Fascinating topic, isn't it? I was curious to see if you'd mention Çatalhöyük because I have an as-of-yet unpublished novel that partly takes place there!
Funny, I've always been fascinated by the origins of civilization but never really thought about the role of geography in terms of forcing people together in a relatively small area of arable land. My daughter has been studying this period in school, and now I'm excited to tell her about that particular wrinkle. (She will likely roll her eyes at me, which is only to be expected.)
I have to wonder if there wasn't an additional factor. At some point individuals found themselves doing work not directly related to agriculture (planting, growing, harvesting, etc.) but instead devoting their time and energy to making something his neighbors needed or wanted - plows? hoes? pottery? The concentration of people in a 'city' created the possibility of pursuing just that craft and trading your wares for food, etc. This would seem a natural outgrowth of what it might have been like in a village where everybody knew that "John" made great plows or hoes - so why not get him to make you one in return for food or labor? But in a village there wasn't enough demand to free the craftsman completely from his own farming.
Definitely agree that more craft specialisation would be possible in a bigger settlement, but that still leaves the question of what drove the people together to form the bigger settlements in the first place? I do think there is a third factor, alongside agriculture and circumscription, which has something to do with cultural innovation, but I'll get to that in a future post!
Social technology - yes. And as such they become texts themselves, interacting and connecting with us all. Like a sentient being itself. Look forward to this series, Mikey!
I do love this topic. And, as you can already suspect, I do have strong opinions about it.
Climatic stability after the Ice Age, geography, and agriculture played an undeniable role in the first settlements. But I still think that religion played a fundamental role in ensuring social cohesion and the longevity of settlements.
The main problem with archaeology is the survival bias. The only evidence we have of plenty of the early settlements is what left some kind of footprint, but we cannot know what has been lost. It's possible to think that agriculture is more likely to leave more solid evidence behind than early religions. And I think we can assume that temples were only created after religions had evolved to a certain degree, and way before that it was something important for the societies.
Ah Miguel, you have preempted a future post I have in the works! I 100000% agree that religion was a crucial part of the social glue that was able to bring these early urbanites together in density never seen before. I shall be writing about that very soon - and it's a topic whose implications for our societies today are just as interesting as in our study of ancient history.
And thanks for the compliment on the maps, you would know!
This is delightful information. I imagine you may have a corollary on modern cities that thrive—like NYC and SF—thanks to the geographical limitations that force them to renew their centers.
The Mesopotamian element dovetails with my own humble research into ancient civilizations and the theory that the constellations visible to them—which compose the zodiac understood by all of them—tell the biblical story of promise and redemption. I started my own Substack to share my findings. My field of study is the Bible and most recently examining whole books through what I call visual translation. The basis of my presentation on how the zodiac could be a narrative revelation for the ancient civilizations before history (and the Bible) were written is a 19th century book by linguist and astronomer Frances Rolleston. I attempt to simplify her discoveries.
I noticed your comment that you will be sharing your thoughts in ancient religions. I look forward to that.
Wonderful post! This is a topic that fascinates me both as a fan of history and as an ecologist and a great arena for the two to intertwine. There is mounting evidence that the Younger Dryas was initiated by several meteor impacts (Younger Dryas Impact Event - YDIE) on the ice caps of the northern hemisphere. The melt of which could have altered ocean currents which changed weather patterns, cooled the climate, and the overall impact to life could have necessitated humans, theretofore not particularly interested in sedentary agricultural life, to pool resources and focus on tending food and animals that were not only in short supply but disappearing altogether. Perhaps the first widespread animal domestications were as much about conservation as survival. Anyway, so many element come together with the YDIE that it is worth further research. As with any new idea, some scientist are critical of it, as they should be, but evidence is mounting.
One of the things I enjoy about your essays is they cause me to think about the factors influencing human trajectory. Geography most certainly had a huge hand. Seems to me that early cities all had food surplus and some form of aquatic "mobility", but different cities had to engineer one more than the other. So in the floodplains the water is basically free, but work had to go into fields and food storage. In the arid basins or plateaus, land was adequate but labor was directed to canals, reservoirs, etc. I used to think, narrowly, that ocean proximity was required for large human encampment.
