8802+Evolution+of+Habitats

=8802 Evolution of Habitats=


 * THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN HABITATS **


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* __** Human Evolution and Settlements **__

According to the evolutionary story, sometime before 13 million years ago the forests of East Africa began to thin out, forcing many of the tree-dwelling primates out of their homes, challenging them to evolve life-style suited to new ecological niches in the expanding savannas. They took up residence in the surrounding grasslands, survived, prospered, and evolved into prehuman beings, the first members of the huminid family. Early human settlements were dependent on proximity to water and, depending on the lifestyle, other natural resources used for subsistence , such as populations of animal prey for hunting and arable land for growing crops and grazing livestock. But humans have a great capacity for altering their habitats by means of technology; through irrigation, urban planning , construction , transport , manufacturing goods, deforestation and desertification. Deliberate habitat alteration is often done with the goals of increasing material wealth, increasing thermal comfort , improving the amount of food available, improving aesthetics , or improving ease of access to resources or other human settlements. With the advent of large-scale trade and transport infrastructure, proximity to these resources has become unnecessary, and in many places, these factors are no longer a driving force behind the growth and decline of a population. Nonetheless, the manner in which a habitat is altered is often a major determinant in population change. ( [|__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Habitat_and_population__] )

The ** Neolithic Revolution** is the first agricultural revolution the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicate that various forms of domestication of plants and animals arose independently in six separate locales worldwide ca. 10,000–7000 years BP (8,000–5000 BC ), with the earliest known evidence found throughout the tropical and subtropical areas of southwestern and southern Asia, northern and central Africa and Central America. However, the Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a limited set of food-producing techniques. During the next millennia it would transform the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had hitherto dominated human history into sedentary societies based in built-up villages and towns, which radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation (e.g., irrigation and food storage technologies ) that allowed extensive surplus food production. People living in tribes or family units did not have to be on the move continually searching for food or herding their animals. Once people could control the production of food and be assured of a reliable annual supply of it, their lives changed completely. These developments provided the basis for high population density settlements, specialized and complex labor diversification, trading economies , the development of non-portable art , architecture , and culture , centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies , and depersonalized systems of knowledge (e.g., property regimes and writing ). The first full-blown manifestation of the entire Neolithic complex is seen in the Middle Eastern Sumerian cities (ca. 3,500 BC ), whose emergence also inaugurates the end of the prehistoric Neolithic period. __( [] )__

Farming the world over has always relied upon a dependable water supply. For the earliest societies this meant rivers and streams or regular rainfall. The first great civilizations grew up along rivers. Later communities were able to develop by taking advantage of the rainy seasons. All of the ancient civilizations probably developed in much the same way, in spite of regional and climatic differences. As villages grew, the accumulation of more numerous and substantial goods became possible. Heavier pottery replaced animal-skin gourds as containers for food and liquids. Cloth could be woven from wool and flax. Permanent structures made of wood, brick, and stone could be erected. With the development of agriculture, humans began to radically transform the environments in which they lived. A growing portion of humans became sedentary cultivators who cleared the lands around their settlements and controlled the plants that grew and the animals that grazed on them. The greater presence of humans was also apparent in the steadily growing size and numbers of settlements. These were found both in areas that they had long inhabited and in new regions that farming allowed them to settle. This great increase in the number of sedentary farmers is primarily responsible for the leap in human population during the Neolithic transition. For tens of thousands of years before agriculture was developed, the total number of humans had fluctuated between an estimated five and eight million persons. By 4000 B.C., after four or five millennia of farming, their number had risen to 60 or 70 million. Hunting-and-gathering bands managed to subsist in the zones between cultivated areas and continued to war and trade with sedentary peoples. But villages and cultivated fields became the dominant features of human habitation over much of the globe. __ ([]) __


 * Transition of Habitats **

The subject of the evolution of human habitats deals with the historical transformation of human living spaces and settlements from caves to mega cities and with future possibilities of space occupation. The evolution of humans habitats is closely linked to the development of technologies and population growth.

