Uruk, the first city
Fifty thousand people live in one place, and everything that requires cities becomes possible.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 200 years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Uruk in southern Mesopotamia grows through the fourth millennium BCE into what is generally called the world's first city — perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 people within six miles of wall, with monumental temple platforms, mass-produced pottery, cylinder seals, and the earliest writing. Its scale forces inventions that smaller settlements never need: administration, bureaucracy, standardised measures, full-time specialists, and a permanent distinction between rulers and ruled.