CibbuanoWhy did people decide to live in cities?
January 8th 2008 08:35
Why indeed? Why did we decide to abandon the hunter-gatherer system and pack ourselves into crowded cities, full of plague and sickness?
The original idea was that hunters moved into cities to become farmers, and that the stability of the city was ideal for a large number of farmers to work effectively. The article discusses research from the 90s that points to a very different idea:
"Earlier this century, archaeologists thought they had the answer: The rise of agriculture required early farmers to stay near their crops and animals. But these new excavations are challenging the long-held assumption that the first settlements and the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and animal domestication were part of a single process...
...these explanations are too simple and that other factors--including, possibly, a shared cultural revolution that preceded the rise of farming--might also have played a key role."
The site, in Turkey, was first discovered in the 50s, and it shocked the anthropological world - it was over 4 000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids, and was the oldest large human settlement ever found.
The surpluses from agriculture really pushed human civilization forward... with food in ready supply, people could concentrate on thinking, reason and art.
"Thus the earliest cities in Mesopotamia--such as Uruk--were made possible by agricultural surpluses that allowed some people to quit farming and become full-time artisans, priests, or members of other professions. Meanwhile, the farmers who provided food for these urban centers continued to live in outlying villages. "A key defining feature of a town or city is that farmers don't live in them," says Patton."
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