Cities: The First 6,000 Years

by Monica L. Smith

A FASCINATING INVESTIGATION INTO THE HISTORY OF CITIES: WHY DID THEY OCCUR, HOW HAVE THEY EVOLVED, WHY DO SO MANY OF US CHOOSE TO LIVE IN THEM AND HOW DO THEY AFFECT US?

‘Monica Smith is the person best qualified to write a book about the big problems raised by the increasing concentration of the human population into cities. She also has a gift for vivid writing that will make the science of cities come to life for the broad public. I expect that CITIES will be a great read and will sell well.’
Jared Diamond, author of Collapse
 
Over half of the world’s population lives in an urban area and cities around the globe are getting bigger and bigger.  Love them or hate them, more and more of us are choosing to live in them.

Cities investigates the following intriguing questions: why did cities start to occur around 6,000 years ago, how have they evolved, why do so many of us choose to live in them, how do they affect us, and what does the future hold at a time when we’re increasingly connected by technology?  

In Cities, Monica L. Smith points out that, even if you don’t live in a city, your life is inevitably affected by one, whether you commute into one for work, sell coffee beans to a company that supplies urban coffee shops, or host city-dwelling tourists seeking adventure and respite from the city in your remote village.  

Using fascinating anecdotes and research findings from her work as an archaeologist, Smith also reveals that many of the problems that we associate with modern cities (violence, hyperconsumption, etc.) have, in fact, always existed.  And, more positively, how many of the things that draw us to cities in modern times (educational and economic opportunities, social mobility, culture) are the things that have drawn us to them since they first appeared. 

She also makes the controversial argument that it’s down to cities that the middle class exists and she examines why social movements flourish in cities in a way they rarely do in rural settings. 
 

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Cities, Sociology, World History, Urbanism

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2019

About the author

Hello readers! I'm an archaeologist based at UCLA where I use my background of global field research to identify the things that make human societies and settlements distinct.

How did I start studying cities? Many years ago I moved to Manhattan after living in a small town while I was a graduate student. That move was electrifying and made me think about what it meant to be an urban person. The move dovetailed with new research that I was undertaking in India, so that I became lucky enough to study something that I loved and wanted to find out more about. There are two books that came out of that process. One book is A Prehistory of Ordinary People, which looks at how and why humans are so good at multitasking. The other is Cities: The First 6,000 Years, which looks at the way that cities both past and present are places where people connect with each other in a dynamic and energizing way. Even though we all recognize that cities have some disadvantages, they've become the dominant form of population center because of the great nexus of economic, educational, and entertainment options that they offer.

In the Cities book, I wanted to have a conversation with readers and let them see how they can decode their own cities just as archaeologists decode the material traces of the past. I’d love to hear from you about your journey!

Reviews

[Ksenia (vaenn) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Міста. Перші 6000 років” – це, певною мірою, документальна книжка про дитинство. Дитинство великих людських поселень та того штибу життя, котрий вони створили. Американська археологиня Моніка Сміт створила щось середнє між посібником з прадавньої урбаністики та коротким екскурсом в психологію міського життя. І все це – на численних прикладах “Як ми копали”.

ПРО ЩО? Сучасна людина живе неприродно: у містах, одне в одного на голові, часто працює не на себе, а на іншого дядька, не забезпечує себе всім необхідним з власного господарства, а змушена купувати потрібне (навіть, прости Господи, готову їжу!), постійно смітить навколо і нестримно споживає все нові й нові не конче необхідні блага, волаючи посеред бездуховної пустелі: “More! More!”. Раніше ж такого не було, правильно? Це ж ми оце останні п’ятдесят, ні, сто, та ні, сто п’ятдесят, гаразд, триста, окей, ну, може, тисячу років… Правда ж? Ні. У Моніки Сміт є для нас погана та хороша новини. Погана новина: отак-от люди живуть завжди, відколи постали міста. Хороша новина: видихаємо, з нами все нормально.

Резюме праці професорки Каліфорнійського університету можна вмістити в одну цитату: “Буває таке, що про нього говорять: Дивись, це нове! Та воно вже було від віків, що були перед нами!“. Базуючись на прикладах з розкопок прадавніх міст, авторка розповідає, як ті міста жили і що саме шукають археологи на підтвердження своїх теорій. І за історіями про те, як це – перебирати тонни череп’я та докопуватися до неокультурених шарів – розгортається практично ода людині міській, її впертості та винахідливості. Моніка Сміт докладно й на прикладах пояснює: утворення міст було практично неминучим етапом розвитку людства, бо тільки місто – як місце, як комплект правил, як спосіб життя – може забезпечити задоволення певних людських потреб, і то не лише матеріальних, а якраз чи не в першу чергу – комунікативних. Зокрема науковиця захопливо розказує:

