Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Largest City in the World

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

The rise of civilization is sometimes defined as the urbanization of humanity. The transition from hunter-gatherers to living in settlements was a fundamental transformation of human society and allowed for advanced social institutions such as kings, priesthoods, and standing armies. Since then, our settlements have gotten larger and larger, resulting in the megalopolises we have today. Learn more about the cities which held the distinction of being the largest in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The rise of civilization is sometimes defined as the urbanization of humanity. The transition from hunter-gatherers to living in settlements was a fundamental transformation of human society and allowed for advanced social institutions such as kings, priesthoods, and standing armies. Since then, our settlements have gotten larger and larger, resulting in the megalopolis' we have today. Learn more about the cities which held the distinction of being the largest in the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. your perceptions about the past were wrong. ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by rerouted.co. After getting an extremely bad cold several years ago after hiking on a glacier in Argentina in the rain. I've been on the lookout for a good, insulated raincoat. However, they aren't cheap. I shopped around and priced out some nice jackets, but never pulled the trigger on a purchase. Until last week, when I finally got the jacket I was looking for. The best part was, I managed to get it for only a third to a quarter of the price I would have paid

by buying it on rerouted.co. rerouted is a place to buy, sell, or donate your used outdoor gear. They make shopping for used gear as easy as shopping for new gear. Rerouted believes that each piece of gear has a story, and they want to help you tell yours. Before you go out and buy your next piece of outdoor or adventure gear, you owe it to yourself to check out re-routed.co. It could save you a bundle. Once again, that's rerouted.co. As you'll soon see, the title of the largest city in the world was almost always a reflection of some civilization or empire at its peak. The city in question was usually, but not always, the capital of that civilization, and the city usually suffered a population decline within a century of reaching at zenith.

If you go back far enough, it becomes difficult to distinguish what was a small settlement versus what was a city. There's no hard and fast rule for what is or what isn't a city, especially when we're talking about settlements from thousands and thousands of years ago. Also, the further back we go, the more difficult it becomes to do estimates for the populations of cities. There are a few points on the timeline which are pretty obvious and there isn't really any question as to what was the largest city. But then there are spaces in between those where there's a great deal of debate. Even today, estimating the size of cities is often guesswork. Also, for the sake of discussion, I'll be defining a city as a metropolitan area. One contiguous metropolitan area will be considered a single unit, even if it does happen to be divided into different political units.

So, for example, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota would be a single unit by, this measure, even though there are different cities with different mayors. So, with that, we might as well start with the place, which is generally agreed upon to be the first city with a population of 1,000, Jericho. Jericho is located today in Palestine, along the banks of the river Jericho. It's one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and today it is a population of about 18,000. Jericho is believed to have passed the 1,000 population threshold around the year 7,000 BC, and the city might have begun as a settlement as early as 9,000 BC. What makes Jericho stand out is that it's the earliest known city with walls.

In the ancient world, walls were what made a city. Walls offered protection, and that's why most people wanted to live in the city. It's so they could live within the walls. The next city on the list, and possibly the first city to pass a population of 10,000, was Chahaltook, in what is today Turkey. Chautalhook was contemporary with Jericho, but probably surpassed it in size, around the year 6,000 BC. From 4,500 BC to about 3,000 BC, the city which was considered the largest was Uruk in Iraq.

Uruk was a Sumerian city located along the banks of the Euphrates River. It had a population in the low tens of thousands for about 1,500 years. Around 3,000 BC, the next contender for the title of the largest city arose on the banks of the Nile River, the city of Memphis. It's located today, just south of modern-day Cairo, and it was the capital, of lower Egypt. At a peak population similar to Uruk, and there's debate as to which was larger, but I'm sure at some point Memphis was probably a bit bigger, and besides, it would be odd to exclude ancient Egypt from the list.

For the next 1,500 years, the title of the largest city is either in Egypt or in the Babylonian Empire. In Egypt, the dominant cities were Memphis, Averis, and Thebes, and in Babylon, there were several cities with the claims on the title, including Er, Laghash, Akkad, and Babylon itself. In the year 1500 BC, Thebes unquestionably came the largest city in the world, and it might have been the first city to surpass a population of 100,000 people. Several centuries after this, you start to see the first Chinese cities on the list. Jian, Haojing, Anyang, Ki, and others compete for the title as well.

