“The influence of the city-based cultures and the steady spread and increase of urban populations around the world have been the central facts of human history” (13). Since the beginning of time, cities have been influencing people and the people have been influencing the city in which they live in. As said in the reading, urban life is defined by the community, the government and the economy. The history of cities is complex and it changed in many ways throughout time, starting with the first city of Uruk to present day. That is what these articles focus on, the history of cities from the first city to the urbanization of today’s cities. Urban life has developed immensely through the immigration from the countryside, technology and suburbs.
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Gordon Childe, who was the most influential archeologists of the twentieth century. Childe states that the word “city” is hard to define so he breaks the history of cities down the try to explain the word. He comes up with three stages of the urban revolution to help explain the history of cities. They are the Neolithic, urban and industrial stages. These revolutions show the progressive change in the economic structure and social organization of communities. The first revolution stage was from the stone age time of hunters and gathers to settled agriculture. The people of this time period tended to live together in small villages of farmers with homemade irrigation systems. These towns also grew with the making of raw materials and everyone in the family contributed to the community in some way. This stage faced some problems of increasing population and low efficiency of food surplus. The second stage was agriculture to complex city-based manufacturing and trade. Lastly, the third stage was the record of “human culture and historical development” (30). The industrial stage happened during the industrial revolution, hence the name. To help explain these revolutionary stages more, he studied the actual history of early cities. Childe had a degree in archaeology to help him do this. He explains in this article the ten important and abstract criteria that helps distinguish old cities or villages. Some of the points that Childe made are that by looking at the size of the city, a population estimate can be made. By looking at the monumental buildings, the concentration of the social surplus and the religion can be found out and by looking at documents, scripts or art, the language and learning style can be found. He mostly studied Egyptian, Sumerian, Indus and Maya civilizations using these ten points. These places of study are clearly still important because according to the reading, we still
Gordon Childe, who was the most influential archeologists of the twentieth century. Childe states that the word “city” is hard to define so he breaks the history of cities down the try to explain the word. He comes up with three stages of the urban revolution to help explain the history of cities. They are the Neolithic, urban and industrial stages. These revolutions show the progressive change in the economic structure and social organization of communities. The first revolution stage was from the stone age time of hunters and gathers to settled agriculture. The people of this time period tended to live together in small villages of farmers with homemade irrigation systems. These towns also grew with the making of raw materials and everyone in the family contributed to the community in some way. This stage faced some problems of increasing population and low efficiency of food surplus. The second stage was agriculture to complex city-based manufacturing and trade. Lastly, the third stage was the record of “human culture and historical development” (30). The industrial stage happened during the industrial revolution, hence the name. To help explain these revolutionary stages more, he studied the actual history of early cities. Childe had a degree in archaeology to help him do this. He explains in this article the ten important and abstract criteria that helps distinguish old cities or villages. Some of the points that Childe made are that by looking at the size of the city, a population estimate can be made. By looking at the monumental buildings, the concentration of the social surplus and the religion can be found out and by looking at documents, scripts or art, the language and learning style can be found. He mostly studied Egyptian, Sumerian, Indus and Maya civilizations using these ten points. These places of study are clearly still important because according to the reading, we still