* як саме жили міста
* чому вони були такими, як колись (і є такими зараз)
* на чому ґрунтуються містобудівні моделі
* як швидко люди допетрали, що без каналізації не обійтись (спойлер: майже одразу)
* звідки у нас ця жага споживання нового
* як ми будуємо взаємини за межами розширеної сім’ї і сусідоньок з-за паркану
* коли з’явився середній клас (тизер: ні, не за капіталізму)
* за рахунок чого хочемо увійти в історію і як трансформувати майбутнє собі на користь
* навіщо ми продукуємо стільки сміття (о, ця книжка – просто таки апологія сміття, на таке тільки археологи здатні!)
* чому купити собі тістечко, замість того, щоб спекти самостійно – це не жах страшний, а найлогічніше з усіх можливих рішень.

Розширена версія відгуку - у блозі, як і завше

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a big fan of learning about cities. I don't know when it started, but cities just fascinate me. I've read a few great books on the topic, but unfortunately, Smith's "Cities: The First 6,000 Years" was not one of them. A better title for the book would have been "Archaeology: The First 6,000 Years of Cities" because she spoke a lot more about the PROCESS of uncovering ancient cities than she did about the cities themselves. If you want to learn about modern archaeology, I'd suggest "The Lost City of the Monkey God" which covers a lot of the same material, but does it in a more exciting way.

All that said, there were some good insights in this book that I appreciated. The first of these was the author's perspective on trash. She opened the book by talking about trash and how it is actually one of the most distinguishing characteristics of cities. Excessive trash is actually a sign of affluence that can be found more readily in cities than in rural settlements. She went on later in the book to say that having too much trash isn't a modern problem, it is an URBAN problem. This makes a lot of sense to me. She then goes on to suggest that having a little more garbage is a small price to pay for the greater diversity and creativity generated in cities.

Smith presented an interesting analogy early in the book that caused me some reflection. She compared the rise of cities to the rise of the internet. She wrote about humanities' fundamental need to connect with other people, and how both of these "inventions" facilitate diverse interaction and create opportunities for learning and exploration. However, she goes on to say that people began congregating in cities because they were trying to create this "permanent festival atmosphere". I don't have anything to back me up other than my own thoughts, but I think this claim is flawed. I think people began banding together primarily for protection and defense, whether from neighboring communities or from wild animals. Ancient peoples may have stayed in cities because they found them entertaining, but I would go out on a limb and say that they first got together for greater safety. This is illustrated by one of the characteristics of ancient cities that are entirely absent from modern cities, the construction of large perimeter WALLS. I had an additional thought about halfway through this book that also contradicted what the author claims. She said at one point that you are more likely to know people better if you live in a small community. She didn't seem to realize that this goes against what she was saying previously. Why would people move to cities for greater sociality if they are more likely to know their neighbors better in a small community? In cities, you are surrounded by strangers that don't talk to each other. I know it goes against the grain, but I'd wager that most modern people don't go to cities for greater social opportunities. Modern people go to cities because they want excitement.

In closing, it took me a while to pin down exactly what the author was trying to say in this book. Towards the end I think I finally got it. She was trying to show that cities today are shaped by the decisions of cities in the past (this is partially the concept of architectural dependence). So if we want to better understand our cities today, we have to learn about cities in the past. I don't disagree with this point. However, it made the whole book seem like a shameless plug for the importance of archaeology.

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Cities became the ‘sweet spot’ for human interactions that melded both individual opportunity and a permanence of place.”

Smith has a pleasing way of writing and an interesting way of viewing things, which make this a real pleasure to read. On the surface she deals with archaeology, but as this develops this becomes about so much more as she flirts with many subjects from property rights, the middle classes and consumption and what it might say about civilizations.

Often she gives us teasing glimpses of various ideas and strands, but frustratingly she doesn’t always pursue them to a satisfying or deeper degree, which is a shame as she makes some really good points on so much from such issues as currency and waste to water and city walls. Though I have to say that I thought her observations and conclusions on middle class anxiety were brilliant.

[James Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book is a reasonably enjoyable read, it is frustratingly unfocused and much less scientific than I had expected. Much of book consists of semi-related anecdotes about cities and the author’s unsupported “reckons”.

To give just a few of the many examples of things that annoyed me:

- The book is titled “Cities: The first 6000 Years”. I expected a narrative that explained why we start 6000 years ago, which cities were especially important in that developmental process, and why. This is not at all how the book is structured. Cities are discussed seemingly at random, and not in any chronological order. Some cities are discussed in abstract, without reference to a point in history at all. The book should have been titled “A random selection of cities at random points in time with few connections”.

