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Encarta Historical Essays reflect the knowledge and insight of leading historians. This collection of essays is assembled to support the National Standards for World History. In this essay, Charles L. Redman argues that expanding food production, emerging industry and trade, and increasingly hierarchical governments—as well as the resulting changes in social relations—were the major forces behind early urbanism.
By Charles L. Redman
The gathering of people into large urban centers marks one of the fundamental transformations in human history. Starting about 6,000 years ago in various parts of the world, large towns, and eventually cities, grew out of what were formerly agrarian village societies. This process, often called the urban revolution, involved much more than just an increase in the size of communities. It also included marked changes in the way people interacted, in people’s relationship with the environment, and in the way people structured their societies. The processes and institutions that emerged at this time have continued to evolve, forming the basic structure of urban society today.
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Archaeologists and historians have suggested diverse factors that could have prompted the growth of cities and the reorganization of society. These factors include the need for irrigation, population growth, warfare, specialized production, and large-scale trade. According to one theory, arid alluvial plains where cities have developed needed irrigation to support significant populations. The construction and maintenance of irrigation works, as well as the allocation of water, required a managerial elite. The elite, in turn, formed the core of the complex society. According to another theory, once arable land was fully occupied, conflicts developed among the settlers and their neighbors. One group would be subdued, forming a lower class, while the conquerors formed the core elite centered in the cities. Yet another theory suggests that a growing frequency of warfare or forced relocation of people to increase the power of rulers may have consolidated people into cities. This seems to be the case in one the first true cities, Uruk (Erech), in Mesopotamia. Yet another theory suggests that the development of large-scale product exchange encouraged manufacturing and markets to localize in cities as a more efficient means of managing resources and trade. This promoted the rise of a managerial class as well as specialized producers, both key elements in an urban society.
We know from archaeological findings and written records that each of these factors existed in early urban societies, but the actual order in which they developed is not clear. The key question is whether advances in one or more of these areas preceded cities and were instrumental in leading to urban growth, or whether they followed the formation of cities as a natural outcome of the newly formed urban society. The potential complexity of the process has led a number of scholars to suggest that a combination of these and other factors working together brought about the fundamental changes implied by the urban revolution. These scholars acknowledge the importance of irrigation, agriculture, and the exchange of goods in forming the necessary foundation on which a civilization could be built. However, a multivariate approach looks to changing social relations as the force that crystallized the urbanization process.
The urban revolution appears to have happened first from about 5500 to 3500 bc in Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq, southwestern Iran, and eastern Syria. The historical developments in Mesopotamia can be used as a case study to examine the processes that accompanied early urbanism. The Mesopotamian plain was naturally arid, so few people lived there before irrigation technology developed in 5500 bc. During the next 2,000 years, within a broad period archaeologists call the Ubaid period, the people advanced slowly, but nevertheless they laid the foundations for the world’s first urban society. During this period, many scholars believe, the people now called the Sumerians came to Mesopotamia.
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Sites that date to the Ubaid period have been discovered throughout Iraq and in the surrounding foothills of present-day Iran and Turkey. These sites share many cultural traits, and each has contributed to the understanding of early urban society. But the first site excavated, Eridu, still seems the most informative. Eridu, located in the extreme south of the Mesopotamian plain, seems to have attained the highest level of development of these sites. The original settlement probably was not much larger than the villages that dotted the upland mountain valleys for several thousand years. But the people of Eridu understood the principles of irrigation, and the extremes of the Mesopotamian climate seemed to have suited their wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cattle.
At Eridu archaeologists discovered what appear to be temples built about 3500 bc. Such construction at that early time would indicate that by then the community had grown relatively large—by some estimates, covering 10 hectares (25 acres) and including at least 2,000 people. The existence of so many people in one settlement implies the evolution of social relations to a new level of integration within the community and a potential reliance on surrounding settlements for some subsistence goods.
Between 3500 and 2900 bc, a period called the Protoliterate or Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods, the number of Mesopotamian settlements that housed more than 1,000 people increased. Pottery of the period indicates that agricultural and craft production became more organized. During this period, most pottery vessels were made on a wheel or in molds, processes that allowed greater output and standardization, suggestive of a complex trading economy. Another important discovery from this period is evidence of early efforts at writing on stone and clay. Much of this early writing was used for record keeping, further evidence of the growing sophistication of the Mesopotamian economy. Further, the buildings of this period that archeologists identify as temples reflect the growing complexity and increasing scale of the communities. Some temples seem to be in clusters, possibly serving as holy precincts, and a few were built on raised platforms, later called ziggurats. Increasing the prominence of the structure may have reflected the growing power of the religious leadership of the communities.
