Origin of the City
Gordon V. Childe: Urban
Revolution
Lewis Mumford: City in History
• The modern city is the ‘product’ of a complex
historical process.
• The origin of cities are shrouded in the distant
past. According some sources it could be as long
back as 10000 years.
Periods
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Paleolithic 35,000-10,000
Mesolithic 7,000-4000
Neolithic 4000-1500 (Near East-6000-3500)
Chalcolithic Age—copper
Megalithic Age
Iron Age-Painted Grey Ware Culture
Lewis Mumford’s theory of
‘Thanatopolis’
• The conditions of the origin of the city have been
discussed by different theorists.
• According to Lewis Mumford the first cities that
came up are not the city of the living but of the
dead. It was the thanatopolis. Among the hunter
gathering Palaelithic people it is the dead who
had a permanent dwelling not the living and
men and women would return to these ritual
spaces to worship their ancestors.
What were the conditions that
had led to the rise of the urban?
Advances in agriculture
• The evolution of the Neolithic village into a city
took at least 1500 years (from 5000 to 3500 BC).
• The technological developments that made it
possible for humankind to live in urban places
were at first mainly advances in agriculture.
surplus
• Neolithic era domestication of plants and
animals eventually led to improved methods of
cultivation and stock breeding. Eventually
producing a surplus and made it possible to
sustain a higher population density
production of non-essential goods and
services
• Surplus also made a section of the population
free for craftsmanship and the production of
non-essential goods and services.
Necessity for circulation of goods
• As human settlements increased in size through
advances in irrigation and cultivation and the
need for improving the circulation of goods
and people became ever more acute.
domestication of animals
• In this situation domestication of animals had
an important role.
• The Neolithic people domesticated animals and
used them for transportation as well as for
food and hides. It made them travel greater
distances and when attached with sledge like
equipments they helped them to carry heavier
loads.
Invention of the wheel
• The most spectacular technological
advancement in the early history of
transportation was the invention of the wheel
which was used first in the Tigris-Euphrates
valley and 3500 BC.
Roads
• The Romans were famous for their road building
technology.
• The roads were mainly for military purposes.
They were a part of Rome’s military might.
Travel was a specialized affair where only the
merchants and soldiers are the only people who
traveled.
• Roads helped urbanization.
Characteristics of the ancient cities
• First and foremost, the population of ancient
cities were mostly very small by modern
standards. Babylon, one of the largest ancient
cities of the Middle East probably had a
population of 20,000 at its height. Rome under
Emperor Augustus was the largest ancient city
outside China, had some 300,000 inhabitants.
• They were centres of art, science and
cosmopolitan culture.
• However, the influence of the city on the rural
areas was minimal.
• But how did they come about? We will look at
two theories:
Gordon V. Childe: Urban Revolution
Lewis Mumford: Urban Implosion
V. Gordon Childe (1892-1957)
• An Australian archeologist who is credited with
coining the term ‘urban revolution’.
• The term ‘urban revolution’ refers to the processes
by which agricultural village societies developed into
socially, economically and politically complex urban
societies.
• Childe identified ten formal criteria that according
to his system indicate the development of urban
civilization:
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increased settlement size
concentration of wealth
class-stratified society
large-scale public works
writing
representational art
knowledge and science of engineering
foreign trade
full-time specialists in non-subsistence activities
political organization based on residence (territory)
rather than kinship
• So Childe primary saw the underlying causes of the urban
revolution as the cumulative growth of technology and the
increasing availability of food surpluses and capital. Food
surplus is the necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for
the urban revolution.
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• Although it was later shown that Child’s exact criteria were
not universal but some basic characteristics do appear to be
essential to the development of urban life.
• Exchange and redistribution of goods between specialized and
interdependent zones and differential control over productive
resources such as land and livestock.
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990)
• Mumford points out that for the Neolithic
human beings village and home were the
creations of the women. Nurture, protection,
fecundity were the main tasks that had to be
performed.
• Wherever containers were found we could
assume that there was surplus.
• One of the first feats performed by early
engineers was a hole dug in the ground and sundried to brick hardness in Mesopotemia.
heterogeneity
• The city came as a definite emergent in the Neolithic
community (The New Stone Age 9000-3000 BC). It required
no mere increase in numbers. It is heterogeneity that led to
the formation of the city—the miner, the woodman, the
fisherman, each bringing with him the tools and skills and
habits of life formed under other pressures. The engineer, the
boatman, the sailor and other occupational groups the soldier,
the banker, the merchant, the priest. Out is this complexity
the city created a higher unity.
• It is not that kinship and family connections did not matter
but vocational ability. So the question is what skill have you
brought and not what tribe/caste do you belong to.
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Communication
• The city effected a mobilization of man-power, a
command over long distance transportation, an
intensification of communication over long
distances in space transportation, an
intensification along with a large scale
development of civil engineering, and not least it
promoted a tremendous further rise in
agricultural productivity.
• Development in science and technology and
increased demand led to this rise.
Receptacle of civilization
• From its origin onward the city may be described as
a structure specially equipped to store and transmit
the goods of civilization, sufficiently condensed to
afford the maximum amount of facilities in a
minimum space, but also capable of structural
enlargement to enable it to find a place for the
changing needs and the more complex forms of a
growing society and its cumulative social heritage.
The invention of such forms as the written
record, the library, the archive, the school
and the university are the earliest and most
characteristic achievements of the city.
• Contrary to rejecting what was already there the
‘urban revolution’ actually brought the earlier
elements of the existing culture and increased
their efficacy and scope.
• The emergence of non-agricultural occupations,
heightened the demand for food and probably
caused villages to multiply, and still more land to
be brought under cultivation.
• Revolution does not mean discarding what was
there earlier.
• Mumford uses the term ‘implosion’ to describe this
process. According to Mumford the many diverse
elements of the community hitherto scattered were
mobilized and packed together under pressure,
behind the massive walls of the city.
• The process of urbanization had further impact on
villages. More urban centres meant that more
population who is not producing food. The city was
not revolution but built on something that was
already present.
Role of political institution of kingship
• According to Mumford it was the institution of
Kingship that was at the centre of the urban
implosion. He cites archeological evidence from
Egypt and Mesopotamia that it was the king who
stood at the centre of the urban implosion
bringing under the control of the palace and
temple all the new forces of the civilization.
• The earliest cities always had a citadel which
signified a political centre.
Certain common features of the
ancient cities were:
• walls: primarily for military defense but also to
emphasize the separation of the urban community
from the countryside.
• They contained a market but it was not in the city
centre like modern cities. The main buildings were
nearly always religious or political such as temples,
palaces or courts. The dwellings of the ruling class
or elite tended to be concentrated in or near the
centre while the less privileged lived near the edges.
• places of work and residence were the same.