- In early chapters, several ancient archeological sites are discussed along with their layouts and features. This is interesting, but should really be accompanied by a map for illustration. Ironically, the author complains that editors allow few pictures in printed books, yet the pictures in this book are almost entirely unrelated to the contents of the chapters in which they are found. If the author is so limited in number of pictures, one would think she would be much more selective in the illustrations that are in fact included. Alas!

- A chapter on “Urban Building Blocks” jumps back 6 million years to the origins of language and symbols, and then jumps forward to modern shanty towns, with no explanation of the link between the two discussions.

- In the same chapter, the author discusses the ability of cities to allow diversification of production. She claims that Adam Smith’s arguments for the division of labor were understood by “managers” of “factories” in cities thousands of years ago. This is presented without evidence. She goes on to write about the use of industrial design and production molds, without any discussion of the period of history to which this refers.

- Overall, the lack of structure and evidence left me with no clear narrative or argument for why cities evolved the way they did, or why they needed have begun some 6000 years ago.

[Anne Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In her book Cities: The First 6,000 Years, archaeologist Monica L. Smith gives us the story of cities: how people built them and why, how ancient cities compare to modern cities, and how cities impact the people who live in them. It is a fascinating look at the urban environments that so many of us take for granted, unquestioningly walking streets everyday without considering why or what went before.

Smith's love of archaeology and discovery shine clearly off of each page- she seems as eager to share her discoveries with us as we are to read about them. What I found most interesting was that Smith's views on the development of cities were such a seamless flow between the physical and the psychological. She describes what a city needs: infrastructure of roads, water, food, planning, but also what a city does: it provides humans with exposure to people, ideas, and consumer goods that they would never see in a rural setting. Much of the book examines how consumer habits are both created by the environment but also create the environment and the people's mindsets in turn.

There is also the inevitable discussion of what comes next. What about the collapse of cities? Looking at the question from an archaeologist's point of view, Smith argues that perhaps this isn't as inevitable as we often think. Cities may grow and change with the times, the environment, and the people in them, but historically very few simply end. And even if a city ends (like Pompeii), its people may survive, move on, integrate and influence other cities.

Although occasionally repetitive, Cities is a book full of fascinating information and new ways for people to look at the urban environments around them. An excellent read for history lovers, those interested in archaeology, or even human psychology, as Smith makes the argument that all of those aspects go into what makes a city and how we should look at their history.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

[Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I must note, the end of this book contains the silliest analysis I’ve read in a while:

“In 2017, there were three major hurricanes in the US: in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. Although the damage to Puerto Rico was in many ways far greater for its lasting potential effect, it received much less federal recognition than the other areas. Political pundits suggested that the comparatively limited attention was due to disaster fatigue or racism; although those elements might have played a role, the fact is that the population of Puerto Rico was much more dispersed, and the main city of San Juan was considerably smaller than the affected metropolitan areas of Houston, Tampa, and Miami. Large cities draw in nationalized resources because, having been integrated into the national fabric, they are ‘too big to fail’.”

Perhaps Puerto Rico might not be “integrated into the national fabric” because it’s a colony with neither state’s rights or the ability to deficit spend with federal power? Because it has zero power in any branch in the federal government, unlike Texas and Florida, which are states essential to the GOP?
Is Smith actually unaware that the Senate, EC, and even the House each bestow rural voters much more power than urban voters? Is she unaware that if rural Iowa got hit by a hurricane, they would also get much better aid per capita than Puerto Rico?
On what planet did she get this train of logic?

This is just the worst example of Smith’s unfortunate penchant for making unsupported claims. She regularly makes claims like “it’s good to produce ‘a little extra trash’ (181)”, as if we aren’t swimming in a continent-sized island of trash, because reusing is “icky” and reducing “is no fun as all”. Our culture of disposability is treated as rational, even a positive sign of creativity, instead of the result of markets focused on short-term outcomes. She similarly claims that consumerism produces meaning in our lives, without considering other frameworks. Or she could’ve easily written the consumption chapter without that assumption or a lengthy digression about whether consumption produces meaning and/or happiness in our lives As you might already guess, these claims are the only part of the book where Smith doesn’t cite sources. Because she’s making it up! There’s a strange consumerist cosmopolitan neoliberal ideology underpinning everything, as if Macron’s 2017 campaign wrote an archeological history of cities.

The Puerto Rico example also follows an inevitablist framework. “Oh, of course the aid wasn’t as good because of their human geography (which, probably, derives from their natural geography). That’s just how it is!” I started wondering if archaeologists are simply the humanities versions of evolutionary biologists, observing then reasoning backwards to reverse engineer a rational explanation for what they saw. This reasoning always seems to confirm existing theoretical axioms. It “isn’t circular reasoning” because there’s a dig site, in the same way Cutco “isn’t a pyramid scheme” because there’s a set of steak knives.

