How Man Invented Cities

HOW MAN INVENTED CITIES

As you read, answer the following questions.

1. Why does the author consider successful city life "surprising?"

2. What is the conventional view of why cities arose? (See History of the World pp. 29-30; People and Civilizations pp.57 & 60.)

3. What thesis does the author present instead?

4. What evidence does he cite?

5. Why did nomadism decline about 15,000 years ago?

6. What crisis was triggered by increasingly settled living patterns? 7. How does the author see agriculture as a struggle to preserve the past rather than as an effort to invent the future?

8. Why did agriculture tend to concentrate population in a small area?

9. What were the basic steps in the settlement of the Susa Plain in Iran? How were Sumer and Mexico similar?

10. Why did cities force the development of social hierarchies? How did they work?

11. Why does the author call 25 and 500 the "magic numbers" for human groups? Do you agree?

12. What was the role of trade in early cities? of religion?

13. Give two examples of how the author uses archaeological evidence to support his thesis. Do you find his use of evidence convincing? Why do you think other historians and archaeologists have come to different conclusions about the origins of agriculture and cities? (separate paper)