Cities Throughout History

[browngirl]

I was joking to WD that I'm a city girl of long standing, and that if I've been reincarnated my past lives lived in cities back to Catal Huyuk or before. That started me thinking about if I could draw an unbroken chain of cities, from Catal Huyuk, or even Jericho, straight through to NYC and Boston, such that I could theorize a fictional person's reincarnations amongst them.

(O, my late lamented Oldest Cities in the World page; the research necessary to do this would be the research necessary to resurrecr that webpage. OTOH, Wikipedia's is better than mine was.)

It's an interesting thought. Once I get to 3500 BCE the problem is mostly one of remembering to keep a good geographic spread, to include Varanasi as well as Ur, Xinzheng as well as Memphis. Finding earlier ones to link with Jericho, Catal Huyuk and so on is the harder bit, but it would be a good excuse to brush up on my archaeology, anyway. A surprising fact about human history is that we had little cities, dense little diversified settlements of hundreds or thousands of people, before we had actual civilizations.

Comments

[ilthit.livejournal.com]

You could, of course, just use the non-linear incarnation model, too.

What makes a civilization, again?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

You could, of course, just use the non-linear incarnation model, too.

I could... maybe my protagonist only reincarnates when there's a cuty to live in.

What makes a civilization, again?

That is the 64K question. I tend to hold with a certain level of complexity, population, and literacy myself, but even different archaeologists and historians disagree on that question, so I certainly don't have a definitive answer.

[danachan.livejournal.com]

Have I lately told you how I love your brain?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*blush* Danke, sweetie.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

what a brilliant idea

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*grin* Thank you. :) Maybe, if I do NaNoWriMo...

What makes a civilization

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I noticed that you added me to your Friends list -- thank you! -- so I dropped by here to browse.

I think it's connectivity that makes a civilization. You need a certain amount of networking and infrastructure, a way of meshing together individual family groups and cities, to exchange information and goods on a wide scale and to organize projects bigger than what one small local group could accomplish. Roads. School systems. Economies. Armies. That sort of thing.

Re: What makes a civilization

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Hi! *wave* I found out you have a journal, and a book! So I had to friend you. :D

I think you have a good point about what defines civilization. *nods*