I’ve been on a bit of a human history journey here lately, basically just jumping around various dates and eras to see what we know about the people of the time.
What occurs to me and what I haven’t come across yet, is how do towns and cities even get started? If I have come across that, I didn’t rightly understand what I was reading.
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Take a little journey. You are a hunter/gatherer leaving Africa for the first time. You move up to the shore of the Mediterranean, and find fertile soil.
Over time, you develop skills to actually plant the crops you need for food. You learn to domesticate animals. But you are still nomadic. You continue north.
As these skills develop, you begin to create some levels of permanent settlements, where you can keep your domesticated animals and tend to your crops. Other people move in near you. There are even community built sites (Gobekli Teppe) so groups can gather. But the nomadic life is still part of your understanding.
You move north to find new places to settle. But run into impassable mountains. You follow them East until you hit a river. Farther east is more mountains, so you follow the river south. And you wind up in an incredible river valley, with fertile soil and access to everything you could need. Farther on, you hit a sea, so your nomadic journey is at an end. You settle in and make your home in that river valley.
More people join you. There is nowhere else for them to go, and the land is perfect. Settlements get larger. They begin to join together. There begins to be cooperation between neighboring settlements. Society grows to the point where people can specialize. Not everyone needs to farm, because the farmers can support everyone. Not everyone needs to hunt, because there is enough food for everyone.
People begin to invent. They build houses. They take up trades. Society begins to become more substantial. People even have more time for leisure activities and philosophizing. Some people learn how to administrate and organize society around religious centers, and the settlements grow. Sooner or later, you have a city. You call it Uruk. And there is a neighboring one called Ur. And Eridu. You have priests and kings. You have a society. Then it’s all downhill from there.
As a note, this is generic for ELI5. The first actual city appears to be in Turkey. More of an urban area than Golbekli Teppe. It formed in much the same way as I described here, but I skipped over it to get to the importance of Uruk, Ur, and Eridu.
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