ABSTRACT
Dealing with the largest settlements of European pre-history, Trypillia mega-sites and the Late Trypillia development should be compared with population agglomerations that took place contemporarily in Southern Mesopotamia: the development of agricultural towns' and first cities during the Uruk-period. In Uruk, the urban revolution' began, while in Late Trypillia prehistoric small stratified societies continued. The massive growth in settlement in the earlier part of the Uruk period, although probably partly an artefact of the poor chronological resolution of the survey material, is nonetheless so great that it is very unlikely that it can be attributed to biological growth alone. The tendency of Uruk to grow massively continued into the third millennium, at which point it reached 400 ha. All of these artefacts, some of which appeared for the first time in the Uruk period, whereas others became more common and/or more differentiated, seem to use principally to record economic transactions, in particular, the circulation of goods and information about them.
