Urbanization
The Founding of cities depends on several factors but none more important than an abundant of food and water. For this reason, in the ancient world it was common for cities to be located near rivers and coasts.
Some examples of this principle at work are the cities of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers in China, The Indus River in India, and the Nile River in Egypt .
Other Factors can also explain the location of cities. For Examples, Constantinople became a thriving city without either good local farmland or freshwater because of its strategic location. Aqueducts and massive cisterns were built to bring in water from afar.
Important cities had to be defensible. Examples of ancient sites that could withstand invasion were the Phoenician city of Tyre , situated on an island; Corinth in Greece had an acropolis on a high hill overlooking the harbor; and Petra in Present -day Jordan, located in a desert and reachable only via a narrow and winding route through a pass.
Similarly Chang’an ,ancient capital of China, was protected by nearby mountain passes that held back nomadic invaders. Even cities that did not have natural defenses could survive ,For examples ,Sparta , located on a Plain, or Rome, whose seven hills above the Tiber River were not adequate for Protection , Because both developed formidable armies.
Protective Walls and Impressive Monuments
Walls and Fortifications protected most ancient cities. One of the oldest cities in the world (7000 B.C.E), Jericho was known in the Bible for its reputedly impenetrable walls that protected the 2000 people who lived there, making it a large settlement for its day.
Other cities constructed ingenious gates, towers, and moats as safeguards against enemies. Among the cities most famous for their gates were Mycenae(Agamemnon’s capital,1200 B.C.E), which had a famous “lion Gate.” and Babylonia, which had awesome Ishtar Gate(550 B.C.E).Both of these gates were as much intended to impress as to defend. The Mauryan capital, Pataliputra (200 B.C.E),reputedly had 570 towers and a moat. Moats were also used in Maya cities as early as 250 B.C.E.
Rulers decorated their capital cities with monuments and public works to flaunt their power and impress their residents and visitors. A good example is the colossal complex of Teotihuacan(450 C.E) ,located near modern-day Mexico City. It Had 2,00,000 residents and 600 Pyramid Temples in the city.Later the Aztec Described it as the “Place of the Gods”.The bas relief monumental art of Nineveh showing foreigners cringing in fear before sennacherib, Assyria’s King.The Egyptian pyramids of Giza were intended to solidify pharaoh’s image as the keeper of maat, cosmic balance.The Parthenon was built by Pericle to demonstrate Athens’s preeminence among the Greek city-States in the Fifth Century B.C.E.
The armies and Laborers who defended the cities presupposed adequate manpower.Many great states used mercenaries to staff defenses and slave to labor on public works tasks.The emperor of China, Who unified the country in 221 B.C.E.intolerable demands on his people to build walls,canals and roads.Simirarly,in the city of Jerusalem the biblical king Solomon put alien residents into servitude and taxed his subject to poverty in order to build a temple,Several palaces,and other huge projects.Rome relied heavily on the labor of its slaves,which totaled one third of its population by 100 B.C.E.
Cities of Myth and Origin
Ur(5000 B.C.E) was situated on the banks of Euphrates River.Ur was a Mesopotamian religious center for centuries and the site of a famous ziggurat tower, perhaps something like the tower of the Babel.Several thousands years later it was cited in the Jewish Bible as the homeland of Abraham.Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa(2300 B.C.E) were cities on the banks of the Indus River and its Tributary in present day Pakistan.Both were well populated and developed according to an urban plan.
The Shang dynasty built its capitals in the fertile, Silt-enriched lands of the middle yellow River basin of China.One capital named Ao was surrounded by a wall ,30 feet high and 65 feet wide, that took 19000 men working 330 days a year for 18 years to build.The Pharaoh ruled over Memphis and Thebes on the Nile, and their urban monuments stood as testimony to the power and prestige of Egypt.According their own reckoning, ancient Egyptians felt no need colonize in this period because they felt that inferior peoples would come to them from abroad for their plentiful resources and superior culture.
Some of the most spectacular ancient urban centers were in the Americans, along the Peruvian coastal plain, the central Andes mountains, and in the Mesoamerica.Each city celebrated its origin with a Mythological tale.If a city was newly founded,it would be claim continuity with some other well known divine figures and traditions to buttress its quest for respect.Differing reason attracted people to live in cities, and they debated about how to design cities to create the “Good life”.Cities answered a multitude of human needs. They offered potential for civic ennoblement(Temple,School,plays,libraries, the arts,Parks and palaces), or they could be the breeding ground of demagoguery, decadence and diseases.How to create the ideal city motivated the Hebrew Prophet Zechariah (The Bible),The Greek philosopher Plato(The Republic) , and the Mauryan political adviser kautilya(Arthashastra,Treatise on polity) to give instruction about governing ideal cities.
