Brak — a 6,000 year old antiauthoritarian city?
I was fascinated by a recent article in Science about Brak, a 6,000-year-old Mesopotamian city (now in Syria) whose structure seemed to defy conventional wisdom about how urban spaces evolved. Unlike many early cities, Brak did not start as a dense, central core and slowly radiate outward into neighborhoods. Instead, it began as a loosely-connected group of neighborhoods arranged in a semi-circle that gradually grew together and formed a centralized downtown area with temples and large ceramics shops.
Anthropologists investigating Brak speculate that its unusual evolution meant that its inhabitants may have been more tolerant of diversity, and less dependent on an authoritarian, centralized ruling class. This is certainly an appealing idea, since many social reformer types like myself are asking how we can improve the quality of life in urban spaces. Maybe a decentralized city model is more liberating? Less likely to result in slums and highrise palaces? Actually, I don’t think so. Read more about why I think a decentralized city model may not be as antiauthoritarian as it seems.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:27 am
I believe the remains of some ancient cities have been found in the rainforests of Central and/or South America. These were arranged in circles with connecting spokes. The descendants of these ancient civilizations are now hunter/gatherers with an advanced pottery tradition.
More and more, human habitations are being found underwater. Before 8,000 BCE the sea level was hundreds of feet lower than today, and some now believe that ancient Sumer was established by refugees from the Black Sea, which reached its current level around 6,000 BCE. I think it is reasonable to say that civilization, and living in cities, is much older than places like Brak.
Also, post-flood cultures may very well be suffering from the shock of losing a civilization to rising waters. The earliest skeletons found in California show short lives and violent deaths in a material culture of scarcity; later skeletons show material improvements. But people didn’t spring forth from the earth of California, and there are probably traces of human civilization under the water along the California coast (I think the region between Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands is a good place to look).
Even more intriguing, there is now evidence that a comet hit North America about 9,000 BCE, causing the extinction of large animals in North America, including elephants, camels, lions and humans. Who knows what went up in smoke in the firestorm of that event?
When Europeans discovered the “New World” and the egalitarian aboriginal cultures there, the European imaginations were inspired to come up with democracy. We are now discovering a much older world, and we are reinterpreting our history in light of various calamities we now know to have occurred. Once again, we are free to imagine new forms of social organization, based upon what we can glean from the really old ways.
September 18th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I thought Brak was an ADHD affected Cat-headed Alien who was always getting picked on by his best friend, a snotty, slightly older, teenaged Mantis named Zorak.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:28 am
@Freddie, I think the Brak you’re talking about was named after the city of Brak — you know, the way some people name their kids Minneapolis or Tulsa.