The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

Just as surprising as their scale is the distribution of these massive settlements, which are all quite close to each other, at most six to nine miles apart.26 Their total population – estimated in the many thousands per mega-site, and probably well over 10,000 in some cases – would therefore have had to draw resources from a common hinterland. Yet their ecological footprint appears to have been surprisingly light.27 There are a number of possible explanations. Some have suggested the mega-sites were only occupied part of the year, even for just a season,28 making them urban-scale versions of the kind of temporary aggregation sites we discussed in Chapter Three. This is difficult to reconcile with the substantial nature of their houses (consider the effort expended in felling trees, laying foundations, making good walls etc.). More probably, the mega-sites were much like most other cities, neither permanently inhabited nor strictly seasonal, but somewhere in between.29