By contrast, Mary Beard stylishly suggests when she’s out on a limb versus grounded in the facts, explains concepts through describing academic debates about it, and fosters critical thinking in the reader. She forms history into rigorous, dense, compact, witty packages. Of course, we’re not all Mary Beard. But Smith’s approach was sort of the worst of both worlds: random editorializing, loose summary, a feeling that she threw in paragraphs from two different books.

If you're really interested, I’d recommend the following chapters: anxiety+risk+middle class life (for any reader), infrastructure and urban building blocks (if you’re into city mechanics), and city life past+present (if you’re into social dynamics). These chapters contain some interesting anecdotes and useful concrete details explaining how cities took their form.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read the blurbs on the back cover, I was a bit disappointed in this book. It is a subject that I know quite a bit about as a professor of ancient history and culture. The book repeats itself several times, e.g. cities offer the young a chance for mate selection that living in isolated villages (where all are more or less closely related), cities provide more intellectual and cultural exchange, etc. But for someone not so familiar with what archaeology has revealed about urbanization in the last 50 or so years, this is a good book to read. The pictures are only a chapter heading and in B and W only. Sometimes they are related to the chapter, sometimes not. For example, the chapter "Urban Building Blocks" has a chapter illustration of Giovanni Maggi's map of Rome A.D. 1625. Hardly relevant to a discussion of ancient (6000 years ago) cities. Better illustration? Well, aerial view of Pompeii easily comes to mind. However, this is not a fault to be ascribed to the author, but to the publisher.

So, summary: good book for those needing an introduction to this topic and a timely topic it is as predictions are that urbanization will increase even more exponentially around the world. Super-cities will become even bigger.....

[Evin Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so delightful; you connect so many dots about society, infrastructure and evolution.

The author, Monica, is absolutely adorable. She is such a talented writer - making a typically dry archaeological topic dynamic and stimulating, by infusing it with empathetic observations about human nature and technological progress.

I found particularly thought provoking her statement that anxiety was woven into the tapestry of city life (p.221) - that with the rise in choice that comes with a vibrant and diverse city, comes much anxiety about how to navigate one's place in it as well as which decisions to make to indicate your successful navigation. It made me think about how our generation bemoans anxiety and its crippling effect on our lives, rather than seeing it as an asset - an energy to fuel into navigating oneself.

Related, she refuted a widespread misconception of the "Fertile Crescent" of Mesopotamia being an indeed fertile and abundant land. Instead, she corrected it as the "Fragile Crescent" - wildly vacillating between fertility and catastrophic barrenness: "in the Fragile Crescent of Mesopotamia, the vulnerability of cities was countered with a creative resilience that grew out of the networks of provisioning and communication." (p.90) Yet that communication was also a form of liberation of looser ties, speedier connections - cities "simultaneously constrain physical opportunities and paradoxically free people from the cognitive overload of what would otherwise be an overwhelming number of social obligations just for the sake of movement." (p.36) And in cities, "people almost unwittingly engaged with an impulse to align with their commonalities rather than to divide according to their differences." (p.25)

An interesting anecdote Smith imparted was her socio-infrastructural study of the ancient city of Ur, one of the earliest human civilizations: "The centrality of the temple was a key factor in its continued longevity. When the congregation grew too large (or too wealthy) to be accommodated (...) they didn't move out into the suburbs, where land might have been cheaper and more easily available: instead, they rebuilt the temple, over and over again, in the exact same spot." (p.245) This meant, in her interpretation, that the values of the society - the overarching idea binding everyone together - was its utter foundation. The intangible was transformed into the most important tangible object of the city; its literal bedrock.

And on that note, "Civic governments appear not to have evolved to have enough day-to-day authority, instead relying on the moral codes (...) Strong moral and legal codes in urban environments were both relatively consistent compared with the caprices of political authorities. People with education could be the targets of rival political violence, as seen in the ancient (...) murals where the scribes of the losing party are depicted with their fingers broken (...) history was literally written by the victors because the losers had lost their capacity to do so." (p. 219)

Also thought provoking:

"People trust cities more than they trust states precisely because cities are point-specific locales where there are multiple opportunities to interact with strangers in ways that dissipate the strangeness under the aegis of a shared urban ethos." (p.237) Especially true for cities with broadly-utilized public transportation.

"Trees constitute a living, incremental monumentality that competes with architecture as the only other urban ground-based entity that invites us to look up. No matter how futuristic their constructions, there are always trees in the landscapes of imagined cities." (p.231) We tend to think of cities as monumental hulks of concrete, void of nature - but nature has evolved in tandem with our construction of cities, including the animals which have come with us to adapt to city life (and not just the rats in NYC).

