Download HUM 101

Week IV
Lecturer: Faruk Berat AKCESME (MSc)
HUM 101
Spring semester 2013-2014

Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the increasing number of people that live in urban areas. It
predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical

Louis Wirth: ‘For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and
permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals’

Castells:

1. ‘The spatial concentration of a population on the basis of certain limits of dimension and density’

2. ‘The diffusion of the system of values, attitudes and behaviour called “urban culture”’. (See
Castells, 2002 p. 21)

Large population and large settlements (cities)

Full-time specialization and advanced division of labor

Production of an agricultural surplus to fund government and a differentiated
society

Monumental public architecture

A ruling class

Writing

Exact and predictive sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, calendars)

Sophisticated art styles

Long-distance trade

The state
 Homo
 No
Sapiens emerged
cities for 99% of human history.
 First
Cities cc 10,000 - 6000 years ago
 Now
more than half of all human beings live in
cities
 The
earliest was Mesopotamia in modern Iraq.
 Egypt
and the Indus valley civilisations
followed soon after.
 Northern
China (Huang-Ho) around 2,000BC.
 Meso-America
and Peru first milllennium AD.

Urban civilization marks a fundamental and irreversible turning point in the
history of technology and human affairs generally.

Process by which small, kin-based, non-literate agricultural villages were
transformed into large, socially complex, urban societies.

Techno economic revolution arising out of the need for intensified agricultural
production to sustain increasingly large population.

In its consequences unrivaled episode in human history and the history of
technology and science until the Industrial Revolution.

Written records available on dried and stored clay
tablets, cataloged in great libraries and archives,

Sumerian scribes in the third millennia BCE developed
sophisticated system of 600-1000 signs (ideograms),

Pictographic writing and hieroglyphs (ideographic)
known in Egypt.
Schøyen Collection MS 3029. Sumerian
inscription on a creamy stone plaque,
9,2x9,2x1,2 cm, 6+6 columns, 120
compartments of archaic monumental
cuneiform script by an expert scribe
26th century BC

Institutionalized science

Patronized by state and temple

Civil servants as bureaucrats employed to deal with science and knowledge

Court doctors

Calendar keepers

Magicians

Learned priests

Mathematicians on the palace

Medicine, medical practitioners appeared, anatomy, surgery, herbal medicine developed

Exact and predictive sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy) developed


Knowledge subordinated to the utilitarian ends
Useful
knowledge,
practically
oriented
science,
provided useful services in record keeping, political
administration, economic transactions, architectural and
engineering
projects,
agricultural
management,
medicine, religion, astrological predictions.

Anonymous science, not a single individual who over hundreds
of years contributed to science in the first civilizations
(Mesopotamia, Egypt, India…) has been remembered,

Lack of abstract science and generalization, no naturalistic
theory, no natural philosophy or science,

Pure science or abstract theoretical research only fostered by
Greeks

Sumerians and Babylonians developed sexagesimal or 60 base system versus
our decimal or 10 base system,

So, it was 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 360
degrees in a circle, and so on. The clocks that we use today are based on
Sumerian mathematics.

Babylonian astronomers mastered solstices and equinoxes, cycles of the sun
and moon, could predict solar or lunar eclipses,

Calendars originated in earliest civilizations, lunar and solar calendars
adopted, 12 lunar months or 354 days and 12 solar months with 365 days….

Full-time specialization and advanced division of labor

Economy supported by government, centralized economic
authority,

Large food surplus created, large food storage facilities available,

Food redistributed, taxed.

First money appeared in ancient Babylonia and Shang dynasty
China

First standardized weights and measure appeared in ancient
Egypt, Indus river valley and early China.
 Political
authority available,
 Bureaucratically
 Coercive
 First
organized societies,
institutions available,
kingdoms, monarch or pharaohs appeared…

Metalworking embodies a complicated set of
technologies: mining ore, smelting, hammering.


At the end of the Neolithic (the last Stone Age),
about 6,300 years ago, people from Indus Valley
(today northwestern India-Pakistan) to Central
Asia started to process the copper.

The bronze civilization spread rapidly through
migration and trade even 5,000 years ago.
 Wind
power as new energy and source for sailing
(contributed to the unity of Egypt)
 Horse
was domesticated and entered humanity‘s
service, camel and elephant provided essential
transport too
 Muscle
power of the ox was applied to pull the plow in
massive production










Stone age
No cities and kingdoms
Tool making,
Food producing economy
Gardening
Available some storage facilities
Some surplus created
No written record,
No education facilities
Some social ranking available
economic competition created.









Bronze age
Villages became towns, towns became
cities, cities became kingdoms,
Tool designing, making and producing,
Massive and state sponsored food
production economy,
Systematic agriculture, irrigation,
hydraulically intensified agriculture,
large scale water management,
Systematic and large storage facilities,
Larger, massive surplus created,
government funded,
Written sources available,
Educational institutions, libraries
created,
Dominant, coercive bodies, individuals,
institutions, centralized political
authorities…
The urban revolution resulted in a further decline in health and life expectancy. Factors
included:

Diet – further deficiencies.

Airborne diseases – increased due to crowding.

Water-borne diseases – increased due to contamination by sewerage.

Food-borne infections – increased due food storage and handling.

Vector-borne infections – increased due to increase in rodents, birds and arthropods.

Irrigation also created new risks.

Direct contact – more opportunity for sexual transmission.
 The
earliest cities were politically independent
(city states).
 Some city states conquered neighbouring cities
and eventually developed into extensive
empires, which came and went.
 The change in scale does not appear to have
had any major implications for the history of
disease.

In Europe urban civilisation first made its appearance in Greece, initially in
Crete and then on the mainland.

Athens and Sparta emerged as the most influential city states between the
8th and 6th centuries BC, but Greece was never politically unified.

Athens led the resistance against the Persians in the 5th century BC and
might have formed the focus for a unified Greece.

Athens lost the Peloponnesian War against Sparta in 431-404 BC, after
being devasted by a plague in 430-429 BC.
 http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/1-
CompleteSet/MES-09-Childe-TPR.pdf