Why where ancient cities smaller?

[Bubble99]

Why where ancient cities smaller?

I read some where most people did not live to the mid 30s is that true? Where disease where more common back than?

If you look at the cities they are really small.

Take Memphis, Egypt. The Along with the pyramid fields that stretch across a desert plateau. Memphis had some 30,000 inhabitants and was by far the largest settlement worldwide.

Memphis, Egypt, was a vast settlement that reached a population of about 100,000 people at its peak, making it one of the most populous cities of ancient Egypt. The ruins of the city are estimated to span 23 square miles in total.

Uruk, the archeological site known today as Warka, was an ancient city in the Near East or West Asia,

Uruk is the type site for the Uruk period and played a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. At its peak around 3100 BC, the city may have had up to 50,000 residents,, with 80,000–90,000 people living in its environs. In area of 2.3 sq mi.

The city of Babylon had 200,000 people.was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about 85 kilometres (53 miles) south of modern-day Baghdad. In area of 3.5 sq mi.

Most people died and population struggled because diseases where more common?

Yes even in medieval times it was low in London was 200,000 in 1600 to over 575,000 by 1700.

 

[KaliYoni]

It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet.

 

[Performa460]

There were way, way, way fewer people centuries and millennia ago.

The population has increased as time has passed.

Cities back then were no doubt smaller because there just wasn't as many people on the planet. During the "Ancient Egypt" days I don't think the world population had even hit a half-billion

I'm no anthropologist though so that's just my guess.

 

[Analog Kid]

I'm not an archeologist, so all I can do is guess.

I think it was a few things. First, there weren't as many people on the planet then, so there were less people everywhere. Yes, people also didn't live as long. Disease was a serious problem, and one that was amplified in cities because of sanitation challenges. Most sewage ran in open trenches, or was dumped into the same water ways used to draw drinking water. Germs weren't something people understood then.

Infrastructure to support large populations is a technology that needs to be developed. Looking at what it takes to support large multi-million people metropolises in the modern world, it's pretty astounding and mostly invisible to those of us who live there. New York City treats 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater a day. Wastewater processing, fresh water treatment and supply, transportation of food and other products into the city and transportation of garbage out, fire suppression, transportation, electricity, gas, heath care...

Then there are other limiting factors-- everyone living in a city needs food provided from outside the city. Farming techniques have gotten much more efficient in modern times, and we've gotten much better at transporting food from further away. Back then crops were less dense and you needed enough farm land close enough to the city to grow the food and transport it to the city before it spoiled.

 

[Bubble99]

There were way, way, way fewer people centuries and millennia ago.

The population has increased as time has passed.

Cities back then were no doubt smaller because there just wasn't as many people on the planet. During the "Ancient Egypt" days I don't think the world population had even hit a half-billion

I'm no anthropologist though so that's just my guess.

Was there not a plague in Europe at that time that wiped out lot of the people?

 

[Analog Kid]

I just magicked up two quick plots. World population at various times in history:

Live expectancy over time. It's important to note that life expectancy is usually measured from birth, but if you survive birth and childhood, things look a lot better for you-- both in ancient times and now. Modern times have improved infant mortality quite a bit, but there's still a massive variation depending on where you live:

Both plots appear fairly well sourced, but I haven't gone through the trouble of double checking the primary sources.

 

[BotchQue]

...I read some where most people did not live to the mid 30s is that true? Where disease where more common back than?...

In earlier times, even up to early US, the average age of hoomans was indeed in the mid-30's, but that was because of the huge infant mortality rate of the earlier days; the average age of US citizens who lived up to age 5 suddenly jumps into the late 50s. That isn't the case anymore.

And modern city population densities could not be supported in those days. Try to imagine modern-day Singapore, Hong Kong, or even New York City, being fed strictly by mammal-hauled produce carts, with no refrigeration or canning in sight.

And, if you really want to be frightened, imagine every major city in the SW US roasting their populace in their skyscrapers, in 114º (F) heat, because both the Hoover and the Glen Canyon dams can no longer generate electricity with no water (we're 3, 4 years away).

Have a good evening, folks.

