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Evolution of settlement - meenal sogani - 11-07-2014

Evolution of settlement

Five major stage of evolution of settlement
1. Primitive non-organized human settlements (started with the evolution of man.)
2. Primitive organized settlements ( the period of villages - eopolis - which lasted about 10,000 years.)
3. Static urban settlements or cities (polis - which lasted about 5,000-6,000 years.)
4. Dynamic urban settlements (dynapolis - which lasted 200 - 400 years.)
5. The universal city (ecumenopolis - which is now beginning.)

The independent and relatively sudden jump to civilization has occurred some six or seven times in history.

1. Sumer 4000 BC
2. Egypt 3500 BC
3. Indus valley 2500 BC
4. Shang china 1700 BC
5. Mesoamerica like olmec 1100BC , monte alban 700BC
6. Peru 200BC

In every case, the first cities are emerged only after a preceding agriculture revolution and small permanent settlements of cultivators appeared.

RE: Evolution of settlement - Priyanka Mathur - 01-20-2015

The oldest settlement of man in town fashion which has yet been explored is that of Kahun near Greece , in Egypt, dating from about 2500 B.C. Professor Flinders Petrie unearthed many four-roomed cottages packed close in parallel oblong blocks and a few larger rectangular houses: they are the dwellings of the workmen and managers busy with the neighbouring Illahun pyramid.

RE: Evolution of settlement - Priyanka Mathur - 01-20-2015

Babylonia and Assyria

Herodotus visited Babylon in the course of his many wanderings about 450 B.C. Babylon was planted in an open plain and formed an exact square of great size, 120 stades (nearly 14 miles) each way; the whole circuit was 480 stades. It was girt with immense brick walls, 340 ft. high and 90 ft. thick, and a broad deep moat full of water, and was entered through 100 gates; arranged symmetrically, 25 in each side. From corner to corner the city was cut diagonally by the Euphrates, which thus halved it into two roughly equal triangles, and the river banks were fortified by brick defences. There was, too, an inner wall on the landward side. The streets were also remarkable:

'The city itself (he says) is full of houses, three or four storeys high, and has been laid out with its streets straight, notably those which run at right angles, that is, those which lead to the river. Each road runs to a small gate in the brick river-wall: there are as many gates as lanes."

In each part of the city (that is, on either bank of the Euphrates) were specially large buildings, in one part the royal palaces, in the other the temple of Zeus Belos, bronze-gated, square in outline, 400 yards in breadth and length.

RE: Evolution of settlement - Priyanka Mathur - 01-20-2015

Actual remains of Babylon, as known from surveys and excavations :

Large district extending to both banks of the Euphrates, which is covered rather irregularly by the mounds of many ruined buildings. Two sites in it are
especially notable. At its southern end is Birs Nimrud and some adjacent mounds, anciently Borsippa; here stood a huge temple of the god Nebo. Near its north end, ten or eleven miles north of Borsippa, round Babil and Kasr, is a larger wilderness of ruin, three miles long and nearly as broad in extreme dimensions; here town-walls and palaces of Babylonian kings and temples of Babylonian gods and streets and dwelling-houses of ordinary men have been detected and in part uncovered.