All of these Chinese cities reach a population of about 100,000 people. China has a really large population today, and, it's pretty much always had a large population. Eastern China is an exceptionally fertile area and is an excellent place to grow crops to sustain a high population. And we will be hearing more from China later on. By the year 500 BC, we're entering an age where we have a more firmly established written record of history. We aren't quite so reliant on archaeology and guesswork. The biggest city in 500 BC was unquestionably Babylon, which was the first city to surpass a population of 200,000.

In 300 BC, the title went back to Africa to the city of Carthage in modern-day Tunisia. It may have been the first city to surpass a population of half a million people. By the year 100 BC, the title went back to Egypt to a city that didn't even exist 200 years earlier, Alexandria. The city was uniquely situated on the Mediterranean Sea and in the Nile Delta, which means that it could be supplied by the fertile Nile farmlands, and it could trade with the rest of the world. I'll probably do a separate episode on Alexandria in the future because the city's story is just so fascinating. The city which most people think is the first one to pass a population of a million people was Rome, around the year one. Rome at this point was at the beginning of the imperial period.

It had a large empire, and much of that was used to send food and goods to supply the city. A city of this size at that time was highly unnatural, and it took all of the power of the Roman Empire to sustain it. Rome stayed on top for several centuries until about the year 400. During this time, it shrunk down to about 700,000 people, but it was still bigger than anything else. I should note, the population of Rome really fell hard after the collapse of the empire. It went from a maximum population of probably around 1.2 million at its peak, down to a population of only 15,000 people around the year 1,000. And then it went back to a population of over 2 million people today. Probably the biggest case of yo-yo population in history. Around the year 500,

the torch was passed to the other side of the Roman Empire, to Constantinople. While smaller than Rome, the capital of the Byzantines was the largest city in the world until about the year 700. Then it definitely moves back to China, to the city of Chang'an. Chang'an was the capital of China at the time, and was the capital for several dynasties. It approached a population of a million, but never quite surpassed Rome when it was at its peak. During this time, Islam exploded onto the world stage, and by the year 900, the Abbasid Caliphate's capital in Baghdad became the largest city in the world. Baghdad's reign lasted until about the year 1200, when it went back to China for an extended run. In 1200, Hangzhou may have had a population that approached a million people.

In 1400, the new Chinese capital of Nanjing became the largest city in the world, which then passed the baton to the even newer capital of Beijing around the year. or 1,500. Beijing held the distinction of being the largest city in the world for over 250 years, until the early 19th century. Up until this point, it's doubtful if any city surpassed Roman size. Maybe some of the Chinese capitals came close to equaling Rome, but if so, they wouldn't have surpassed it by much. China had many large cities, whereas the Roman Empire really had all its eggs in one big basket. The second largest city in China would have been far larger than whatever the second largest city in the Roman Empire was.

The first city we can say without question, which had a larger population than Rome, was London. Around 1825, London became the largest city in the world and held that title for a century. It became the first city with a population of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 million people. By the year 1925, Metro London had a population of 7.5 million. It was in 1925 that the largest city distinction was held by a city in the western hemisphere for the first and only time, New York. From about 1925 to about 1965, New York was the largest city in the world. It was the first city to surpass a population of 10 million people. In 1965, the largest city in the world title passed to Tokyo, which still holds it today.

As of 2021, the Tokyo metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of a population of a approximately 37 million people. The future, however, may see some more changes to the title of the biggest city in the world. The population of Japan is shrinking. Even if more people move into the Tokyo region, it would probably only be enough to keep the population stable. You might have noticed that there was one country conspicuously absent from the list I gave. India. While India has had some historically big cities, they've never had the biggest city at any given time.

However, by 2050, it's predicted that. the largest city in the world with a population of 42 million people will be Mumbai, with Delhi at number two, where it is today. Rounding out the predicted 2050 top 10 would be Dhaka, Bangladesh, Kinshasa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kolkata in India, Lagos, Nigeria, Tokyo, Karachi, Pakistan, New York, and Mexico City. Birth rates are currently dropping all around the world to at or below replacement levels. The only current exception to this is in sub-Saharan Africa. Depending on what happens to demographics between now and then, and a whole lot can happen, some projections have the largest city in the world in the year 2100 being Lagos,

Nigeria, which would have a population of over 88 million people. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read your review on the show.