Edinboro, Pennsylvania

Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania

Vidal de la Blache suggested in effect that cities are made by transportation routes.1 If one assumes that physical topography or landforms determine the location of routes, the suggestion implies that, in an indirect way, landforms strongly influence the size and importance of cities as gathering or distribution nodes on some natural route presenting ease of access or, perhaps, a crossroad type location. In spite of the importance of site and situation, cities must have evolved from an embryonic state, and that evolution was, in most instances, more directly a function of human historic consequence. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast three core areas of an early urban transformation: Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley and Mesoamerica (high civilization area of Middle America, Figures 1 and 2). It is not the task of this endeavor to analyze the site, situation or morphology of each of the representative cities shown, but rather it is the purpose to consider some possible reasons for the early urban transformation which gave rise to the city. City names indicated will be mentioned only as incidental.