Cities, States, City-States and City-State Cultures

In the very long perspective there are three milestones in the history of mankind before the Industrial Revolution: (1) the change from hunting and fishing to agriculture and herding as the most important mode of getting a living, (2) the change from dispersed to nucleated settlement, first in villages and later in true cities, the change in social structure from looser, family-based groups to institutionalised communities with first the tribe and later the state as the dominant political unit. In our part of the world the ‘agrarian revolution’ began c.8000 bc, i.e. in the Neolithic period and in the Near East between Asia Minor and Mesopotamia.

Agrarian society · Agricultural revolution · Agriculture · Ancient history · Archaeology · Economic history · Economy · Ethnology · Geography · Herding · Industrial Revolution · Mesopotamia · Political science · Politics · Settlement (finance) · State (computer science) · Tribe · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History