The Evolution of Human Settlements William M. Bowen · Robert E. Gleeson The Evolution of Human Settlements From Pleistocene Origins to Anthropocene Prospects William M. Bowen Robert E. Gleeson Cleveland State University Cleveland State University Cleveland, OH, USA Cleveland, OH, USA ISBN 978-3-319-95033-4 ISBN 978-3-319-95034-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95034-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946799 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Cover image: © Alexander Zelnitskiy/Alamy Stock Vector Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland PRAISE FOR THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SEttLEMENts “Our future will be made or broken in cities. Understanding urbanization from an evolutionary, complex system perspective is essential for navigating our future successfully. This book is an essential guide for that journey.” —Will Steffen, Executive Director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute “It is a delight to learn how Robert E. Gleeson and William M. Bowen deploy a fresh perspective on the data already known from the history of human settle- ment from the outset till today. They succeed in doing so by resorting to General System Theory going back to Ludwig von Bertalanffy, by combining it with insights from evolutionary theory of Darwinian origin and by factoring in human agency as being endowed with the ingenuity of mental models. The result is a big picture that surpasses competing approaches. It provides a timely explanation of core problems of the Anthropocene.” —Wolfgang Hofkirchner, President of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science and Associate Professor for Technology Assessment at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria “This is an ambitious undertaking and the results are outstanding. I cannot rec- ommend this book strongly enough. From its conceptualization and use of sys- tems theory thinking to its breadth of coverage and use of people and problem solving as central themes for human settlement development, it is both structur- ally sound and powerfully forward looking in a period of depressing local devel- opment. It is critical, analytic and in the end optimistic. I would use this in a class on urbanization, urban and regional planning and/or urban management to v vi PRAISE FOR THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS provide a background in human settlement evolution and an appreciation of the resulting structural forms generated by human behavior. Further is does not shy away from issues of management complexity and urban policy while looking at infrastructure and urban form. I recommend it without reservation.” —Kingsley E. Haynes, Ruth D. and John T. Hazel, MD Faculty Chair in Public Policy, Decision Sciences, Geography and Public Affairs, School of Public Policy, George Mason University PREFACE This is a book about the road that has taken us to who we are as human beings with agency living settled lives in the early twenty-frst century. It began as notes for a class taught to master’s degree students in planning, urban studies and public affairs. The class was motivated by an interest in understanding today’s densely-populated urban settlements in which increasing scale and complexity is frequently a source of diffculty. The primary goal of the class was to provide students with suffcient con- ceptual and theoretical background, and substantive knowledge about various human settlements, and about complex social and technical sys- tems, to begin to understand and apply some of the relevant theories, concepts, and ideas in consideration of plans, policies and decisions. The course was motivated by the possibility that the knowledge transmitted in it might exert some infuence on aspects of the future of these systems. As the name suggests, the class assumed that human beings and our settlements evolve over time, as does everything else connected with our lives. The idea was that the evolution of our settlements is not limited to the material aspects of their existence. Rather, their material aspects refect the evolved capacities of human beings to create, learn, and communicate ideas, cultures, languages, myths, and social institutions. Human settlements are a refection of human agency. We human beings are evolved creatures and our settlements are natural extensions of us. We had several distinct purposes in writing the book. First, we sought to provide a coherent model with which to obtain an overview of the natural and social histories of diverse human societies throughout the vii viii PREFACE world, with special emphasis upon the environmental and geographi- cal factors that have come to characterize them through time. This we did by describing general systems theory, the principles of generalized Darwinism, and their application to the dynamics of evolving settlement systems. Second, we sought to provide context through background about humans before settlements, the advent of permanent human set- tlements, and the change from settlements to civilizations. The purpose here was to fesh out and characterize enough of the anthropological research on prehistoric humans to begin to establish the validity of evo- lutionary explanations of change in human settlements. The idea was that human settlements were created by humans for human purposes, and it is not possible to coherently understand the creations without understanding the creators. We characterize humans as social creatures with a mind, agency, lan- guage, and culture. We have cognitive capabilities that make it possi- ble for us to learn, communicate, and create complex organizations. Our thought was that examination of such creatures in the prehistoric world would help obtain perspective and insight into how the same evo- lutionary processes that produced them have since in many ways led to the state of human settlements around the world today. We wanted to make it clear that generalized Darwinism can be used to understand the longer-term dynamics of cities, both prehistorically and today. Next we sought to synthesize a great deal of literature from multi- ple disciplines to describe the features of humans and human societies that made it possible for us to organize ourselves into human settlement systems. Human settlement systems extend human nature to give out- ward expression to the cumulative efforts of individuals and groups to preserve themselves and fnd meaning in their lives. We wanted to con- vey some insights into human thought and behavior which are essential for explaining the dynamics and trajectory of human settlements using generalized Darwinian principles. Important among these is that the existence of the human mind and the agency through which settlement systems have been constructed is entirely consistent with these princi- ples. This is important because human settlement systems are products of the human mind, and of cognitively and linguistically based processes of problem solving. Finally we sought to extend the substantive knowledge of past human settlements together with principles of evolutionary and systems Preface ix theory to consider threats to the sustainability of human settlements and to anticipate possible future outcomes. To this end, the logic and evidence we’ve attempted to establish throughout the book leads to the conclusion that orientations that emphasize non-material as well as material culture, combined with efforts to establish and conserve diverse institutions—“polycentric” institutional structures, as Elinor Ostrom called them—are among the greatest hopes for sustaining human set- tlement systems into the future. Hopefully, in writing this we will have stimulated questions, discussion, and critical thinking on an informed basis and with an open mind about current urban policies and practices. This said, although our intellectual ambitions are boundless, neither of us are subject-matter experts. One of us is a regional scientist who has specialized in public sector decision-making and problem solving in regional economic development, energy policy, environmental issues and higher education. The other is an urban historian who