"So is trash a positive? Yes. On the scale of human existence, trash is a great problem to have as a product of human creativity." (p.180) There is a whole chapter on this topic - "The Harmony of Consumption".

"Although many species other than our own have a capacity for stimulus and response that is instinctually coded and individually experienced, what is distinct about humans is our capacity to convert individual experience into collective knowledge." (p.95) I wonder if we will ever develop another tense in our language, to communicate in another dimension.

In sum: "Urbanism required much more curation and investment (...) and cities reflect that investment from everyone who lives in them. In order to keep going, cities required an ongoing commitment by ordinary people, marked by three things that we can analyze archaeologically: infrastructure, social stratification, and an intense upswing in consumption." (p.117)

Well I basically rewrote the book here, but do recommend reading it.

[Darrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an overview of the historical growth of cities and how they are a reflection of who we are as a species, this book does an okay job. The author was at her best when she specifically talked about digs she either conducted or participated in and explained examples of what archaeologists discovered that were relevant to the subject to the chapter.

For example, there is a chapter called "The Harmony of Consumption", a chapter that discusses consumption, trash, waste and pollution both in ancient times and modern. She specifically talks about the Mesopotamian bevel-rimmed bowls and how it was the "ancient equivalent of the polystyrene cup" and that archaeologists have found millions of these bowls. They were easily produced out of clay, used for however long they lasted and then thrown away.

Archaeologists often have to dig through layers and layers of bowl shards in digs in the middle east in order to get to anything that is not one of these bevel-rimmed bowls (brb). Often they will have to abandon a dig in one area because there are so many broken bowls and shards. Digging and cataloging piles and piles of brbs can consume a whole dig season and the archaeologists are left with very little to show for it.

This was interesting to me because she also pointed out how most of what you see in a museum is the interesting and pretty stuff which is only a tiny fraction of what might be found at any given dig site. This was probably intuitive if I had thought about it but I had a bit of an a-ha moment when I read this.

I give this as an example because she later spends a lot of time giving her thoughts on human consumption and trash and I feel she glosses over the problem of human consumption and the ultimate disposal of what is consumed. She sort of dismisses the whole idea of recycling and describes human consumption and trash as something to celebrate..."While today the ecologically minded among us cringe at the quantity of trash that we seem to generate even when we attempt to adhere to a reduce-reuse-recycle mantra, we should instead view trash not as an embarrassment but as a celebration."

There is a lot of philosophical prose in this book regarding cities and the chapter I note above is not the only chapter where I felt she took pains to avoid the negative aspects of the growth of cities. She has obviously done a lot of reading in sociology, psychology, economics and other fields that are not necessarily her expertise. I don't necessarily disagree with all of her conclusions but there were many times while reading this book that I thought she was a bit full of shit.

[Frances Haynes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it has some interesting bits*, such as some of the stuff on trash, I wasn't finding this book particularly useful. This is partly because it's often quite vague, often using a list of cities or examples abstracted from their contexts where a more specific example would be helpful. The author also uses words like "venture capitalist" and "entrepeneur", which make sense in specific economic systems, to describe roles in other economic systems, without complicating them (and although this isn't my main problem with the book, I did feel this served to naturalise capitalism). Similarly, the author also has a tendency to make claims without acknowledging limitations to interpretations of evidence or ongoing debates in archaeology and anthropology. While I understand that it wouldn't be practical to do this for every example, I would have liked more acknowledgement that there can be multiple ways of interpreting things.

I gave up in the chapter that started "If you have ever been a middle manager, you know that you represent the most essential function of any complex enterprise". This seemed somewhat unmoored from physical reality and I just realised the book wasn't likely to get better at that point.

*I particularly enjoyed some of the stuff about the process of archaeology although (like some other reviewers) it wasn't what I was expecting based on the title.

[Miriam Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. Loved the archeological details, but mostly this was just an obvious, somewhat simplified account of how cities operate.

[Nicole Marble · Rating 2 out of 5]

the author had trouble focusing.

[Alan Eyre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I admire anyone who writes a book but I found this an irritating combination of superficiality and unsupported sweeping statements.

[Yohanes Saputra · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The question I would pose you as a reader is "Why cities?" Are they a natural step in human's habitation evolution or a response to something else?'



Wow, I haven't read anything so insightful this year as Monica L. Smith's book Cities: The First 6,000 Years.

As the title suggests, this is a book about the first 6000 years of urbanism. The title though is a little bit misleading. It's a very loose description, i.e. it's not a history book written in a chronological order as you would expect. What you'd get is more of an argument of what is a city. (This is actually the strong point of the book that sadly many reviewers didn't mention).

