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Even if that were true, what is your point? Where did these 10m people live if not in settlements?
by rini17 5y ago
Even if that were true, what is your point? Where did these 10m people live if not in settlements?
- pvg 5y agoThey didn't live in permanent settlements, no, never mind ones that lasted tens of thousands of years. That is my point.
- rini17 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_continuously_inhabited_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_continuously_in... lists several cities already established (with walls) around 3000 BC. Why they would not be inhabitated millenia before? Just because we don't have written records?
- pvg 5y agoMostly because they hadn't invented agriculture, a less-than-10k-years-old development.
- kuschku 5y agoThe city of Abu Herey was destroyed 10'800 BC, almost three millenia before the timeframe you just stated for the first cities.
- pvg 5y agoDo you mean this site? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Abu_Hureyra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Abu_Hureyra It's a unique site of possible early long-term hunter-gatherer settlement right in the middle of one of the regions in which agriculture was first developed. It also happens to be one of the first agricultural sites! The pre-agricultural populations we're talking about are a few hundred people, which feels a little short of a city.
- nl 5y agoAbu Hureyra 1 was hardly a city - more a collection of huts. And it's one of the earliest examples of the transition from nomadic hunter gathers to more permanent settlements.
- bsanr2 5y agoAgriculture isn't the only way to sustain moderately-sized populations, it's just the most efficient in the short term. Semi-passive cultivation is arguably more sustainable because you don't encounter the issues of deforestation, soil depletion, and centralization of resources. Nomadism doesn't preclude semi-permanent settlements, especially as migratory patterns retrace sites.
- nl 5y agoSemi permanent sites did exist in this timeframe. But they were much smaller in terms of population and rarely (if ever) walled cities like those which existed around 4000 BCE.
- pvg 5y agoCompletely agree with you that agriculture is not required to form non-permanent settlements that didn't last tens of thousands of years.
- kuschku 5y agoNo one said it had to be a single, year-round, uninterrupted settlement. A seasonal, interrupted, settlement would be no different to an asteroid.
- bsanr2 5y agoA non-permanent settlement conceivably could see continuous (non-permanent) habitation for thousands of years. If, as a semi-nomadic group, you return to the same location year after year, generation after generation, and you do so alongside a large number of nearby settlements, with whom you maintain social relationships... Well, it might not have a post office or gate, but it's a dynamic fulfills many of the requirements of a "city".
- danans 5y ago> Agriculture isn't the only way to sustain moderately-sized populations, it's just the most efficient in the short term. Semi-passive cultivation is arguably more sustainable There is a theory by Jared Diamond [1] of how pre-Agricultural Jomon people of Japan were able to invent pottery 18K years ago: the wild-food rich environment of Japan, being moist, temperate, and surrounded by ocean - allowed them to have very settled lives while other hunter gatherers had to constantly move. Outside of rate examples like this, there is little evidence that non agricultural societies reached even moderate populations. 1. https://erenow.net/common/gunsgermssteel/23.php https://erenow.net/common/gunsgermssteel/23.php
- BurningFrog 5y agoI think most people were nomadic hunter gatherers until agriculture was invented, binding them to their fields.
- ascar 5y agoI would recommend reading Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". It's really enlightening about the early days of human kind and even gives a new perspective for recent/current developments.