in ancient Mesopotamia within the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, in the Harappa civilization in the valleys of the Indus River and its tributaries, and in the Egyptian Old Kingdom in the lower Nile valley. Other centers appeared in the Huang Ho basin on the east coast of China and the Peruvian Andes in the second to first millennium B.C., and in Mesoamerica in the first millennium B.C. (Phillips 1997, pp. 82–85).
Small agricultural surpluses and limits on transportation meant that the first towns were small and few in number, and contained only a small proportion of the populations of their regions. Economic activities of the earliest towns were tied largely to their surrounding areas. After the rise of towns in the Middle East, trading centers appeared on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean; some, such as Athens, became city-states. After developing more effective communication and social organization, some Western city-states expanded and acquired empires, such as those of Alexander the Great and of Rome. Following the decline of Rome, complex city life continued in the East and in the West in the Byzantine and Muslim empires, while the population of Europe declined and reverted, for the most part, to subsistence agriculture and organized into small territories held together by the Catholic Church (Hawley 1981, pp.
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