How long have humans been living in cities?

[Mendalla]

It's an interesting question in the development of human culture and, to be honest, we don't have a firm answer. There's even debate about what constitutes a "city" going on given the existence of place like Gobekli Tepe that are city-like but quite different from what we usually think of as a city. Suffice it to say that large human communities of varying forms go back much further than ones that clearly are "cities" as we know them like Uruk in Mesopotamia. SciShow has a good piece on the subject this week. It runs 25 minutes, covers the issues around definition, some possible contenders (like Gobekli Tepe, Catal Huyuk, and the still inhabited Jericho), and then the oldest known and accepted cities in various regions (Uruk in Mesopotamia, Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley, Liangzhu in China). In the Americas, they touch on the large indigenous community found in Poverty Point, Louisiana (the more famous Cahoukia in the Mid-West is newer).

 

[Jaebius]

That's a great post, Mendalla, it's definitely worth pondering, but you definitely don't want my answer

 

[Luce NDs]

That's a great post, Mendalla, it's definitely worth pondering, but you definitely don't want my answer

Is you answer too limited and confined by a single book (record)? There are a spectrum of logs ... a forest thereof ...

 

[Mendalla]

That's a great post, Mendalla, it's definitely worth pondering, but you definitely don't want my answer

I think I kind of know it anyhow from past experience. You do you but I love the big, old, beautiful world I find studying the world and its history beyond the pages of a single book. A 4.5 billion year-old Earth with a complex history and biology in a 14 billion (or so) year-old universe with its own amazing complexity speaks to me far more of an expansive, powerful God than the limited world painted by YEC. If I return to being a believer, it won't be as a younger Earther, but someone who finds God in the beauty and complexity of an ancient, expanding universe. Dr. Francis Collins (who led the Genome Project and later the National Institutes of Health) is a devout Christian who thinks much this way and did a good book on the subject covering his conversion and views on science and faith. He had a free PDF of it out at one point but it's back on sale at Amazon so maybe he did a second edition or something.

 

[Luce NDs]

Then people left the cities and went into the arid places washouts and vales ... burying history in aborted forms ... foggy? Thus Shenandoah ... who knows 4 shores?