// The first people relied on caves or trees to keep them warm and to protect them from wild animals as they slept, but gradually people learned to construct shelters from materials that they found around them. //


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As early people began to move north, they found that at night they needed a place where they could keep warm and be safe from wild animals while they slept. A cave could form a strong natural refuge, and early people certainly did use caves for shelter, as the remains of bones, tools and early graves in hilly regions of France, Spain and Germany show. But, as people slowly spread to many parts of the world where there are no caves, they must have needed to find other ways of sheltering.

// Hearths & Shelters : // The earliest hearths are at least 790,000 years old, and some researchers think cooking may reach back more than 1.5 million years. Control of fire provided a new tool with several uses—including cooking, which led to a fundamental change in the early human diet. Cooking released nutrients in foods and made them easier to digest. It also rid some plants of poisons. Over time, early humans began to gather at hearths and shelters to eat and socialize. As brains became larger and more complex, growing up took longer—requiring more parental care and the protective environment of a home.

During the period known as the Old Stone Age, people lived as nomadic hunters.They moved from place to place in search of game, and they lived in temporary shelters. During the New Stone Age, men became farmers and herdsmen, and they settled in permanent villages.


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// Terra Amata // is an archeological site in open air located on the slopes of Mount Boron in Nice, at a level 26 meters above the current sea level of the Mediterranean. The site, contained tools of the lower Paleolithic period, dated to about 400,000 BC, as well as traces of some of the earliest domestication of fire in Europe. ([])

Ruins found in Syria show that people in this region were living in permanent villages before the year 8000 B.C., more than 1,000 years earlier than anyone had suspected. The village of Tell Mureybut in northern Syria consisted of huts built with wooden frames and walls of packed mud. Tell Mureybut is as old or perhaps even older than the earliest known villages in Mesopotamia. It offers some of the earliest examples of real houses, as opposed to temporary shelters, that have been discovered anywhere on earth.

// Gobekli Tepe // The entire site covers 22 acres. The top of the hill is somewhat flat with a "bump" of about 300 meters in diameter and 15 meters high which seemed to contain the mother load of the archaeological material. Only about one acre has been examined so far. The site appears to be dated mostly from about 9,000 BC and 8,000 BC, but other artifacts on the site have been dated to between 11,000 BC and 12,000 BC. This era lies on the cusp of the hunter-gatherer and agricultural epochs. The shelters are well designed. The "T" shape stones have been carved from a quarry about a kilometer away and weigh about 20 tons each. It is estimated that at least 500 workers would have had to be involved in carving and moving these huge stones. The stones are actually pillars used to support a roof, probably made of wood. Arranged in a circle and spaced by about 2 to 4 meters apart, the pillars are part of the walls of the shelter which were finished by piling stones between them. Many of these stone walls have been found intact.
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// This evolved division of human thought processing is no more evident than at the archaeological site of **Gobekli Tepe**, located just North of the Syrian border with Turkey. Here we see evidence of a real community where groups of people worked together to create shelters with architectural design, a balance of form and function, and for an abstract spiritual purpose. //

// Architecture - // The structures are round megalithic buildings. The walls are made of unworked dry stone and include numerous T-shaped monolithic pillars of limestone that are up to 3 metres (9.8 ft) high. Another, bigger pair of pillars is placed in the centre of the structures. There is evidence that the structures were roofed; the central pair of pillars may have supported the roof. The floors are made of terrazzo (burnt lime), and there is a low bench running along the whole of the exterior wall. ([])


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// Catal Huyuk // In about 7200 B.C. a settlement, Catal Huyuk (Çatal Hüyük), developed in Anatolia, south central Turkey. About 6000 Neolithic people lived there, in fortifications of linked rectangular mud-brick buildings. Food was mostly hunted or gathered, but the inhabitants also raised animals and stored surplus grains.Catal Huyuk is considered one of the world’s first town.


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Early house came in a variety of shapes and size. At Khiroktia in Cyprus, people built round, domed houses like beehives. Houses in Mesopotamia were usually rectangular and built around a courtyard, but there were also ‘tholoi’ or circular houses. These strange buildings had a rectangular roofed section with a circular, domed room at one end. At Catal Huyuk, there were no streets between the houses. People got about by crossing the rooftops. The doors into the houses were in the roof. Each house had one room set aside as a shrine, a storeroom and a living room with built-in benches and platforms for sleeping, sitting and working on.


