Ancient Societies Built Socially Distanced Cities that Kept Them Healthier

New research shows ancient city planners intentionally designed socially distanced layouts to help prevent the spread of disease

Hiya!

Time is a tricky thing. Our human lifespans are decently long compared to many in Earth’s animal kingdom, but they are very short in the grand scheme of things. We may think our choices and actions are our own, but one day, many years from now, someone will probably find that the events within our lifetime represent one small cog in a giant wheel of transition.

For instance, humans have gone from scattered nomadic hunters and gatherers to billions living permanently in expansive concrete cities, but it’s taken thousands of years to make that transition — and many urban planning strategies to achieve it. Beyond technology limitations, building materials, or layouts to accommodate large populations, urban designers throughout time needed to find ways to keep residents safe — and not just from war or conflict, but disease too.

The Curiosity

R. Alexander Bentley, currently a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, studies everything from culture, social influence, decision-making, and health to time scales ranging from decades to days.

He recently wrote in The Conversation about a curious pattern he noticed in his research about the lives and societies of early European farmers. He explains:

Farmers lived in large dense villages, then dispersed for centuries, then later formed cities again, only to abandon those as well. Why?

Of course, archaeologists have all sorts of explanations for urban collapse, including overpopulation, climate change, social issues, or a combination. However, Bentley says he and other scientists believe there’s another significant contributor behind urban collapse — disease.

Bently and his colleagues figured disease was especially an issue around 10,000 years ago when hunting and gathering communities started going out of style in favor of settling down to become farmers.

Their idea is that when our ancestors first settled, they lived closely with animals, which led to zoonotic diseases that evolved to infect humans. In turn, disease outbreaks among dense settlements could theoretically lead to people abandoning them, which makes sense considering our natural aversion to disease. Then, at some point, future generations found new ways to organize their urban layouts to be more resilient to disease.

While their theory makes logical sense, Bently and his colleagues decided to investigate it by studying the layouts of settlements over time to see what influence, if any, urban planning had on preventing or limiting disease transmission among occupants.

The Research