From the attraction of ritual spaces, to the accidental first city, to the building blocks of cities and why infrastructure is needed to sustain them, I can see a pattern, that she is making an argument, a series of chapter about the process of urbanization. And this helps really well because you read the chapters gradually. You get a sense of different aspects and history of cities, but not in detail. It’s like a good introduction to a topic but not scholarly.

And though in some places it was hard to go through, the rewards are worth it. I remember reading the chapter of water infrastructure and was very annoyed that the writer thought of the readers as these urban planners and civil engineers (she was talking about banal things like the Roman baths and the “Great Bath” in the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro). I took upon myself to know what the hell are these things being mentioned. To my surprise, ancient people used to have an obsession of water (Wasserluxus, the luxury of water). Smith said water became “an expression of the triumph of culture over nature.” And so it was for the Indus people with their Great Bath, a brick wall water reservoir in the tallest mound of the city with its engineering that astounds me (bitumen was used as a layer between the bricks so the water didn’t leak through).



It was overall a rewarding experience. I just hope you wouldn't be deterred by the low reviews by others around here. From me, I have learned many, and that's a good enough testament of the book.

*first image is the Thames River

[Kerrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, interesting and educational read with a surprise section on grammar, discussion of London's sewage problem and the "big stink" and the LA's St. Francis Dam (apparently I'm an infrastructure geek). Lots of information in a relatively small tome; an overall excellent read. Good stuff from the book.

1st - defining what a city is:
... a city is defined as a place that has some or all of the following characteristics: a dense population, multiple ethnicities, and a diverse economy with goods found in an abundance and variety beyond what is available in the surrounding rural spaces.

2nd - what enabled cities in the first place:
We can identify four ancestral elements that were essential precursors to the creation and sustaining of metropolitan life: the use of language to envision scenarios before they happen; the human propensity for migration that continually enables our species to adapt to new circumstances; our dependence on object for both practical and symbolic purposes; and the use of architecture as creative place making.

3rd - embracing diversity:
Today we know that ethnic differences will never be completely erased; they too often serve as a positive force for community cohesion and individual identity, particularly through the kinds of material consumption of clothing, hairstyles, music and leisure activities that enable individuals to thrive and succeed. So the idea of complete assimilation is both impractical and illogical; in addition, the retention of distinct cultural traditions has a positive spillover into urban identity for all residents.

[Yodan Rofe · Rating 3 out of 5]

An archeological perspective on cities, which is interesting, as it shows that many of the problems and opportunities we see in cities, have always been there. I found it however a bit too cavalier with regard to cities' impact on the ecology, and their erosion of their own resource base. Also, what may have worked quite well for 6,000, may not continue to work well in the next century - as cities have transformed from being a small part of humanity's environment (though crucial), to the majority of the environment.

[Hind · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this was interesting, I find that the title is slightly misleading, focusing largely on what we can learn about early cities from archeological evidence, which is all great and good but it leaves much to be desired about the rest of the history of cities, between the era or ancient cities and the cities of today.

[Darshil Chauhan]

DNF at 9%. Picked up the audiobook from the library because it seemed interesting. But so boring. Author keeps mentioning obvious stuff. I kept waiting for it to get interesting or tell me something new.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and insightful, but a bit repetitive. I would recommend it though.

[Ouriel Attal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best but still interesting !

[Imran Ahmed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an easy book to follow despite the author's use of simple analogies, etc. Other than expounding on the idea that cities are here to stay I couldn't find one thread running through the book. Nonetheless, there are still some nuggets to be gleaned from the work.

[Lauren Thornberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is like many cities - it suffers from sprawl.

It isn't very organized, with several chapters repeating the content of other chapters. For example, on page 116: "...once a master artisan had made the mold, less skilled employees (who could be compensated at a lower rate) could churn out perfectly executed copies." Meanwhile, on page 157: "...once a master carver had made a mold, a relatively untutored (and underpaid) apprentice could just fill the molds over and over again." These are almost the exact same sentence.

There are also a few instances of random French that never gets translated. I am really not sure why it never gets translated, considering that it's never more than one sentence at a time.

On the positive: Chapter 9, starting on page 203, was really worth reading. I study anthropology but rarely think about the middle class in the archaeological record.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read half this book and then realized that I had gained next to nothing from it. A pity because Smith's writing is coherent and easy to read; it just has no significant content. I did find the discussion of worship/festival sites as a precursor to cities slightly interesting, but the rest is just painfully obvious observations about why people decided to make cities.

