Catalog of an exhibition being held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 8 to Aug. 17, 2003.

"A revelation of the drive and creative flux of the metropolis over time."--Nature "This is a must-read book for any city dweller with a voracious appetite for understanding the wonders of cities and why we're so attracted to them."--Zahi Hawass, author of Hidden Treasures of Ancient Egypt A sweeping history of cities through the millennia--from Mesopotamia to Manhattan--and how they have propelled Homo sapiens to dominance. Six thousand years ago, there were no cities on the planet. Today, more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas, and that number is growing. Weaving together archeology, history, and contemporary observations, Monica Smith explains the rise of the first urban developments and their connection to our own. She takes readers on a journey through the ancient world of Tell Brak in modern-day Syria; Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan in Mexico; her own digs in India; as well as the more well-known Pompeii, Rome, and Athens. Along the way, she presents the unique properties that made cities singularly responsible for the flowering of humankind: the development of networked infrastructure, the rise of an entrepreneurial middle class, and the culture of consumption that results in everything from take-out food to the tell-tale secrets of trash. Cities is an impassioned and learned account full of fascinating details of daily life in ancient urban centers, using archaeological perspectives to show that the aspects of cities we find most irresistible (and the most annoying) have been with us since the very beginnings of urbanism itself. She also proves the rise of cities was hardly inevitable, yet it was crucial to the eventual global dominance of our species--and that cities are here to stay.

This Element describes and synthesizes archaeological knowledge of humankind's first cities for the purpose of strengthening a comparative understanding of urbanism across space and time. Case studies are drawn from ancient Mesopotamia, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. They cover over 9000 years of city building. Cases exemplify the 'deep history' of urbanism in the classic heartlands of civilization, as well as lesser-known urban phenomena in other areas and time periods. The Element discusses the relevance of this knowledge to a number of contemporary urban challenges around food security, service provision, housing, ethnic co-existence, governance, and sustainability. This study seeks to enrich scholarly debates about the urban condition, and inspire new ideas for urban policy, planning, and placemaking in the twenty first century.

Take an enthralling journey from the Stone Age onward, and see how our ancestors became great builders and rulers. They grew food, discovered metals, made tools, and invented writing. You will see a mighty civilization in Egypt, wise Chinese philosophy, Maya culture in Central America, the colossal Roman Empire, and much more. Illustrated maps let you compare what is happening across the globe at various moments in time. While the Santorini volcano was wiping out the Minoan civilization, flushing toilets were being invented in the Indus Valley (Pakistan). The Greeks held the earliest Olympic Games while the Zapotec built pyramids in Mexico. Find out where it all started!

This study of early cities in Mesoamerica will contribute significantly to the world-wide discourse on early cities and urbanism.

The emergence of urbanism in Iraq occurred under the distinctive climatic conditions of the Mesopotamian plain; rainy winters and extremely hot summers profoundly affected the formation and development of these early cities. Sunlight and Shade in the First Cities explores the relationship between society, culture and lived experience through the way in which sunlight was manipulated in the urban built environment. Light is approached as both a physical phenomenon, which affects comfort and the practical usability of space, and as a symbolic phenomenon rich in social and religious meaning. Through the reconstruction of ancient urban light environments, to the extent possible from the archaeological remains, the location, timing and meaning of activities within early Mesopotamian cities become accessible. Sunlight is shown to have influenced the formation and symbolism of urban architecture and shaped the sensory experience of urban life.From cities as part of the sunlit landscape, this work progresses to consider city forms as a whole and then to the examination of architectural types; residential, sacred and palatial. Architectural analysis is complemented by analysis of contemporary textual sources, along with iconographic and artefactual evidence. The cities under detailed examination are limited to those on the Mesopotamian plain, focusing on the Early Dynastic periods up to the end of the second millennium BC.This volume demonstrates the utility of light as a tool with which to analyse, not just ancient Mesopotamian settlements, but the built environment of any past society, especially where provision of, or protection from sunlight critically affects life. The active influence of sunlight is demonstrated within Mesopotamian cities at every scale of analysis.