Ancient cities were similar to modern settlements: Study

A new study has discovered that the settlements in ancient times had similar characteristics as those existing in the modern days.

As the cities in the modern period have large population and density, the similar characteristics were also found in the ancient settlements.

The study, conducted by the researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Santa Fe Institute, was done in order to find out whether the ancient cities and modern day settlements function in similar ways.

Scott Ortman, study researcher from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder, looked at a surveyed data of ancient settlements, cities, houses and temples at pre-Hispanic Basin in Mexico.

The dimensions of the structures were analyzed so as to estimate the rates of the monuments’ construction, the populations, densities and the household productivity prevailing in ancient cities

The results showed that the ancient cities with high population were also more productive. Moreover, the rate at which the productivity increased shared similarity with the modern cities.

Ortman said, “We have been raised on a steady diet telling us that, thanks to industrialization, capitalism and democracy, the modern world is radically different from worlds of the past. But what we found here is amazing and unbelievable. The fundamental drivers of robust socioeconomic patterns in modern cities precede all that.”

The researchers also found that as population in old cities increased, the rate of monuments’ construction surged. The similar pattern of growth pattern was also witnessed in private wealth.

“Our results suggest the fundamental processes behind the emergence of scaling in modern cities have structured human settlement organization throughout the history of human. And the contemporary urban systems are also best-conceived as lying on a continuum with the smaller-scale settlement systems known from archaeological and historical research,” the study group wrote in the research paper while concluding the findings.

The study was reported in the journal PLOS ONE on February 20.