Evidence from 2900 to 2350 bc, the era called the early dynastic period, shows a significant growth in the populations of about two dozen settlements, which, by sheer population size, could rightly be called cities. During this period, production of ceramic vessels, metal, and woven goods became more organized and were handled by artisans arranged into specialty groups. Stone, wood, metal ores, and other exotic materials were brought into the lowland cities where they were fashioned into finished goods for the local elite. By about 2500 bc writing had become standardized across the entire Mesopotamian plain. Also at this time, communities began to assume the form of modern cities: dense residential areas with short, twisting streets and multistoried housing. Previously the temples were the largest buildings in the cities, indicating the importance of religious institutions in Mesopotamian culture. By the end of this period, large buildings identified as palaces seem to indicate a growing secular hierarchy, while production specialization and varying access to economic resources point to greater social stratification.
By the end of the early dynastic period, it is clear that the egalitarian villages of earlier periods—run primarily along kinship lines—had developed into a hierarchy of towns and cities with sharply defined social classes among various task-oriented groups. And as social stratification increased, city-state rulers arose and began to identify themselves as kings and warlords. Although the details of power struggle are not clear, the growing frequency of warfare between the politically independent city-states of Mesopotamia indicate that the balance of power shifted to those who controlled the armies.
In the following millennia, similar changes occurred in the Indus Valley of South Asia, the Yellow River Valley of China, and eventually in the Valley of Mexico. In these and many other regions, the means of urbanization was unique; however, several common underlying forces contributed to the growth of cities in different ways.
Along the Indus River valley in what is now Pakistan and India, the Indus Valley civilization, also known as the Harappān culture after one its great cities, arose by about 2400 bc. Nearly 1,000 Harappān sites have been discovered. Of these, the most extensively preserved is Mohenjo-Daro, situated in the modern nation of Pakistan. Mohenjo-Daro and other great Harappān sites are characterized by large buildings of baked bricks arranged in a carefully laid out pattern. The most distinctive feature is a portion of the site known as the citadel, which is raised to a higher level than the rest of the city and is covered with massive structures. The abundant decorated pottery and some metal found at Mohenjo-Daro indicate that the major Harappān centers actively exchanged goods. The civilization may even have traded with Mesopotamia, although little evidence exists. The Harappān also developed their own written symbol system.
In the broad river valleys of northern China, some of the great early civilizations of Eurasia developed. On the alluvial plain of the Yellow River, Neolithic farming villages allied themselves into federations ruled by chiefs. These federations eventually coalesced into an early state during the 2nd millennium bc. Known from their myths, their early writings on oracle bones, and archaeological excavations, the Shang (Yin) dynasty is one of China’s best-understood early civilizations. It took generations to centralize authority; the capital moved to several cities while the rulers were chosen from several different lineages. However, power ultimately was vested in one royal family, and the city of Anyang became the permanent capital. All the while, the people of the Shang dynasty developed a bronze industry that produced amazing vessels and tools in great quantity.
Finally, built on very different foundations, the Americas had several early urban civilizations. Among the most notable were the people in central Mexico who built the city of Teotihuacán, the first great city of the Americas. Agrarian village life emerged in Mexico during the 2000s and 1000s bc, relatively late compared to early regions in Asia. The economic base also differed. Corn was the dominant crop instead of wheat, barley, or rice. Moreover, compared to their counterparts across the globe, the Mexicans had few domestic animals—only the dog and the turkey. In contrast, the people of Asia raised sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. Nevertheless, by the 1st or 2nd century bc, a great city arose at the northern end of the Valley of Mexico near present-day Mexico City. Teotihuacán grew rapidly—amazingly so—to be home to more than 100,000 people. Much planning clearly went into the construction of the many central buildings. Teotihuacán was the center of craft production, trade, and possibly military power for all of central Mexico until its decline in the 7th century ad.