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// Remains of a Ziggurat, Mesopotamia (Iraq) //
 * 4000 - 3500 BCE ** - At the end of the fourth millennium BCE, enormous mud-brick platforms had been built at a number of sites in Mesopotamia. It is presumed that they originally supported important buildings, especially temples. By the mid-third millennium BCE, some temples were being built on huge stepped platforms. These are called ziggurats in cuneiformtexts. While the actual significance of these structures is unknown, Mesopotamian gods were often linked with the eastern mountains, and ziggurats may have represented their lofty homes. Around 2100 BCE, southern Mesopotamian cities came under the control of Ur-Nammu, ruler of the city of Ur. In the tradition of earlier kings, Ur-Nammu built many temples, including ziggurats at Ur, Eridu, Uruk, and Nippur. Ziggurats continued to be built throughout Mesopotamia until Persian times (c. 500 BCE), when new religious ideas emerged. Gradually the ziggurats decayed and the bricks were robbed for other buildings. However, their tradition survived through such stories as the Tower of Babel.


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// Hagar Qim. Aerial // Hagar Qim is a massive megalithic temple complex that dates in between 3600-3200 BCE. Located on the island of Malta, the temple complex is a masterpiece and one of the world’s major religious sites. The layout of the building is quite complex, perhaps the most complex of any of the temples, and the design is very sophisticated. Its most dramatic feature was the use of exceptionally tall stone uprights, which would have been highly visible for miles around. As you approach the site, you are immediately impressed by the building’s façade of carefully dressed megalithic blocks. The tallest ones were at the corners and had been notched to accommodate two horizontal courses running between them—in short, looking very similar to the model found at Tarxien. The pillars and lintels that make up the trilithon doorway have been compared to those of the Lion Gate at Mycenae built some two thousand years later. To either side was a low stone bench that runs the whole length of the façade. In front is a block with a V perforation—a feature that is found at some other sites and is generally thought to be for tethering animals. // ([]) //


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// Hagar Qim Temple Façade from the South //

=‍CITIES= The conventional view holds that cities first formed after the Neolithic revolution. The Neolithic revolution brought agriculture which made denser human populations possible, thereby supporting city development.The advent of farming encouraged hunter-gatherers to abandon nomadic lifestyles and to settle near others who lived by agricultural production. The increased population-density encouraged by farming and the increased output of food per unit of land created conditions that seem more suitable for city-like activities. // [] //

Ancient times Early cities developed in a number of regions of the ancient world. Mesopotamia can claim the earliest cities, particularly Eridu, Uruk , and Ur. After Mesopotamia, this culture arose in Syria and Anatolia, as shown by the city of Çatalhöyük (7500-5700BC). It is the largest Neolithic site found to date. Although it has sometimes been claimedthat ancient Egypt lacked urbanism, several types of urban settlements were found in ancient times.

// The ancient [|Ur] of [|Sumer], in present day Tell el-Mukayyar in [|Iraq] is known to be one of the world's earliest сities //

// Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) //

// Mohenjo-daro, located 25 km southwest of __Larkana__, was a center of the Indus Valley Civilization ( 2600 BC - 1900 BC ). // The Indus Valley Civilization and ancient China are two other areas with major indigenous urban traditions. Among the early Old World cities, Mohenjo-daro of the Indus Valley Civilization in present-day Pakistan, existing from about 2600 BC to 1900 BC, was one of the largest, with an estimated population of 40,000 or more. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, the large Indus capitals, were among the first cities to use grid plans, drainage , flush toilets , urban sanitation systems, and sewage systems. At a somewhat later time, a distinctive urban tradition developed in the Khmer region of Cambodia, where Angkor grew into one of the largest cities (in area) of the world.

// Paestum - Founded around the end of the 7th century BC by colonists from the Greek city of Sybaris, and originally known as Poseidonia. //

// Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the __Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world. //

The old town of //Pingyao//, lying in central Shanxi Province, can be one of the most intact ancient cities in China. With a history of more than 2,700 years, the 2.25 square-kilometer town is renowned for its ancient city walls, well-preserved dynastic architecture and aura of antiquity. Pingyao was first constructed during the reign of King Xuan of the Western Zhou Dynasty(C.827-782B.C.). The original purpose of King Xuan for building Pingyao was to withstand the attacks of the nomads of the north. Afterwards, Pingyao was developed into a multi-functional city, the starting place of commercial business in Shanxi and the birthplace of China's first rudimentary form of a modern bank.