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not so much the archaeology and discovery of the earliest cities on Earth but more an anthropological look at why humans gravitated to create cities and why - over the millennia - they will continue to exist,

The book starts really slow which is not really that surprising since we are talking about humans slowly meandering out of Africa. Collecting in family groups and eventually extended family groups. That would meet and work together to create ritual centers like Stonehenge and Gobekli Tepe. Eventually villages and towns that grew into cities. Cities that needed water accessibility. That needed the infrastructure of roads, ports, bridges as well as waste management. Cities that defined permanence and safety with their protective walls. Cities that had religious centers nearby instead of several days journey away. Markets that provided not only essentials like food from the rural areas but products made by specialists like potters, weavers, metal workers and more.

The author goes into what she believes are the precursors that lead to the development of urban areas - language, a drive to build structures, a history of migration as well as a dependence on objects. How writing begat a pseudo middle class where the educated could fill the managerial positions needed to organize construction, movement of supplies, records of property and where they may be located - one religious center had literally hundreds of thousands of goats and sheep which had it's scribe/clerk keeping track of where they were, under who's supervision and which was coming to market when to prevent chaos and a glut of meat and wool for weavers.

Over centuries, humans have accepted and 'can't live without' writing, clocks/timepieces, coinage and now broadband. What makes it interesting is that with the cashless apps or wallets, we are returning to ancient Mesopotamian ways where there was no physical money or coins. Of course they used barter system among others.

Overall, Dr. Smith covered alot of territory, trying to touch on many aspects of urban life that most people would not consider. Interspersed with tidbits from her own excavation experiences and amusing anecdotes derived from ancient records. It makes it an enjoyable read on what could be very dry material

The only negative thing I can say is although she mentions how big some cities are now and the predicted growth in the upcoming years, she makes no mention of how the city is going to deal with increased population and demands on its already limited resources and infrastructure. Just that cities will survive.

2019-085

[Brandon Pytel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, I didn’t realize this was an archeology book. Monica L. Smith gives us a 35,000-foot view of her life spent uncovering ancient cities’ structures, objects, and the like, giving us a sneak peak into what life would’ve been for the many inhabitants of cities thousands of years ago.

We learn how ritual places provided the template for cities (but cities, of course, becoming permanent places for many people to settle). We learn of human’s capacity to collect and discard — actions that remind us that consumption is not simply a contemporary problem. And we learn of the very first infrastructure, which directed inhabitants’ flow (”Pathways not only link people to places they already know that they want to go; they also direct people toward predescribed destinations.), as well as solved sticky problems like waste disposal and water collection.

Perhaps most interestingly, Smith describes how we got to the “city mindset,” which is more open and accepting to strangers, more interconnected, more tolerant of diversity, more capable of generating new economic and social opportunities than their rural counterparts (cities, needing middle managers and skilled laborers essentially gave us the middle class).

But my real problem with this book is that there’s no mention of climate change anywhere. We get one mention of the Anthropocene, but mostly in the context of how humans shape the world, not how we’ve contributed to a rise of catastrophic disasters.

That and the fact that many of her observations felt obvious (e.g., presenting grammar as a way to communicate better?) and that the book was just a bore in general. I rarely ever give up on a book but with this one I was very close.

Smith sums up her argument in the last chapter of her book, the next 6,000 years (again, doesn’t mention climate change??), laying out the inevitability of cities and how we can make them better: Acknowledging that infrastructure “has the interest capacity fro framing social interactions and for contributing to social justice”; observing that there are always socioeconomic hierarchies (i.e., the combination of middle class and low-income workers); and finally, the “need to acknowledge and celebrate the spirit of consumption that has been part and parcel of every urban center ever known.”

Let’s end with this, which I think sums up the argument of the book: “The long-term continuity of many archaeological cities, along with their demonstrated changes over time, illustrates that cities are compelling and successful because they are never ‘finished.’” I, however, am glad that I am finished with this book.

[JAMES · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty interesting, not too complex, analysis of what cities are and their history. Monica L Smith goes back to the earliest cities and compares them with modern cities, noting a lot of similarities and interesting patterns.

The book is at its best when it traces the origin of some urban feature, be it sewage systems or knockoff fashions, back to its roots. I found the stuff about what cities allowed people to do differently with their lives, how cities formed before writing and money, and what those technologies did to shape them, very interesting and well presented.

One disappointment is that I'm still not clear why cities formed. Why did people choose to give up self sufficiency (as they would have had in small villages and bands) and put themselves in a position of near complete reliance on a network of strangers? It seems, though it's not stated explicitly, that people just liked the lifestyle they could have. They liked getting stuff and showing it off.

