today we're looking at the first cities in history [Music]
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today over half of the world's population lives in cities or urban areas with some of the largest
cities including Tokyo Japan and Delhi India having populations over 30 million but where
did the first cities in human history appear and begin to grow to answer this question we have to
look to ancient Mesopotamia in an area sometimes referred to as the Fertile Crescent or cradle of
civilization in this region which is an area of land between the Tigris and Euphrates river
in the present-day Middle East archaeologists and historians have found evidence of some of
the world's earliest settlements around 11 to 10 000 BC in Agricultural Revolution took place in
which people began to plant crops and domesticate animals instead of roaming or leading a nomadic
lifestyle looking for food ancient people began to settle down in one place and grow and harvest
crops and to learn more about this Agricultural Revolution take a look at my other video devoted
strictly to that topic as these early people began to grow more crops they began to develop
a surplus of food and by around 7 500 BC cities or towns began to take shape these first cities grew
in an area known as Sumer at the southern end of Mesopotamia and included cities such as Ur eradu
and Uric today we think of major cities having millions of people living in them but these early
cities were much smaller with only a few thousand residents although ER the largest of these
city-states and Sumer is believed to have had a population of over 60 thousand by around 2000 BC
another significant difference between cities of today and those ancient cities in Mesopotamia is
that these were city-states and what I mean by a city-state is it was the city and the surrounding
land around it that basically created their own little country with their own individual
government and military force many of these early city-states fought with each other for control of
land military leaders be became the rulers of these city-states and soon a hereditary system
emerged in which control of the city-states was passed from one generation of rulers to the next
within the same family these cities became Sinners of trade as people from all over the region were
drawn to these areas with more population to trade their goods Traders sailed up and down the Tigers
and Euphrates and even crossed open deserts to bring their goods to these early markets you
might wonder too how did they build these cities in an area of the world with few resources such
as stone or wood the ancient Sumerians developed a method of making Bricks by mixing together water
clay and dirt and then molding them into bricks that could be used to build structures many of
these early cities in Mesopotamia were built around pyramid-shaped temples at the center of
the community known as ziggurats ziggurats were Sinners of worship for ancient Mesopotamians
and at their top was a shrine built for the in individual God of that city-state here ancient
people would offer sacrifices to their gods and perform religious ceremonies the ziggurats also
served as what you might call a city hall as Citizens would look to these temples for
government decisions furthermore the priests and religious leaders would generally keep records
of the surplus of food so the Harvest from each city-state were many times stored close by the
ziggurat was generally the tallest structure in the city with many reaching as tall as 150 feet
in the air many of these city-states also were surrounded by walls which protected the city from
Invasion the ancient city of Nineveh was said to have had a wall surrounding it that spanned over
six miles long and had 15 gates to control people coming in and out of the city unlike cities today
that are laid out in a grid pattern with city blocks these early cities really had no plans
so they were made up of a series of winding streets and Alleyways eventually the acadians
from northern Mesopotamia led by Sargon of akad would conquer these early city-states
and establish one of the first empires in world history uniting the city-states under one ruler
but from these simple Origins the role of cities and civilization was established and still carries
on to this day so with that hopefully you learned something and thanks for watching
thank you