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Differences Between Human Innovation And Natural Evolution

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Cities are an integral part of human existence. While it is easy to overlook their impact on our lives, it is important to understand both how and why cities were formed in order to better understand our own history. Since cities are both a natural product of evolution and a human invention, their emergence is difficult to understand. Two of the first cities ever formed can be examined in order to better understand this complex relationship between human innovation and natural evolution. Most historians consider the civilization that formed along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and was inhabited by the Sumerians to be the first city (“The Invention of Civilization, I” 3). In Egypt, conquerors battled to gain control over villages that dotted the banks of the Nile River, eventually resulting in the creation of the first empire and many cities within the pharaoh’s domain. The formation and evolution of these cities offer a glimpse into the underlying purpose of cities and how they began.
Sumerians constructed the first real city – or a group of 5000 or more people living together – in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley primarily for agricultural reasons (2). Before they settled, most people avoided these rivers because of the violent and often unpredictable flooding that frequently ravaged the land. Instead, most early people settled in small communities in the hills and along smaller tributaries and streams that stemmed from these two mighty rivers. Perhaps due to
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