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Civilization's Cradle: Art of the First Cities |
| Section: THE ARTS / ART |
| Author: Scarlet Cheng |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 9/1/2003 |
| Size: 2,875 Words, 17,729 Characters |
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Today cities seem to us commonplace and unremarkable, and each decade a greater percentage of the world's population flocks to them to work and live. But had you been able to travel across the planet in 4000 b.c., you would not have encountered a single city. Over the next two thousand years a revolution in human development occurred in which cities gradually arose, followed by city-states and then empires. The first cities appeared during the fourth millennium b.c. on the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in the southern part of an area the ancient Greeks dubbed Mesopotamia ("the land between the rivers"). Here the great twin waterways facilitated irrigation, trade, and communication. Throughout the third millennium, independent city-states and then an empire arose in...
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...ations are but educated guesses based on linguistic detective work. The figures speak to us nonetheless of a time long gone that in some ways still resonates in the present. First Cities reminds us of the legacy of the past and what the fundamental components for a civilization are: religion and politics, division of labor, arts, entertainment, and luxury. Those we certainly haven't forgotten.
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