Cities, States, and Empires
Driving Question: How did complex societies develop and how did they impact humans inside and outside these communities?
Once people started growing their own food, everything changed. Small groups evolved into massive, complex societies with thousands—even millions—of people. Explore how some of these communities grew into powerful cities, states, and empires, and how those changes shaped life—for both for the people within them and the wider world.
Learning Objectives
- Investigate the development of agrarian societies.
- Understand the causes and effects of the development of cities and states.
- Use close reading to analyze how and why complex human societies formed.
Ancient cities may not look like the ones we know today, but understanding the defining characteristics of cities, societies, and empires is key to making sense of the past.
Personal stories help students connect with history—and this one’s got a kid who gets grumpy with his mom about his new school clothes. This video uses the story of Iddin Sin—a young scribe in ancient Mesopotamia—to make the world of 4,000 years ago feel a bit more like today.
Farming changed everything: Villages grew into cities and states, trade networks expanded, and people built governments and religions to navigate their new, more-complex world.
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Guiding Questions
Before cities and large states, there were small villages and towns. What can life in those small communities tell us about who we are now?
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Guiding Questions
Cities changed everything. Read the article to explore how cities reshaped economic and social life.
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Guiding Questions
Some quick definitions from these two articles, pulled out here to make your life slightly easier:
- A state is a political organization that controls a specific territory, has a government, and has the power to make and enforce laws over its population.
- An empire is a complex political organization where a dominant central state controls weaker peripheral (outer) states.
If you’d like to go deeper into the history of the first states and agriculture, check out James C. Scott’s classic, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States.
What’s a state? What’s an empire? Historians frequently debate these questions. Explore these articles to find answers, and then apply what you’ve learned in the activity.
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Guiding Questions
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Guiding Questions
Looking for ancient trade route maps? Check out our Roman Empire maps. Have students use the deep zoom feature (the + button in the top-left corner) to zoom in to Rome. What do they notice about the trade routes? Why might trade have been important to political control in empires?
If you’re looking to dig deeper before class, Jerry Bentley’s Old World Encounters is a foundational book for thinking about the role of trade and exchange in shaping the ancient world.
Trade routes connected the ancient world, spreading innovations, goods, and ideas.
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Guiding Questions
Note: We hear a lot about the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages. But these periodizations only make sense for certain parts of Afro-Eurasia—like the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Other regions, like Mesoamerica, use different periodizations.
Explore three different regions to compare how ancient trade networks affected each one. Then, use what you’ve learned in the activity to draw conclusions about the impacts of these exchange routes.
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Guiding Questions
Farming led to both cities and states, but even though many societies had similar structures and strategies, they weren’t all the same.
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Guiding Questions
Welcome to the ancient city of Teotihuacan, the dominant power in the ancient Mesoamerican region. Think you know what an ancient city was like? Teotihuacan might surprise you.
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Guiding Questions
Think about what you know to be true—and false—about the first cities, states, and empires. Can you tell what’s real and what’s not?