//Axum// or Aksum is a city in northern Ethiopia which was the original capital of the eponymous kingdom of Axum. Axum was a naval and trading power that ruled the region from ca. 400 BC into the 10th century.

// Angkor Wat // There are two great complexes of ancient temples in Southeast Asia, one at Bagan in Burma, the other at Angkor in Cambodia. The temples of Angkor, built by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD, represent one of humankind's most astonishing and enduring architectural achievements.

In the ancient Americas, early urban traditions developed in the Andes and Mesoamerica. In the Andes, the firsturban centers developed in the Norte Chico civilization (also Caral or Caral-Supe civilization), Chavin and Moche cultures, followed by major cities in the Huari, Chimu and Inca cultures. The Norte Chico civilization included as many as 30 major population centers in what is now the Norte Chico region of north-central coastal Peru. It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas, flourishing between the 30th century BC and the 18th century BC.

‍**__Modern Cities:__**
T he word "city" is derived from the Latin for citizen and originally meant a community of citizens. It does not mean that now. Any comparison we make with classical antiquity must also acknowledge huge differences in size. The average population of a pre-Hellenic Greek city would be a little over 5,000. A large provincial Roman city would have a population of 10,000 to 20,000. Not much changed in terms of size until the Industrial Revolution. Most medieval cities had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. Even major Italian Renaissance cities rarely exceeded 50.000. Today, London counts 8 million inhabitants, Chicago contains nearly 3 million people, Paris 2.5 million, and even a small Italian city such as Perugia has a population of 120,000. These differences in size make for very different dynamics of city life. So, too, do differences in social and political organization. Democracy in Greek city-states or Italian communes was unlike modern democracy and was a fragile flower easily and often crushed. Throughout the history of the city, it was much more common to be subject to oligarchic or tyrannical rule. Equally crucial to an understanding of the city is its economic base. Very early cities were fortified villages where people engaged in agriculture outside the walls. This did not last for long. Since antiquity, the city has been a consumer of goods produced in the countryside. It supported itself on trade or conquest. A city was a place where wealth free from the pressures of sufficiency could be enjoyed. Outside the city there was brute existence, the wilderness, the struggle for survival and danger; inside the city there was order, safety, wealth, and the leisure to pursue the finer things of life. This urban ideal may have been the lot only of some citizens, but it embodies the essential ideas that made the city a civilized place. This ideal of civilization, however, is at odds with the modern concept of the city. The modern city is the wilderness, the urban jungle. The inner city is a dangerous place where brute existence is dominated by the struggle for survival. Anyone with sufficient wealth leaves the public city for a private place where there is safety, order, and the enjoyment of leisure. In so many ways, the modern city is not the city of the pre-industrial past. The population, the social structure, the political organization, the economy, access to and from the city, and even the concept of the city are quite different. Above all, the citizen is a radically different creature. Modern aspirations and the understanding of citizenship have little similarity with any period in the past. ([])

//Prague// is the capital and of the. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million. Prague has been a political, cultural and economic centre of Europe and particularly central Europe during its 1,100 year existence. For centuries, during the Gothic and Renaissance eras, Prague was the permanent seat of two Roman-German Emperors and thus was also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

//London//

//Los Angeles// //Tokyo// //Johannesburg//

//New York City// //Saigon// //***// //Mumbai:// In Mumbai, two different cities exist, ...maybe 3; //the good, the bad, and the ugly//

Mumbai is the Financial & Commercial capital of India & and the headquarters of many of Inida's premier financial institutions are located in the city.

Residents of Mumbai's Dharavi slum, which has over 600,000 inhabitants

Mumbai waste beach pollution

//[]// //Life In Slums Of Mumbai// [] //Housing the Masses// http://soc2apc.wikispaces.com/Housing+the+masses //Forget eco-homes and look to the Mumbai slums// []

Major Slum Areas in Top Ten Cities of India []