Warfare
The main elements of war making were basically the same in 3500 B.C.E. as they were in 600 C.E, although the size of armies and the scope of the wars increased significantly over time.Techniques and technologies may have improved,but all wars involved combatants in hand to hand struggles, usually with swords and spears. and long distance fighting using bows and arrows, in siege warfare, and in cavalry combats.The following is a short list of some techniques and technologies of warfare that showed advances over the period .
Cavalry
The horse came onto the battlefield pulling chariots as the Indo-Europeans moved out of their homeland in the crossroads of Europe and Central Asia.It was a remarkable innovation.Sumer was known to have donkey-driven chariots a bit earlier(3000 B.C.E), but the Indo-Europeans Hittites(1400 B.C.E), on horse chariots rode into the Heartland of sumer without challenge.
The next advance after cavalry became an important component in warfare was the invention of the stirrup by Asian nomads around 300 B.C.E.About the same time the nomadic Huns nailed a metal horseshoe on the hoofs of their animals.With these inventions horses could go farther and faster and the riders gained fuller control over their mounts.
India was the first land to use elephants in battle.Alexander the great first encountered the war elephant in India.Later the Romans prized them highly.But elephant did not adapt well to cold.When Hannibal invaded Italy, only one elephant survived the March across Alps.
Infantry and iron weapons
The horse did not make infantry obsolete.Improvements in providing protection for foot soldiers came with sumer’s use of the shield(2500 B.C.E).In Alexander the Great’s day the whole company of Fighters would March into battle Linked together by shields to form a moving wall.This formation is called the “Phalanx”. Ordinary citizens soldiers could learn the coordination and discipline involved with the Phalanx, and this esprit de corps continued into civic life and social interaction.In ancient Greece a dynamic of participatory government sprang from this expectation of battlefield accountability.When combined with Athens’s newfound opportunities on the sea, the aristocracy based on cavalry gave way to democracy based on infantry and navy.Individual body Armor,used with the shield, protected soldiers in the battle.By 250 B.C.E. the Chinese has developed body Armor made of the metal plates.The idea of “knights in shining Armor”doing pitched battle is a fancy of the Middle Ages,as iron was simply too heavy and valuable for large -Scale use.The Parthians(c.2500 C.E) claimed that their horses ate Iranian mountain alfalfa and were strong enough to bear their warriors in full(Though mostly noniron) Armor.
The marauding Hittites inaugurated the Iron Age with iron weapons replacing bronze ones.By 1000 B.C.E. iron was common for weapons all over the Mediterranean world and spread to China after 500 B.C.E.Even the Celts had become experts at smelting and used wrought iron on the battlefield by 750 B.C.E.
Sieges and Archers
The Assyrians,most feared warriors of the near East, excelled in war making technologies and organization ,crafting a united and long-lasting empire out of Mesopotamian city-States.When they advanced against the walls and gates of cities, Assyrians used battering rams and siege engines that struck terror in the hearts of the inhabitants.When their Soldiers marched outside the city walls before battle, The Assyrians would race around with their chariot-driven platforms of archers and mow down their hapless opponents.For 500 years the techniques of besieging cities did not change much,until the Romans invented the catapult in 500 B.C.E.,which hurled boulder and flaming fireballs against the defenses of their enemies.
The bow and arrow were among the earliest primitive weapons used throughout the world.For the Greeks of the Iliad the blow and narrow were despised and considered effeminate compared with hand-to-hand combat, the true test of the heroes.Xerxes Persian(490 B.C.E) and Marcus Aurelius’s Romans(170 B.C.E) used archers to great advantage,as their arrows would blacken the skies before the charge of infantry and cavalry.The Chinese found ways of perfecting aim and power with the crossbow;later the composite bow originated among the nomadic tribes of the Asian steppes.Both were more accurate and powerful than the simple bow.
Navies
In the 14th Century B.C.E. Achaeans(Greeks) and other took to the sea.By 1200 B.C.E,The first battle of sea and fought:The Mediterranean sea peoples against the Egyptians.
Assyria and India each had sea going ships by the early 700s B.C.E.Beside the Phoenicians and possibly the Etruscans,The Athenians were one of the first states to make seafaring their mainstay.From them the use of the trireme ship took on decisive importance in warfare.Athens survived by controlling the seas.Navies become more and more important as civilizations increase their trade and social contacts.
However,for the most parts of the ships were used for cargo transportation,raiding and Exploration.In warfare they had a limited role.Thus the natives of Oceania put their seafaring to use in colonizing places such as Hawaii and the Easter Islands, and the Phoenicians explored Britain and rounded the horn of Africa.
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