“Urban Design Lessons from the Past: How Ancient Cities Thwarted the Ravages of Pandemics”
**The Ancient Pattern of Urban Collapse and the Role of Disease**
In my research on early farmers in Europe, I have often wondered about a peculiar pattern that has emerged over time: farmers lived in large, dense villages, then dispersed for centuries, then formed cities again, only to abandon them. Why?
Archaeologists have pointed to various factors, including climate change, overpopulation, social stress, or a combination of these factors, to explain what we call urban collapse. Each may be true at a different point in time. However, scientists have recently added a new hypothesis: disease. Living in close proximity to animals can lead to zoonotic diseases that can also infect humans. Outbreaks may cause dense settlements to be abandoned, at least until future generations find a way to organize their settlement layouts to increase their resistance to disease.
In a new study, my colleagues and I analyzed the intriguing layout of later settlements to see how they interacted with the spread of disease. We focused on the earliest cities, densely populated with people and animals, and the new layout after 2000 BC.
**The Earliest Cities: Densely Populated with People and Animals**
Çatalhöyük, located in present-day Türkiye, is the oldest agricultural village in the world, dating back more than 9,000 years. Thousands of people live in mud-brick houses so tightly packed that residents climb ladders through trap doors in the roofs. They even buried selected ancestors under the floors of their houses. Even though there is plenty of space on the Anatolian plateau, people are packed together.
For centuries, the people of Çatalhöyük herded cattle and sheep, grew barley, and made cheese. Evocative paintings of bulls, dancing figures, and volcanic eruptions allude to their folk traditions. They keep an organized home tidy, sweep the floors, and maintain storage bins near the kitchen that are located under a trap door to allow oven smoke to escape. Keeping it clean means they even have to paint the interior of their home a few times a year.
These rich traditions came to an end in 6000 BC, when the Çatal Mound was mysteriously abandoned. The population dispersed to smaller settlements in the surrounding floodplains and other areas. The region’s other large agricultural populations also dispersed, and nomadic pastoralism became more common. For the population that persisted, the mud-brick houses were now separate, in stark contrast to Çatalhöyük’s clustered houses.
Was disease a factor in the abandonment of dense settlements in 6000 BC?
In Çatalhöyük, archaeologists found human bones mixed with cattle bones in burials and garbage dumps. The crowding of humans and animals may have fostered zoonotic diseases in the Catalan Mound. Ancient DNA dates back to 8500 B.C., where TB was found in cattle and soon after in the bones of human babies. DNA in ancient human remains has been traced to salmonella from 4500 BC. Assuming that Neolithic diseases increased in contagiousness and virulence over time, dense settlements like Çatalhöyük may have reached a tipping point where the effects of disease outweighed the benefits of close living.
**New Layout after 2000**
By about 4000 BC, large urban populations reappeared in the large settlements of the ancient Tripilian culture west of the Black Sea. Thousands of people lived in large Tripiliya settlements such as Nebelivka and Maidanetsk in what is now Ukraine.
If disease was a factor in the dispersal of populations thousands of years ago, how were these large settlements possible?
The layout this time is different from the crowded Catalan mounds: hundreds of two-story wooden houses arranged regularly in concentric ovals. They are also clustered in pie-shaped communities, each with its own large assembly plant. Pottery unearthed from a nearby assembly house has many different compositions, indicating that it was brought there by different families to share food.
This layout hints at a theory. Whether the people of Nebelivka know it or not, this low-density, cluster-like layout may have helped prevent any outbreaks of disease from engulfing the entire settlement.
**FAQs**
Q: What is the earliest recorded evidence of urban collapse?
A: The earliest recorded evidence of urban collapse is that of Çatalhöyük, which was abandoned around 6000 BC.
Q: What are some possible reasons for urban collapse?
A: Climate change, overpopulation, social stress, and disease are some possible reasons for urban collapse.
Q: How did researchers study the layout of later settlements?
A: Researchers adapted computer models from a previous epidemiological project that simulated how social distancing behaviors affected the spread of epidemics to examine how the layout of the Tripilia settlement prevented the spread of disease.
Q: What was the layout of the Triplist settlement?
A: The layout of the Tripiliya settlement was characterized by hundreds of two-story wooden houses arranged regularly in concentric ovals, with clusters of houses forming pie-shaped communities.
**Conclusion**
The pattern of urban collapse and the role of disease is a complex and multifaceted issue that continues to be studied by researchers. By analyzing the layout of early settlements and the spread of disease, we can gain a better understanding of the factors that contributed to the collapse of these civilizations.**Simulating Ancient City Planning to Combat Disease**
Imagine a world where ancient city planners recognized the importance of spatial design in mitigating the spread of disease. A group of researchers has done just that, simulating the layout of the ancient city of Nebelivka to understand how its design might have influenced the spread of disease. In this article, we’ll explore the fascinating findings of this research and how they shed light on the evolution of urban planning.
**Simulating a Socially Distanced Community**
To simulate the spread of disease in Nebelivka, researchers made various assumptions. First, they assumed that early diseases were transmitted through food, such as milk or meat. Second, they hypothesized that people visited other houses in the neighborhood more frequently than they visited houses outside the neighborhood. The researchers used a network representing the cluster’s neighborhood and ran millions of simulations to test the impact of different possible interaction rates.
**Reducing the Risk of Disease**
Based on their simulations, the researchers found that the clustered layout of Nebelivka houses would significantly reduce early food sources if people did not visit other neighborhoods as often. This makes sense, given that each community has its own capital. The findings demonstrate how Tripili-style layouts helped early farmers live together among low-density urban populations during a time of increasing zoonotic diseases.
**Conscious Planning or Human Instinct?**
The residents of Nebilevka did not need to consciously plan the layout of their neighborhoods to help their population survive. But they probably already did, because human instinct is to avoid signs of contagious disease. Just like the Catalan mounds, residents kept their homes clean. About two-thirds of the houses in Nebelivka were deliberately burned down at different times, which may be a strategy to eliminate pests.
**New Cities and Innovation**
Some early diseases eventually became spread through means other than bad food. For example, tuberculosis is at some point spread through the air. When the bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, adapted to fleas, it can be spread by rats, which don’t care about neighborhood boundaries.
Are new disease vectors too much for these ancient cities? The large settlement of Trypillia was abandoned in 3000 BC. Like the Çatal Mounds thousands of years ago, people dispersed into smaller settlements. Some geneticists speculate that the settlement of Tripilia was abandoned about 5,000 years ago due to the origin of the plague in the region.
**Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)**
* Q: How did ancient city planners design their cities to combat disease?
A: Researchers simulated the layout of Nebelivka to understand how its design might have influenced the spread of disease.
* Q: How did the clustered layout of Nebelivka houses help reduce early food sources?
A: By reducing the frequency of interactions between households in different neighborhoods.
* Q: Why did the residents of Nebilevka deliberately burn down two-thirds of their houses?
A: Possibly as a strategy to eliminate pests.
**Conclusion**
The evolution of urban planning is a fascinating story, shaped by the interplay between human innovation, environmental factors, and disease. The research on Nebelivka offers a glimpse into the ancient city’s design and how it might have influenced the spread of disease. As we look to the future, understanding the past can inform our approaches to urban planning and disease mitigation.