When researching this post, I was very taken with how none of the first cities were actually built by the coast. Most weren't too far away, but they were never directly adjacent. I wonder if that was because coastlines don't tend to have the same environmental circumscription, or perhaps because of other hazards like flooding or lack of freshwater being a problem.
I like your idea that the work was different, depending on irrigation or flooding, has a nice symmetry to it. Think I'd rather work in the fields than digging canals - the latter appears much harder work!
Would setting up a city directly on the coast make it too vulnerable to raiding pirates? I believe the earliest records of pirate raids go back to 14th C BCE, and lots of that was going on in the Mediterranean ... Aside from potential aquatic villains, thank you for this fascinating post, and for keeping it free, much appreciated.
That's an interesting idea, and I could definitely buy it as a minor factor. Piracy was a major problem for centuries. Took the Romans decades and decades to secure the Mediterranean even after they'd conquered all its edges. Having thought about it some more, cities needed an ample supply of freshwater and for the first city-builders that essentially meant they had to be near rivers. River deltas tend to flood a lot, and the land around them is super marshy, so I guess that probably explains why there aren't too many early cities near them.
There is a recent research showing that Sumerian cities were actually in or near coastal marshes. Geography then was different. Persian Gulf coastline was not quite the same as now.
Yes, my same reaction to learning of few coastal developments. This was contrary to my assumptions even though was fully aware of Mesopotamia and Nile cultures. Just a general blind spot in my way of looking at it. Duh! And yes, ditch digging is not fun!
Fascinating topic, isn't it? I was curious to see if you'd mention Çatalhöyük because I have an as-of-yet unpublished novel that partly takes place there!
Funny, I've always been fascinated by the origins of civilization but never really thought about the role of geography in terms of forcing people together in a relatively small area of arable land. My daughter has been studying this period in school, and now I'm excited to tell her about that particular wrinkle. (She will likely roll her eyes at me, which is only to be expected.)
Her actual response: "Oh, you mean the M thingy?" Me: "M thingy... Oh, Mesopotamia. Yes, that thingy."
I have to wonder if there wasn't an additional factor. At some point individuals found themselves doing work not directly related to agriculture (planting, growing, harvesting, etc.) but instead devoting their time and energy to making something his neighbors needed or wanted - plows? hoes? pottery? The concentration of people in a 'city' created the possibility of pursuing just that craft and trading your wares for food, etc. This would seem a natural outgrowth of what it might have been like in a village where everybody knew that "John" made great plows or hoes - so why not get him to make you one in return for food or labor? But in a village there wasn't enough demand to free the craftsman completely from his own farming.
Definitely agree that more craft specialisation would be possible in a bigger settlement, but that still leaves the question of what drove the people together to form the bigger settlements in the first place? I do think there is a third factor, alongside agriculture and circumscription, which has something to do with cultural innovation, but I'll get to that in a future post!
I suspect you're right that it took a number of factors coming together, I look forward to the next post!
Social technology - yes. And as such they become texts themselves, interacting and connecting with us all. Like a sentient being itself. Look forward to this series, Mikey!
I do love this topic. And, as you can already suspect, I do have strong opinions about it.
Climatic stability after the Ice Age, geography, and agriculture played an undeniable role in the first settlements. But I still think that religion played a fundamental role in ensuring social cohesion and the longevity of settlements.
The main problem with archaeology is the survival bias. The only evidence we have of plenty of the early settlements is what left some kind of footprint, but we cannot know what has been lost. It's possible to think that agriculture is more likely to leave more solid evidence behind than early religions. And I think we can assume that temples were only created after religions had evolved to a certain degree, and way before that it was something important for the societies.
Great article… and lovely maps :)
Ah Miguel, you have preempted a future post I have in the works! I 100000% agree that religion was a crucial part of the social glue that was able to bring these early urbanites together in density never seen before. I shall be writing about that very soon - and it's a topic whose implications for our societies today are just as interesting as in our study of ancient history.
And thanks for the compliment on the maps, you would know!
