An evolutionary success story: The ascent of the urban ape

Authors

  • Greg Woolf University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.13.21713

Keywords:

cities, social evolution, Holocene, state formation

Abstract

Urbanistic projects have dominated the last six thousand years of our species’ history, appearing independently on all the inhabited continents. The majority of the population already live in cities and the trend seems to be increasing. An evolutionary approach entails explaining first what factors first made urban experiments possible in the late Holocene, and then what selective pressures made urban forms of social organization more successful than their alternatives. A range of factors, some environmental and some emerging from the characteristic of the human animal, explain the possibility of urbanism. Among reasons for the comparative advantage displayed by cities, it is argued that state formation and urbanization have tended to form synergistic relationships, the success of each facilitating the success of the other.

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Author Biography

Greg Woolf, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Ronald J. Mellor Distinguished Professor of Ancient History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (USA) and Honorary Visiting Professor of Archaeology at University College of London (UCL) (UK). He studied Classics and History at Oxford and then wrote a PhD in Cambridge on the late Iron Age/Roman transition in France, under the direction of ancient historians and archaeologists. His research and teaching has continued to cross all these fields, while he has held posts in Oxford, St Andrews, London and now Los Angeles. He is a Fellow of the British Academy. Current projects include an examination of the dynamics of cultural change in Rome and a study of mobility in the ancient Mediterranean world.

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Published

2023-02-23

How to Cite

Woolf, G. (2023). An evolutionary success story: The ascent of the urban ape. Metode Science Studies Journal, (13), 69–75. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.13.21713
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Issue

Science. The genesis of ideas (vol. 13, 2023)

Section

Assembled life: A natural history of societies

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