EDIT: And I see @Analog Kid beat me to the punch by about 3 minutes. 🙂

 

[Sosab123]

I think people sometimes imagine ancient cities as if a king just pointed to a map and said, "500,000 people will live here." That's not really how most settlements developed.

A new settlement usually started because a relatively small group believed the location had potential. Maybe it was a local ruler, a wealthy merchant, a temple, a military outpost, or a group of families willing to take the risk. At first, they might only have a few dozen or a few hundred people who trusted the leadership enough to move there and build something.

From there, the settlement had to prove itself. It needed to attract merchants, craftsmen, farmers, travelers, and eventually new families. If it offered security, trade, fertile land, or economic opportunity, more people arrived. If it didn't, it stayed small or disappeared altogether.

In other words, cities weren't usually "filled" by government mandate. They were pioneers trying to convince people that this was a good place to live and invest their future. Population growth then came from a combination of migration and births over many generations.

Disease certainly limited growth, but it wasn't the main reason ancient cities were relatively small. The real challenge was convincing enough people to move there while producing enough food, housing, water, and economic opportunity to support them. Every great city started as a gamble that enough people would believe in it.

 

[BotchQue]

I think people sometimes imagine ancient cities as if a king just pointed to a map and said, "500,000 people will live here." That's not really how most settlements developed.

A new settlement usually started because a relatively small group believed the location had potential. Maybe it was a local ruler, a wealthy merchant, a temple, a military outpost, or a group of families willing to take the risk. At first, they might only have a few dozen or a few hundred people who trusted the leadership enough to move there and build something.

From there, the settlement had to prove itself. It needed to attract merchants, craftsmen, farmers, travelers, and eventually new families. If it offered security, trade, fertile land, or economic opportunity, more people arrived. If it didn't, it stayed small or disappeared altogether....

1st verse of the greatest rock record ever made:

A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
He made a home in the wilderness
He built a cabin and a winter store
And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
And the other travellers came walking down the track
And they never went further, no, they never went back
Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track, was the Telegraph Road

- Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits

 

[Harddrive]

I kinda have to laugh the one side says they had to have massive amounts of people to build the massive structures and then one side tells us they did not live as long but analysis of the skeletons say they were in their 70's and 80's I don't believe they know.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Was there not a plague in Europe at that time that wiped out lot of the people?

There were many plagues.

The one you may be thinking of occurred in the the middle of the fourteenth century CE, in the 1340s.

However, the cities in the time period you are alluding to were built several thousands of years earlier.

@Analog Kid and @BotchQue have both offered excellent and thoughtful answers to your question.

 

[Apple fanboy]

1st verse of the greatest rock record ever made:

A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
He made a home in the wilderness
He built a cabin and a winter store
And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
And the other travellers came walking down the track
And they never went further, no, they never went back
Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track, was the Telegraph Road

- Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits

I love some Dire Straits. But greatest ever? Not sure. But you have to listen to the full version of Telegraph Road.
Going to put them on for my next training session.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I love some Dire Straits. But greatest ever? Not sure. But you have to listen to the full version of Telegraph Road.
Going to put them on for my next training session.

Agree that Telegraph Road - the full version - is an amazing song; absolutely brilliant.

 

[retta283]

A lot of it does just come from the primitive farming technologies of that era. Most settlements of significance were along the most fertile rivers, the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, and moving further east the Indus. Even then however you were greatly restricted in the actual size of the arable land and your ability to collect and store its harvest. Irrigation was not advanced in those times and made it harder to expand further inland from the rivers, meaning everyone in the cities had to rely on the same resource pool which was finite.

It also does not help that there was almost constant warfare in this time and banditry/local clashes were extremely common, along with the mentioned sanitation issues. Farming innovations were slow to take hold but even then there were nigh on apocalyptic events happening frequently until the last couple hundred years. When a massive event like the worst plagues, Mongols, Thirty Years War, or the Deluge in Poland happened, the regions were decimated for decades and sometimes didn't fully recover for centuries.

It was only with mass industrialization that there became mechanisms to counteract such devastation, so despite the Second World War absolutely obliterating Europe you saw a fairly quick recovery. If that level of destruction that happened in Germany and the Soviet Union had happened 300 years earlier, it would've probably taken about that long to return to prewar levels of prosperity.