2b.
Origins of Cities

The First Cities

Cities first appeared about 7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and China. They may have existed in other places or before this time, but it is difficult to find the remains of settlements that were not built with lasting materials, such as stones and bricks. One of the first cities was Ur in Mesopotamia, the capital of the Sumerian empire. It dates from 3,800 BCE (the early bronze age) but there is evidence of human presence on this site from 6,500 BCE. When it existed as a city, Ur was on the Persian Gulf. With receding water over the millennia, the site is now 230 kms from the Gulf.  The map in Figure 2.1 presents the contemporary shores of the Persian Gulf, not the ones that existed about 7,000 years ago when they reached Ur.

Between 2030 and 1980 BCE, according to estimates, Ur had a population of approximately 65,000. At the time, this city would have accounted for 0.1% of the world population. Today, a city with a similar proportion of the world population would have 8 million residents. The main feature of Ur was a massive ziggurat. The city also comprised specialized neighbourhoods, some for craft-people, others for merchants.

1. Surplus Food

We now turn to the main features of Ur, as revealed by archeological searches, starting with surplus food.  Without the fertile valley in which Ur is located, it would have been impossible for the Sumerians to produce more food than needed to feed people gathering, hunting or growing it. Surplus food production is the main condition for people being able to settle in cities and engage in non-agricultural occupations. If all the time of everyone is devoted to gathering, hunting or growing food, as in early tribal societies and agricultural settlements, it is impossible to achieve more than very rudimentary forms of social and functional differentiation. The need for all hands for agriculture and hunting rules out the concentration of people in cities and the carrying out therein of non-food producing activities.  

This is why urbanization follows the beginnings of agriculture by a number of millennia. The shift to agriculture meant that nomadic people became sedentary, a first condition to urbanization. But this condition was not sufficient. It took this time for agricultural knowledge and techniques to improve and allow the production of surplus food. As surplus food production was low, Ur was dependent for its existence on food originating from across an empire that covered a large part of the fertile valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.  

Ur enjoyed an unusually favourable location. It was downstream from the two rivers, which made it possible to bring food easily to the city by boat. At the same time, being on the shores of the Persian Gulf allowed trading with many other regions, including the Indus valley.  

Different functions took place in Ur. It served as a religious centre as demonstrated by the offerings taking place on the ziggurat. The city was also a production hub and a market, as evidenced by the artefacts found on the site. Finally, Ur was the administrative centre of the Sumerian empire.  

2. Irrigation Systems

Agriculture was largely based on irrigation. The administration of the irrigation systems required a powerful and efficient involvement of engineers and administrators to assure the construction and maintenance of these systems. Amounts of water needed to be allotted and taxes collected to provide for the building, maintenance and operation of irrigation systems. The irrigation systems led to the development of an effective state and bureaucracy, which would have been concentrated in Ur. The administration and management of the irrigation system and the resulting bureaucracy may have been instrumental in the development of writing and mathematics, which then opened the way for many other applications, including cultural expression. 

3. Competition, Tools and Arms

What caused the fall of Ur and of the Sumarian empire? In a later module, we will consider a field of investigation called collapsology, which is dedicated to the decline and fall of civilizations. The surplus production of food in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys declined due to the salinization of soil over time. Hence, the foremost condition for the existence of any urban settlement, including Ur, disappeared. Another factor of decline was competition between cities and civilizations. There was no accessible iron ore in the Sumerian empire, which meant that as the iron age spread, it lagged behind other civilizations in terms of tools and arms.  

The surplus production of food allowed people to engage in other activities, and many of these people congregated in cities. But as long as the surplus was low, urban population remained small. A surplus of 10 percent meant that only one person out of ten could engage in other activities than food production and potentially live in cities. Even with a large rural area under its control, a city would still be small. Despite a large rural hinterland, we have seen that around 2,000 BCE, the population of Ur reached only 65,000, making it probably the largest city of the time.   

But a little more than 2,000 years later, a city may have reached, according to some estimates, 1.5 million population. This was due partly to increased agricultural productivity, but mainly to the fact that this city, Rome, was the capital of an empire that included much of the Mediterranean basin and a large part of Europe and of the middle east. It could draw the food surplus from an unprecedently large catchment area. In the contemporary world, thanks to high food productivity, more than half of the population lives in cities. In Canada, where only 1.7 percent of workers are employed in the agricultural sector, the proportion of the population that is urban exceeds 80 percent. 

4. Social Differentiation

The production of surplus food has fostered social differentiation, which in turn has had effects on the form urbanization takes. The existence of surplus gave rise to a class system whereby some people acquired the means to appropriate and control the surplus. This was the case of the aristocracy, landowners, religious leaders. The food surplus was also instrumental in labour specialization, allowing people to engage in tasks other than food production. This was the case of the military, merchants, crafts people, architects, engineers, etc. The form of cities, from their early days, reflected this social stratification and functional specialization. There were places of cult, palaces, garrisons and fortifications, marketplaces, shops and residential areas housing different social groups. Social stratification and functional specialization are of course still prominent in the structure of contemporary cities.