The First City

The transition from chiefdoms to cities and states truly marks a fascinating turning point in the history. It seems difficult--or even impossible--to generalize this transition because so many factors must be present in order for urbanization to begin. The society must have the technology, the leader, and the reason to urbanize, among many other things in order to settle down successfully. From the facts and evidences provided by Liverani, his explanations about the transformation of the society seem plausible and practical to me. For instance, the irrigation system, along with many other technological developments, clearly shows the intention to grow surplus of crops for not only a single family, but rather other people in the society as well. The use of seeder-plows, threshing sledges, or clay sickles made it possible for the community to support more people as some people were specialized in doing other tasks. Historical evidences show that temples grew in size over the millennia, and this change clearly reflects the needs of people to use the temple for certain purpose, whether it be religious or administrative. Altogether these evidences brought about the early cities in human history, a fascinating fact because they in one way or another started what would become the world as it is today.

Liverani also mentioned that history should be studied through both archaeological material and the ancient texts (although the texts might be hard to translate), which would allow us to observe the change and continuity. One of the most effective methods in learning history or understanding urban revolution is thus through reading ancient texts. However, even when texts are excavated, their meanings could not be understood until a long period of time, if ever. This really reminded me of how there are still many languages in the world spoken only by few and not recorded properly, and once the language is lost, it is unfortunate that we might not be able to learn about the cultures of those peoples at all. Had there been texts that could explain their ways of lives that we could understand, it would be extremely interesting to truly learn how people in ancient history actually lived.