🔄From the archive: Archaeologists still debate which city came first — let alone how to define one in the first place. But a few settlements offer illuminating views of early urban life.
say cities, by definition, rely on hinterlands for food, water and raw materials. A city stands out as the largest settlement and civic center in a landscape of smaller, socially-tied villages, homes and farms. People from the greater region would identify with the big city, like how today's Wellesley, Massachusetts residents might say they're from "outside Boston." The city designation depends, then, on a site's prominence relative to other settlements nearby.
That means it contained major public attractions, like amphitheaters, monuments and markets, and housed a substantial portion of the regional population — usually 5,000 residents or more before 1 A.D.Even when scholars agree about criteria for cityhood, complications arise when trying to date the appearance of cities based on archaeological ruins. Most ancient cites grew gradually from humbler towns, founded ages earlier.
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