Vocab/ Notes for Exam

Ch. 9 Notes and Vocab:
-Urban Morphology: layout of a city; physical form and structure.
-Cities are centers of political power and industial might, higher education and technological innovation, artistic acheivement and medical advances.
-City: a conglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to serve as a center of polotics, culture, and economics.
-People are migrating from countryside to urbanized areas.
-Globally population is mostly urban.
-Urban: describes the buildup of central city and suburban realm; distinctively nonrural and nonagricultural.
-In todays world, urbanization happens quickly. Ex: Later part of 20th century, the Chinese government announced a major economic development in Guangdong, province in southern China. The Chin. govt' made a special economic zone [SEZ] in Guangdong Province, and business and industy mushroomed. A tiny fishing village of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province is adjacent to Hong Kong. Industies moved from Hong Kong to Shenzhen to take advantage of lower labor cost. The village expirenced an extraordinary growth as its pop. increased. [20,000 to 3.1 million in 3 decades] The whole village changed.
-Communities have existed for over a 100,000 years but took more than 90,000 years to have people begin to cluster into towns. First cities formed about 8000 years ago. Only 200 years did cities modernized.
 The Hearths of Urbanization
 Agricultural Village
 A village practicing in agriculture
 Agricultural Surplus
 One of two components that enable the formation of cities
 Social Stratification
 One of two components that enable the formation of cities
 The series of events spurring these two components also varies by theory. One theory maintains that advances in technology such as irrigation generated an agricultural surplus, and a leadership class formed to control the surplus and the technology that produced it.
 Another theory says that a king or priest-king centralized political power and then demanded more labor to generate an agricultural surplus, which would help him or her retain political power.
 Leadership class
 Urban elite
 The urban elite controlled the food supply, including its production, storage, and distribution. Generating a surplus of agriculture enabled some people to devote their efforts to pursuits besides agriculture. The urban elite, for instance, did not work the fields. They devoted time to other pursuits such as religion and philosophy. Out of such pursuits came the concept of writing and record keeping.
 First urban revolution
 -Innovation of the city
 Mesopotamia
 -The first hearth of agriculture, the Fertile Crescent, is the first place we see cities, in about 3500 BCE. This urban hearth is called Mesopotamia
 Nile River Valley
 -Second hearth of urbanization (c. 3200 BCE)
 Indus River Valley
 -Third urban hearth (c. 2200 BCE)
 Huang He (Yellow) and Wei (Yangtze) River Valleys
 -Fourth urban hearth (c. 1500BCE)
 Mesoamerica
 -Fifth urban hearth (c.200 BCE)
• Ancient cities weren’t just centers of religion and power, they were economic centers.
• Early towns drew talent, trade, and travelers from FAR distances.
Not in farm villages.
Places with buildings to entertain visitors, package food, process raw materials, provide worships houses, and a house to defend the town.
• By modern standards, ancient towns weren’t that large. Ex: In the cities of Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley may have had between 10,000 and 15,000 inhabitants after nearly 2000 years of growth and development. That is about the maximum sustainable size based on existing systems of food production, gathering, distribution, and social organizations.
• Urbanization diffused in Mesopotamia in several different directions. Pop. grew with the steady supply of food and sedentary lifestyle. They moved from the hearth, diffusing their knowledge of agriculture and urbanization. Diffusion in Mesopotamia happened early, even before agriculture developed independently in some other hearths.

Site and Situation during European Exploration
• Early Eurasian urban area extended in a cresent-shaped zone across Eurasia from England in the west to Japan in the east. [London, Paris, Venice, Constantinople, Tabriz, Samarqand, Kabul, Lahore, Amra, Jaunpur, Xian, Anyang, Kyoto, and Osaka]