I'll be waiting for that to show up in my inbox.
No pressure!
Fantastic read, thanks for that!
Love this — love considering that even pre-societal intelligence in times of struggle and strife humanity still tended toward banding together.
This is delightful information. I imagine you may have a corollary on modern cities that thrive—like NYC and SF—thanks to the geographical limitations that force them to renew their centers.
The Mesopotamian element dovetails with my own humble research into ancient civilizations and the theory that the constellations visible to them—which compose the zodiac understood by all of them—tell the biblical story of promise and redemption. I started my own Substack to share my findings. My field of study is the Bible and most recently examining whole books through what I call visual translation. The basis of my presentation on how the zodiac could be a narrative revelation for the ancient civilizations before history (and the Bible) were written is a 19th century book by linguist and astronomer Frances Rolleston. I attempt to simplify her discoveries.
I noticed your comment that you will be sharing your thoughts in ancient religions. I look forward to that.
Wonderful post! This is a topic that fascinates me both as a fan of history and as an ecologist and a great arena for the two to intertwine. There is mounting evidence that the Younger Dryas was initiated by several meteor impacts (Younger Dryas Impact Event - YDIE) on the ice caps of the northern hemisphere. The melt of which could have altered ocean currents which changed weather patterns, cooled the climate, and the overall impact to life could have necessitated humans, theretofore not particularly interested in sedentary agricultural life, to pool resources and focus on tending food and animals that were not only in short supply but disappearing altogether. Perhaps the first widespread animal domestications were as much about conservation as survival. Anyway, so many element come together with the YDIE that it is worth further research. As with any new idea, some scientist are critical of it, as they should be, but evidence is mounting.
Long story short, people don’t put up with neighbors unless they have to 😂
It all sounds so obvious once you understand it! Great read! I wish I could write such a well researched post.
This was a great read, and this substack is a good model for what I hope to do with my own historical writing.
Fascinating, very compelling argumentation!
Babylon ✨✨🪽
I don't know if you've read Andrea Matranga's thesis,"The Ant and the Grasshopper:
Seasonality and the Invention of Agriculture," on the role of seasonality, but it is an interesting component.
I’ll check it out
One of the things I enjoy about your essays is they cause me to think about the factors influencing human trajectory. Geography most certainly had a huge hand. Seems to me that early cities all had food surplus and some form of aquatic "mobility", but different cities had to engineer one more than the other. So in the floodplains the water is basically free, but work had to go into fields and food storage. In the arid basins or plateaus, land was adequate but labor was directed to canals, reservoirs, etc. I used to think, narrowly, that ocean proximity was required for large human encampment.
When researching this post, I was very taken with how none of the first cities were actually built by the coast. Most weren't too far away, but they were never directly adjacent. I wonder if that was because coastlines don't tend to have the same environmental circumscription, or perhaps because of other hazards like flooding or lack of freshwater being a problem.
I like your idea that the work was different, depending on irrigation or flooding, has a nice symmetry to it. Think I'd rather work in the fields than digging canals - the latter appears much harder work!
Would setting up a city directly on the coast make it too vulnerable to raiding pirates? I believe the earliest records of pirate raids go back to 14th C BCE, and lots of that was going on in the Mediterranean ... Aside from potential aquatic villains, thank you for this fascinating post, and for keeping it free, much appreciated.
That's an interesting idea, and I could definitely buy it as a minor factor. Piracy was a major problem for centuries. Took the Romans decades and decades to secure the Mediterranean even after they'd conquered all its edges. Having thought about it some more, cities needed an ample supply of freshwater and for the first city-builders that essentially meant they had to be near rivers. River deltas tend to flood a lot, and the land around them is super marshy, so I guess that probably explains why there aren't too many early cities near them.
There is a recent research showing that Sumerian cities were actually in or near coastal marshes. Geography then was different. Persian Gulf coastline was not quite the same as now.
Yes, my same reaction to learning of few coastal developments. This was contrary to my assumptions even though was fully aware of Mesopotamia and Nile cultures. Just a general blind spot in my way of looking at it. Duh! And yes, ditch digging is not fun!