The 21,000-year-old Ohalo II settlement in Israel, for example, meets most of the criteria we associate with cities: people lived there on a long-term basis, they had permanent huts, and there’s evidence to suggest that they practiced agriculture (with more than a hundred seed varieties found onsite). But the buildings weren’t very durable and the human population at Ohalo II was most likely tiny, so it’s generally called a village rather than a city. When we call an ancient settlement a city, we’re not just saying that humans lived there; we’re implying that it existed for a long enough
...more