This kind of relates to something I thought was a bit odd in the book. One theme is consumption and waste. The author seems not to be a fan of Veblen's critique. She celebrates consumption of unnecessary goods as one of the great things in our society today. I can see where she's coming from, but she completely downplays, or just ignores, the real issues caused by over-consumption in our world today. In fact, environmental issues barely get a mention.

Another oddity which I suppose I should find flattering is her valorization of middle managers, as the real heroes of the urban environment. Sure, people who work with their hands are great. And sure, leaders need to set a bold vision, but it is the middle managers, Smith would contend, who really make it all happen. OK? I guess.

Overall a fun book and a good beach read for my mid-winter vacation.

[Brad McKenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ms. Smith's writing style was funnier than I expected and there were a lot of "I didn't know that!" moments in the book. But, ultimately, I'm not interested enough in non-Indiana Jones style (aka fictionalized) archeology. My attention kept slipping away from this book. This isn't the first time I've picked up a book that uses archeology to prove a point; I read The Horse, The Wheel, and Language about tracing the Indo-European language's origin to a specific geographic region. When that author got talking (and talking and talking) about pottery shards, my interest waned. I get that pottery is often extremely useful in learning about the culture that used it, I'm just not interested enough in it, it doesn't hold my attention for long.

While not as pottery-focused, there was on mention in this book that was fascinating: the BRB. The mountains, almost literally, of this specific piece of pottery, which stands for Broad-rimmed bowl, is proof that the disposable culture dates back many more years than our industrialized society, millennia in fact. These bowls were found in some of the earliest known cities and based on the evidence, they appear to be the ancient-peoples equivalent of the paper cup. Crazy.

And I'll end my review with a few more crazy nuggets:

It should have been called the "Fragile Crescent" not the "Fertile Crescent" because of how unpredictable nature is in the area. It's a wonder those civilizations survived. (page 85)

A good bit of the infrastructure chapter (actually more interesting than it sounds) has to do with walls. That's not something I associate with cities today.

Writing was invented after such cities as Brak and Teotihuacan were built. (136)

Urbanism (aka living in cities) preceded money by more than 3,000 years. (153) The Greeks created the first coined money in the 7th century BCE. And cities date back to 4,000 BCE.

[José Angel Hernández · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very enjoyable and succinct read about how humans created cities and also about how cities created us. One of the main arguments of the book is that 6000 years ago there were not many cities and today almost half the population on the planet now resides in an Urban setting, or what we today was call the city. Her archaeological knowledge of the ancient world, especially that of Mexico with respect to Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan, are impressive and refreshing to see in a perspective that is Global in its scope. She also makes an interesting argument about the many values of trash and how recycling is not always the most efficient method for reducing waste...according to her bio, Professor Monica L. Smith is "Professor of anthropology and professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds the Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies and serves as the director of the South Asian Archaeology Laboratory in the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Her archaeological expertise includes fieldwork in Egypt, England, India, Italy, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Madagascar, supported by highly competitive research grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Geographic Society."

[Justinian · Rating 3 out of 5]

2019-07 - Cities: The First 6,000 Years. Monica L. Smith (Author) 2019. 304 Pages.



I encountered this book on Book TV, while watching the author give a book talk. Her talk proved interesting enough that by the end of it I had this book on reserve at my local library. Her focus is not on the grand or monumental. She is much more interested in the mundane. I think this makes for great storytelling and an approach for more than the casual reader who just wants highlights. In this book you learn a lot about trash, fast food, and the middle class. The focus is on the urban landscape and those who inhabit it. Why do people come, leave or stay. I found her thesis more than plausible. What really struck me was fast-food. The role that it has played in urban environments from ancient times to now. How prevalent take-out was in the archeological as opposed to the written record. Read made food was common and served as a way for immigrants to the city to make an inroad. Human civilization consolidates in urban environments and then scatters often repeating this cycle. This book does a very good job of explaining why and how. A good read if you want to understand the urban landscape of the past, of today, and what we likely will encounter in the future.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book by mistake, thinking it was another book by the same title that was recommended. But once I started it, I found myself enjoying it, even if it wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting a book on the history of urbanism and how cities are designed, but this author is an archeologist so it's more her thoughts about ancient cities and what they had in common with modern ones.

She also has thoughts on what makes a city appear and thrive in the first place, which was not what I expected: for example, we all grew up hearing about the Fertile Crescent and I specifically was taught that first comes excellent farming, then comes cities. Smith makes the argument that the Fertile Crescent has never been hospitable, that people always had to battle with nature and eke out a living in that area. She said it's been re-dubbed "The Fragile Crescent" for that reason. It's the fragility and difficulty that caused the banding-together and pooling of resources that led to more communal living, she says.

I will keep my review short because I have a lot more books to review, but I did enjoy this one and thought she was a capable narrator of her own work.