The First Towns: Seedbeds Of Civilization - The Origins Of Civilizations

By more or less 7000 B.C., techniques of agricultural production in the Middle

East had reached a take aim at which it was possible to contain thousands of

people, many of whom were not booked in agriculture, in densely populated

settlements. Two of the earliest of these settlements were at Jericho in what

is today the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and at Catal Huyuk in present-day

southern Turkey. With populations of about 2000 and from 4000 to 6000 people

respectively, Jericho and Catal Huyuk would be seen today as little more than

large villages or slender towns. yet in the perspective of human cultural

development they delineated the first stirrings of urban life. In these and

some other Middle Eastern neolithic settlements, occupational specialization and

the formation of religious and political-military elite groups advanced

significantly. concern became essential for the communitys survival and was

carried on, perhaps by specialized merchants, with peoples at considerable

distances. Crafts such as pottery, metalworking, and jewelry making were

highly developed. At Catal Huyuk in particular, both sculpture and wall

painting were carried to a high level of sophistication.

In these earliest town centers, the key ingredients of civilization came

together. Agricultural surpluses were sufficient to support specialized

non farming producers and non farming political and religious leaders.



The

interaction of these groups resulted in a burst of creativity and innovation

in a wide variety of fields. But these earliest centers were quite isolated.

They were merely tiny islands of sedentary cultivators and small numbers of

townspeople, surrounded by vast plains and woodlands. The earliest town

centers look to have traded rather extensively but to have retained only

intermittent and limited contacts with neighboring hunting-and-gathering

peoples. Though small in surface and not highly specialized in comparison with

the cities of Sumer and other early civilizations, the first towns, settled

during...

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