards north

Earliest (cont.)

• Mesoamerica

– Only around 500 BCE, societies based on corn (thus no need for metal plows or draft animals or wheels). Also had very advanced astronomy.

• Most of these civilizations built pyramid structures with broad plazas fronting them – first on Monte Alban (just outside Oaxaca) by Zapotecs, later Teotihuacan of the Valley of Mexico and the Mayan cities of the Yucatan

• Rulers, military and wealthy near center in stone buildings; crafts people on outskirts in wood structures

• Many of these settlements also contained a court for the much-debated (but still little understood) “ball game.”

Early expansion

• This was uneven, in fits and starts based on climates, resources, plague, inertia (the great killer of empires, when investments become neglected, the army too small), etc.

– Persians first to spread cities, from Mesopotamia to Central Asia

– Between 2000 BCE and 1200 BCE Assyrians moved from Mesopotamia to Syria and Turkey; Mycenaeans to greater Greece; Canaanites in Israel/Lebanon; Phoenicians in North Africa and Spain

– After Harappans sacked; no cities in South Asia until Maurya in 400 BCE who then bring cities to Southeast Asia; Arab Muslims bring new city types starting around 700 AD to North Africa, East Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia

• Around 800, the Hindu Khmer Empire emerges (Cambodia), with its capital at Angkor

– It had the biggest sprawl of any pre-industrial city (3000 sq kilometer, like modern LA) and only Rome had had more people until the emergence of modern London

Early Expansion (cont.)

– In China, Chao dynasty moves cities to Yangtze River around 1100 BCE, Han and Mongols spread cities throughout East Asia

– Osaka is first city in Japan around 400, starting in 800’s Kyoto remains a capital for almost 1000 years

– In Mesoamerica, Aztecs and Incas arrive much later on the scene, near the time of the Spanish; Maya had already faded greatly

• Tenochtitlan (Aztec capital), in terms of engineering, planning and aesthetics may have been the most advanced city of pre-modernity (or at least of its day).

Silk Road

• Started as trade routes internal to Mesopotamia and China which eventually joined and made one trans-Asiatic route from 500 BCE to 1500 AD

– From Xian in the East to Constantinople in West, with loops around the Takla Makan Desert and Pamir Mountains

• Around 100 BCE the great empires of Rome, Han, and Parthian (Persia) all participated in the road

– Silk, jewels, ceramics, spices went towards the West; with smaller amounts of gold, ivory, cotton and wool going east

– Ideas about language, religion, art (including paper making), spread along the route

• Near its end, Islam dominated the route (thus the Turkic speaking Uyghurs in China)

• Europe in fact concentrated on naval power to bypass the land power the road represented

– Caravans could be up to 1000 camels, need to defend them at night led to growth of cities like Samarkand