Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
layers, and the formation gave to the tall solitary trees likeness to the palms, or a heroic and romantic
air like fullrigged ships with their sails clewed up, and to the edge of the wood a strange appearance
as if the whole wood were faintly vibrating. Upon the grass of the great plains the crooked bare old
thorn-trees were scattered, and the grass was spiced like thyme and bog-myrtle; in some places the
scent was so strong, that it smarted in the nostrils. . . . The views were immensely wide. Everything
that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequaled nobility.
Where Was the World's First City?
With the recent discoveries of skeletal remains in caves in the Middle East by a joint Israeli-French ar-
cheological team, the dates of the earliest “modern” humans have been pushed back to approximately
100,000 years ago. Nomadic hunter-gatherers, these folks would take some time to settle down. About
90,000 years, give or take a few centuries.
The first permanent human settlements were made in the Middle East, with the establishment of sedent-
ary bases with houses, storage facilities, and tools that have been found in modern-day Israel. Remains
from this very ancient human era were first found in the Wadi en-Natuf area in modern Israel near the
shores of the Mediterranean, and the period has been called Natufian. Permanent settlements next grew in
what is now Syria, the Euphrates area (modern Iraq), Persia (modern Iran), and Anatolia (modern Turkey),
as hunter-gatherers traded in their flint spears for plowshares and learned how to farm about 10,000 years
ago. Çatal Hüyük, located in southern Turkey, was a town of some 6,000 people occupied from about 7000
BC
, where some of the oldest known pottery, textiles, and plastered walls have been discovered.
While these agricultural settlements represented a great leap toward civilization, the first true cities
were the ancient capitals of the early civilizations, such as Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia, which was
founded approximately 4000-3500
BC.
The capital of the Sumer kingdom, birthplace of writing and the
presumed home of the biblical patriarch Abraham, Ur was once a great city featuring one of the ziggurats,
or brick pyramid temples, built in the Mesopotamian region starting around 3000
BC.
(One of these ancient
pyramids is presumably the basis for the biblical Tower of Babel.) An early trading center, the city was
later abandoned when the Euphrates changed its course. At that point, around 2000
BC
, Babylon became
the capital of the Old Babylonian empire and quickly became the greatest city of the period, featuring the
famed Hanging Gardens (see later in this chapter, “What Were the Seven Wonders of Antiquity?”).
Thebes and Memphis, at various times the capital cities of ancient Egypt, were probably founded
around the same time as Ur. And in the Indus Valley (modern-day Pakistan), Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro
(Hindu for “mound of the dead”) were sophisticated cities of some 40,000 people that date from about
2500
BC
and which traded with Ur. By contrast, the first circular earthen mounds dug at the Stonehenge
site in Great Britain date to about 2750
BC
, with the stone megaliths apparently put in place by 1700
BC.
Such great cities as Cairo (founded as El Fustat in
AD
642) and Baghdad (founded about
AD
762) are relat-
ive newcomers.
The title of the oldest, continuously inhabited city belongs to the Syrian capital of Damascus, the oldest
capital city in the world. Built in an oasis and dating to about 2000
BC
, Damascus was an early commercial
center as a halt for the desert trading caravans. It is mentioned in the topic of Genesis in connection with
Abraham, the patriarch revered by Jews and in the Islamic world as well. Through its long history, Damas-
cus has been controlled by Assyrians, Macedonians, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, British, and French.
It became the capital of independent Syria in 1946.
But more ancient than any of these early settlements is Jericho, a village located fourteen miles from
Jerusalem in Jordanian territory now occupied by Israel. Built 825 feet below sea level, Jericho has been
