The first cities: origins and development of early urban settlements

Rise of the City

Before humans documented history, the beginning of civilization, humans were primarily were hunter-gatherers. This meant human tribes moved from place to place using only what they were able to obtain from their natural surroundings, and what was seasonal. Historical evidence, though fragmentary, suggests that once humans began domesticating floral and fauna, small villages started domesticating the animals they were hunting and the seeds of the plants they were gathering there was no need to constantly move.

Coming together as a civilization is complex and certainly took generations to move into an actual city or city-state. The likely scenario is that for thousands of years, southern Mesopotamia was home to hunters, fishers, some farmers, but mostly nomads. It is really the establishment of farming (the domestication of plants) that allowed humans to settle in one place long enough to have a society in which people became specialists (potters, bread makers, administrators, builders, etc.). It is also likely that people began to flock together out of protection from enemies, natural disasters, or that extended family groups just became larger and larger until finally they were a community -- and communities merged into cities. In Mesopotamia, the first known "city" as we would call it, was called UR -- and was a collection of dwellings encased in a fortified wall, suggesting that the inhabitants lived together for protection, farming and hunting outside the walls, but coming inside at certain times. As people came together and began to trade and engage in commerce, a few things become necessary: a monetary system (banking) and a way to keep records (writing). Archaeologists believe that one of the earliest examples of this is about 9,000 years old, and signal not just the ability to track the daily economic life, but to begin to share abstract thoughts (Fitzhugh and Habu, eds.).

The Sumerian, or Mesopotamian, civilization is considered the "cradle" of civilization, even though some evidence points to earlier starts in China and India. The name Mesopotamia simply means "land between the rivers" and the civilization utilized the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as a means of commerce and setting up cities. The major differences between these early Sumerians and the hunter-gatherer tribes active in many parts of the world at the time is that people came together to develop shared culture and customs that had a sense of history, a sense of commonality, and a way to keep that civilization and culture alive through writing. Others believe it is the domestication of crops and animals and the specialization of a workforce and, above all, technology, which defines a civilization. Function and stratification of individual duties certainly come into play, but most especially is the ability to plan and think toward the future as a coherent group (Mumford, 1968)..