![[Media/MUFT_-_Catal_Höyük_Modell.jpg]] *A model of [Çatalhöyük](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk "Çatalhöyük"), a commonly cited example of a proto-city.* This week we're going to talk about River Valley Civilizations that produced the world's first cities that we know of. While these earliest large communities all seem to have been enabled by some form of staple agriculture, farming was not the only new development that provided energy for this shift. Others included kiln-fired ceramics, copper tools, and weaving of textiles. Each of these inventions appeared at about the same time, 9,000 years ago, in the Near East, China, and India. Yes, people seem to have started wearing clothes made from woven cloth at about the same time they first lived together in cities. It's almost impossible to detect where each of these changes happened first or how they spread, but they all seem to have spread very quickly. As we've already discussed, agriculture was *NOT* an unmitigated benefit, and neither were these other changes. A big part of assessing the benefits and costs of a change like urban life or agriculture involves defining the terms. The effects (whether they're considered upsides and downsides) of a change are not usually that evenly distributed. In fact, I might propose as a sort of historical law (or at least a truism that we'd be wise to keep in mind) that who benefits and and who bears the costs of any change in history, are some of the most important and interesting things for us to try to understand. ----- Next: [[3.2 - Externalities]]