Prehistoric Era, URBANIZATION

URBANIZATION
 

The founding of cities depends on several factors but none more important than an abundant supply of food and water.  For this reason, in the ancient world it was common  for cities to be located near rivers and coasts. Some examples of this principle at work are the cities of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers in China,  the Indus River in India, and the
Nile River in Egypt. Other  factors can also explain the location  of cities. For example, Constantinople became a thriving  city without either good local farmland or freshwater because of its strategic location.  Aqueducts  and massive cisterns were built to bring in water from afar.
 

Important cities had to be defensible. Examples of ancient sites that could withstand invasion were the Phoenician  city of Tyre, situated  on an island; Corinth in Greece had an acropolis  on a high hill overlooking the harbor; and Petra in present-day Jordan,  located in a desert and reachable  only via a narrow and winding route through a pass. Similarly Chang’an,  ancient capital of China, was protected by nearby  mountain passes that  held back  nomadic  invaders.  Even cities that  did not  have natural defenses could survive, for example,  Sparta,  located on a plain, or Rome, whose seven hills above the Tiber River were not adequate for protection, because both developed formidable armies.
 

Protective Walls and Impressive Monuments. Walls and fortifications protected most ancient cities. One of the oldest cities in the world (7000 b.c.e.), Jericho was known  in the Bible for its reputedly impenetrable walls that  protected the 2,000  people  who lived there,  making  it a large settlement for its day. Other  cities constructed ingenious gates, towers,  and moats  as safeguards  against enemies. Among the cities most famous for their gates were Mycenae  (Agamemnon’s  capital,  1200 b.c.e.), which had a famous “Lion Gate,” and Babylonia, which had its awesome  Ishtar Gate (550 b.c.e.). Both of these gates were as much intended  to impress as to defend.  The Mauryan capital, Pataliputra (200 b.c.e.), reputedly  had 570 towers and a moat. Moats  were also used in Maya cities as early as 250 c.e.
 

Rulers decorated their capital cities with monuments and public works to flaunt their power and impress their  residents  and visitors.  A good example  is the colossal complex  of Teotihuacán (450 c.e.),  located  near  modern-day Mexico  City.  It had  200,000 residents  and  600  pyramid  temples (the largest one 700 feet long at its base, 215 feet high) in the city. Later,  the Aztec described  it as the “Place of the Gods.” The bas-relief monumental art of Nineveh  showed  foreigners  cringing in fear before Sennacherib, Assyria’s king. The Egyptian  pyramids  of Giza were intended  to solidify pharaoh’s image as the keeper of maat, or cosmic balance.  The Parthenon was built by Pericles to demonstrate Athens’s preeminence  among the Greek city-states in the fifth century b.c.e.
 

The armies and laborers  who defended the cities presupposed adequate manpower. Many great states used mercenaries to staff defenses and slaves to labor on public works tasks. The first emperor of China,  who unified the country  in 221 b.c.e., made intolerable demands  on his people to build walls, canals, and roads.  Similarly, in the city of Jerusalem the biblical king Solomon put alien residents  into  servitude  and  taxed  his subjects  to poverty  in order  to build  a temple,  several palaces, and other  huge projects.  Rome relied heavily on the labor  of its slaves, which totaled  one-third of its population by 100 b.c.e.
 

Cities of Myth and Origin. Ur (5000 b.c.e.)  was situated  on the banks of the Euphrates River. Ur was a Mesopotamian religious center for centuries and the site of a famous ziggurat tower, perhaps something  like the Tower  of Babel. Several thousand years later it was cited in the Jewish Bible as the homeland of Abraham. Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (2300  b.c.e.)  were cities on the banks  of the Indus River and its tributary in present-day Pakistan.  Both were well populated and developed according  to an urban  plan.
 

The Shang dynasty built its capitals in the fertile, silt-enriched  lands of the middle Yellow River basin of China. One capital named Ao was surrounded by a wall, 30 feet high and 65 feet wide, that took 19,000 men working  330 days a year for 18 years to build. The pharaohs ruled over Memphis and Thebes on the Nile, and their urban  monuments stood  as testimony  to the power  and prestige of Egypt. According to their own reckoning,  ancient Egyptians felt no need to colonize in this period because they felt that inferior peoples would come to them from abroad for their plentiful resources and superior  culture.
 

Some of the most  spectacular ancient  urban  centers  were in the Americas,  along  the Peruvian coastal plain, the central Andes Mountains, and in Mesoamerica. Each city celebrated its origin with a mythological tale. If a city was newly founded,  it would claim continuity with some other well-known divine figures and traditions to buttress  its quest for respect.

Differing reasons attracted people to live in cities, and they debated  about how to design cities to create the “good  life.” Cities answered  a multitude of human  needs. They offered potential for civic ennoblement (temples,  schools,  plays, libraries,  the arts,  parks,  and palaces),  or they could be the breeding  ground  of demagoguery, decadence,  and disease. How  to create  the ideal city motivated the Hebrew  prophet Zechariah (the Bible), the Greek  philosopher Plato  (The  Republic),  and  the Mauryan political  adviser Kautilya  (Arthashastra, or Treatise on Polity)  to give instruction about governing ideal cities.