What led to the rise of cities in central and south america?
1 Answer
The rise of cities depends on reliable productive farming -- particularly of grains and, in South America, potatoes. The domestication and breeding of reliable crops makes urban life possible.
Explanation:
Civic life depends on a stable number of specialists -- artisans, leaders, and cultural figures; and they must be supported by stable crops and reliable food sources --. The history of cities begins with farming and the domestication of grains (and, in South America, the potato).
One of the variables in the rise of cities in different areas of the world rests with the beginning of the cultivation of particular crops; once humans learned how to cultivate them. In Europe and Asia different varieties of wheat and barley made urbanization possible as early as 9,000 BC in the Middle East, and then Egypt, and in the Indus Valley. Later, the start of cultivation of Millet and Rice helped expand population growth in Asia.
Sub-Saharan Africa's slow development largely rested on Sorghum, which is less reliable than wheat and rice for successively generating surpluses.
Corn/Maize powered Meso-American civilization but it took a long several thousand years for more productive strains of corn to appear that could feed larger populations. Teosinte (first cultivated 7,000 BC) eventually resulted in something like the corn we would recognize around 1,500 BC, and gave rise to the first Olemec cities.
Potatoes are native to the Andes, and we are not sure when cultivation began -- possibly only as recently as 2,500 BC. This probably predates the arrival of early strains of Maize and means the first Andean cities were dependent on potatoes.