The growth of urban societies in the different regions of the world each followed a unique pathway. However, from a more general perspective, basic processes are at work whenever large numbers of people try to live together. One interesting observation is that each of the early urban societies described here were followed by periods of diminished urbanism and less politically centralized government, only to be followed by reemergent urbanism and political authority. So while many forces encourage the growth of urbanism and centralized political authority, significant forces also work against those developments. Certainly the former have been more powerful over the millennia, in that the world has become more urbanized, yet the forces promoting decentralized settlements and governments continue to operate. The effects of three important processes are briefly examined here: expanding food production, emerging industry and trade, and increasingly hierarchical government.
A prerequisite for the growth of urban society was that food supply had to expand. This was achieved through more effective domestication, more land cultivation, and more intensive productive strategies. Each of these improvements to the gross yield of agricultural products also came with a cost. Increasing the yield of domesticated animals and plants often resulted from specializing in one crop or animal to better control propagation and develop cultivation and harvesting techniques. Although specialization usually led to greater production, it also put the farmer at greater risk of failure. Expanding the amount of land under cultivation also would lead to increased production but at a cost of greater labor input per unit produced. This cost would result in part from the greater distance farmers would travel to the fields, and from the fact that the most fertile land would already be in use, so farmers would expand their labors into less fertile, and hence, less productive land.
Over the millennia, the most effective means of increasing food production has been to intensify agricultural practices to gain more products per acre used. This was done through planting crops more densely, shortening the fallow period between crops, and bringing additional water to the fields through irrigation. Each of these procedures added significantly to a society’s food supply, but the costs were enormous in terms of increased labor input and potential degradation of the environment. Planting more densely and more often were likely to diminish the fertility of the soil, while excessive irrigation of fields could lead to waterlogging and salinization of the fields. None of these procedures for expanding production are inherently bad, but given the environmental and social contexts, they must be employed in a sustainable manner or they will ultimately undermine the productive ability of the society.
For the most part, human societies have been very successful at maintaining that balance. But all too often among the early civilizations of the world, demand for greater production has outstripped the potential of the environment, and disaster has resulted. What would lead these highly organized societies to miscalculate the situation? One significant aspect of the urban revolution was the crystallization of the concept of private property and incentives for producing an agricultural surplus. In a simple world, a group, such as a family, would produce only as many goods as the group needed for food and clothing. Incentive for greater production would be small because the amount of extra food one could eat was limited. Nevertheless, somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago this situation changed, and enormous quantities of agricultural surpluses began to be produced and used to support the production of goods that were deemed valuable for the prestige they conferred. This would most likely have happened in a society in which concepts of property were well developed, social inequality existed, and power relationships were asymmetrical.
This fundamental transformation in social dynamics also is related to two other fundamental processes in urbanism—emerging industry and trade and increasingly hierarchical government. With the establishment of a sedentary village life, it became possible for individuals to assemble more material possessions. Over the millennia, the production of these goods, from utilitarian pottery and tools to items of personal adornment, became the function of specialists. Some items were made from raw materials that had to be imported from distant sources. This consumerism could not have existed unless some farmers produced a surplus that could be used to support this growing trade and industry. Many of the utilitarian goods would benefit the farmers directly, but considerable resources were invested in obtaining exotic raw materials and producing prestige goods that would be owned only by the newly emerging elite. It was in the interest of the elite to foster industry and trade because this led to the production of prestige goods that reinforced their high status.
Archaeology and history have demonstrated repeatedly that where large groups of people came together, they favored hierarchical forms of government over simpler egalitarian alternatives. A hierarchical government usually is run by a member of the elite class who derives disproportionate benefits from the productivity of the more numerous commoners. These members of the elite secure this favorable position by redistributing much of their collected goods back to the commoners, by arming themselves and disarming the commoners, by using their monopoly of force to maintain order and improve personal security, and finally, by formulating an ideology or religion that justifies their positions.
It is clear that some centralized management of economic activities and adjudication of disputes increased the overall productivity of society. However, hierarchical government has potentially negative aspects: decisions made by the elite might serve that class’s interests, but not the interests of the majority; communication might be hampered by the geographical remoteness of decision makers; and finally, the elite’s consumptive patterns might promote unsustainable environmental exploitation. The past 5,000 years have witnessed a continual interplay between the advantages and disadvantages of urban society, yielding hundreds of case studies of how people have sought to balance these forces.
Charles L. Redman is a professor of anthropology and Director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of Human Impact on the Ancient Environment, among other publications.
Appears in
City; City Planning; Industrialization; Mesopotamia; Industrial Revolution; Migration; Urbanization; Population
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