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“Where and when did people build the first city?” sounds like a simple enough question. But archaeologists have been arguing about it for more than 70 years. Lots of people came up with the idea of cities, but for all kinds of reasons, they didn’t necessarily pull it off. Today, we’re going to explore the idea of why cities fail, and why living communally in cities isn’t inevitable for humans.
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Free Jericho 🇪🇺
Not to mention the early cities that existed under the cities that still exist & have been absolutely built over…
"Worth its salt" is probably still a saying for good reason.
Only about 7% of site has been excavated- wait for more excavation to glean fuller understanding
You dropped the ball not talking about caral supe
BCE : Before Carney Existed 🙂
1:36 hey, it's ye olde @natswhatireckon
If you don’t burn it all down every so often, governments, politicians, and monarchies start to pop up…
Seems like we're basing the lack of water in Gobleki Tepe on what it looks like today. As recently as the 10th century AD, there is evidence of higher local moisture. Seems like a distinct possibility that the area was wetter 11500 years ago and perhaps the abandonment related to the area becoming too dry to support the population. I believe we've seen this model in a number of locations across the ancient world.
thee paleolithic was mostly a golden age. agriculture is a violent glitch. gardening the environment is the only way to fix it.
councils can easily be comprised of delegates, just ask the quakers.
ursula le guine was inspired by the Cucuteni-Trypillia but also the greeks for her sci fi novel "planet of exile"
saying a city needs hierarchy, because ours have them, is like saying a city needs AI because some future city has them, meaning we are no longer cities. the key concept is people living together, that aren't all familiar with each other, no?
Cucuteni- trypillia is a name of a culture, not of a settlement. This culture occupied an area of ca. 350000 km2 from Basov in the heart of Romanua to Kyiv or Kiev in the heart of Ukraine. From 20000 to 46000 people may have inhabited this area in many settlements. This area was basically rural. To state that there was a single settlement with 46000 inhabitants is a mistake. It must be remembered that by the period mentioned in the video, the world population was less than 500 million people. Settlements with populations as mentioned for the so-called cucuteni settlement, with no specific location mentioned, wouldn't appear until well into the first millenium BC and in locations corresponding to the mediterranean, mesopitamia and china.
What about in China
Why isn't historian in the title?
The modern urban revolution begins in Eridu, with CatalHoyuk contibuting to the origins of pottery Neolithic Tigris river cultural continuoum. Eridu was the survivor of many S. Mesoptamian flood disasters because it was build in swamp with a sandstone ridge between itself and the Euphrates. The first raised platform becomes a temple complex in 4400 BCE which precedes Uruk culture by 400 years. The kingship according to lore was taken from Eridu by the king of the walled city of smiths (which has never been uncovered) and Uruk is a later copper age development as resource gathering puts the Euphrates in greater focus.
From Ubaid 1 – Eridu Mesopotamian civilization is the result. This civilization gives us writing, mathematics, rectilinear geometry, astronomy/astrology, our sense of time, the 6*60 degree circle, earliest algebra, earliest version of the quadratic formula, earliest version of heaven, the earliest multitier pantheon, the earliest map, the earliest historic records, …….
My man, why would you call a city that lasted 1500 years an "experiment"? I know you're aware that's 6 times longer than the US has even existed for.
Thanks for saying it's a he/him. I thought he somewhat looked like a man but I wasn't really sure
These are just the first cities to use stone, as the only ancient cities that we're aware of all have stone remains. Ancient cities that didn't use stone are lost to time and some may have been much older than stone cities.
Always pretty great. Thanks.