The Seeds of Cities: How Surplus Led to Urbanization
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| Wild vs. domesticated |
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We use the terms wild and domesticated to describe both plants and animals. Wild plants and animals live naturally in the environment without any human control. Wild animals and plants take care of themselves and live without human help. In contrast, domesticated plants and animals grow and live close to humans. Humans care for and breed domesticated animals for food or other uses. Humans selected the seeds from the best crops to plant the next year. In the process, the plants and animals slowly changed to become more useful for humans.
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The farming revolution
For most of human history, everybody got their food by hunting wild animals and foraging wild plants from the environment. When they needed something to eat, they would search for food. Slowly, groups of people learned that they could ensure reliable access to more food by raising animals from birth and growing plants from seeds. Along the way, they chose the best plants and animals so the food they ate became easier to harvest and was more nutritious. We call this process domestication, and it was a key step in making human communities larger and more complex.
Domestication changed the way people collected and prepared their food. Some people gradually moved away from being foragers and became farmers and pastoralists. That shouldn’t surprise you. But you may be surprised to learn that this one transformation changed just about everything about how humans lived their lives: the kinds of houses they lived in, the relationships they had with each other, the kinds of music and art they produced, the way they made decisions, and more.
Agricultural surplus
One of the biggest effects of the shift to farming was the development of a food surplus. In other words, people who became farmers could sometimes produce more food than they needed. This happened because they no longer had to move around looking for food. They could stay in one area and concentrate their time and effort on raising and collecting food. The extra food was also a result of domestication, because improved plants and animals meant that more food could be produced in smaller areas. Most foragers had to roam hundreds of miles to find enough food, but farmers could raise everything they needed to feed themselves within a short walk from home.
Having a food surplus also made it possible for communities to become larger, with more people living in small, permanent villages. Some of these farming villages became cities—large, organized places where lots of people lived together. Some of the first cities formed in Southwest Asia, cities like Jericho (9000 BCE), Çatalhöyük (7500 BCE), and Uruk (4000 BCE). These first cities arose in an area called the Fertile Crescent. It was called that because the rivers flooded regularly, which made the soil very good. Rich soil made this a great place for growing crops. By 2500 BCE, there were also large cities in South Asia (Mohenjo-Daro 2500 BCE), North Africa (Memphis 3100 BCE), and South America (Caral 3500 BCE). Cities spread rapidly to new areas after this date, because they offered important advantages to farmers.
Living in cities had advantages because in these large communities, surplus stored food meant that some members of the community didn’t have to farm. They could do other jobs the community needed, like build houses, or make tools. Cities quickly became centers of trade and creativity. Within cities, people could build permanent homes, create markets to exchange goods, be creative through writing and art, and produce tools to make life easier.
But the rise of cities also created new problems. Large communities were difficult to organize, and disputes occurred with so many people living so close together. As a result, new jobs emerged, like leaders to make decisions about how to store, share, and protect surplus food, and soldiers to enforce the leaders’ decisions. Over time, some of the people who had these jobs became wealthier and more powerful than others. These differences resulted in hierarchies—social systems where some groups had control over others. These hierarchies helped large communities organize, allowing them to build big projects and solve everyday issues. However, hierarchies also meant that some people—especially farmers—could be treated badly by soldiers and leaders.
Some of humanity’s first cities developed in Southwest Asia, which is sometimes called the Middle East. The Fertile Crescent (light-green area) included the Nile River in Egypt and the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia.
Did everything change?
Let’s summarize: The domestication of plants and animals meant that for the first time, a group of people could produce more food than they needed. This surplus helped populations grow, and growing populations formed cities. But cities were large, confusing places, and they needed to be governed. Hierarchies emerged to manage the cities, with both good and bad effects.
Of course, those early cities weren’t the modern societies we know today, but they had some of the same features. People generally built permanent houses. They recognized some sort of authority to govern and had some type of hierarchy. And they had specialists—like carpenters, toolmakers, brewers, and bakers—who ate the surplus food produced by farmers while producing other things. These changes would not have been possible without the technology that started them all—the domestication of plants and animals. Thanks to this new technology and its impacts, human societies began to grow larger and more complex beginning around 12,000 years ago.
Often, the big projects that were organized in cities were big homes, monuments, or tombs for rulers, such as the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Sphinx under construction in this image.
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Archaeologists have found evidence that domestication, hierarchies, and cities usually developed around the same time. This evidence includes granaries, which are almost always present in early cities. Granaries are places to store food, and so are evidence of surplus food production. You only need a place to store grain if you have more of it than you can eat. Since granaries are present in most early cities, they show that surpluses were an important contributor to the rise of cities.
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| Archaeologists also study burials. They have found that in foraging societies, most people are buried in the same way and with the same goods. In cities, however, some people were buried with fancier stuff like jewelry, cloth, or weapons. Others were not. These differences in burials are one example of the evidence archaeologists use to show that these cities had developed hierarchies. |
| Cat people |
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In many agricultural societies, cats became invaluable as people began storing surplus grain. Stored grain attracted vermin, which threatened food supplies. Wildcats, drawn to the grain stores to hunt mice and rats, became regular visitors to these early settlements. People noticed how effective they were at controlling pests and gradually encouraged their presence, eventually leading to domestication. Revered for their utility and seen as protectors of the harvest, cats became integral to agrarian societies. In ancient Egypt, they even held sacred status. |
Trevor Getz
Trevor Getz is Professor of African History at San Francisco State University. He has written eleven books on African and world history, including Abina and the Important Men. He is also the author of A Primer for Teaching African History, which explores questions about how we should teach the history of Africa in high school and university classes.
Image credits
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except for the following:
Cave painting from the Tassili n'Ajjer mountains. Pastoralists are people who breed and raise the animals on which they depend. Unlike farmers, who must stay in one place to harvest their crops, pastoralists often move from place to place as their livestock graze. This image is a cave painting from the central Sahara desert showing cattle herders. It was painted over 5,000 years ago. Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cave_painting_from_the_Tassili_n%27Ajjer_mountains.jpg
Map of the Middle East. Some of humanity’s first cities developed in Southwest Asia, which is sometimes called the Middle East. The Fertile Crescent (light-green area) included the Nile River in Egypt and the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia. By OER Project, CC BY 4.0.
Group of people reconstructing The Sphinx, Giza pyramids, Giza, Egypt. Often, the big projects that were organized in cities were big homes, monuments, or tombs for rulers, such as the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Sphinx under construction in this image. © DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images.
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