
‘Israel’s ancient NYC’: 5k-year-old Canaanite megalopolis may rewrite history - HerrMonnezza
https://www.timesofisrael.com/embargo-until-1130-5000-year-old-canaanite-megalopolis-rewrites-history-books-say-archaeologists/
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idoubtit
Megalopolis, really? At the same time, Mesopotamia's cities were much larger.
Uruk's population was probably more than 30,000 people. Even outside
Mesopotamia, Ebla, south of Aleppo, was a large city where nearby villages
provided agricultural resources. In these regions, technology and art was
apparently centuries ahead. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk_period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk_period)
for some achievements before 3000 BC.

> Among the interesting artifacts revealed at the site was a cylindrical stamp
> impression of a man holding his hands up in the air, as well as several
> figurines of people and animals and tools imported from Egypt.

This was surprising for me. A city that cannot build tools, but imports them.
And if the site was fertile and inhabited for milleniums, how come these
artefacts look

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hos234
Awesome that they got 5000 students involved in the excavation.

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noworld
>A massive 5,000-year-old metropolis that housed some 6,000 residents

That's 1.2 ancient denizens per student. The size of the research is nearing
the size of the ancient city.

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ptah
> that housed some 6,000 residents

is this article an exaggeration? a quick search shows NYC has over 8,000,000
residents

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nkoren
At the time, the whole world had a total population of about 5 million people.
So both this city and modern-day NYC would have about 0.1% of the global
population. The comparison seems apt.

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ptah
it wouldn't need nearly as much infrastructure and innovation to house 6,000
compared to 8,000,000. it is not in any way comparable in scale

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petewailes
It's a simile, that it's a simile is obvious, and you know that that's the
case. No-one is reasonably going to expect that the Canaanites literally built
an NYC. Don't be persnickety.

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liveoneggs
pretty obvious he was talking about the global relevancy of the restaurant and
theater scene; not like he expected ancient subways!

