ABSTRACT
The intervening time span, between the origin and decline of the earliest cities and the onset of the Industrial Revolution, was one in which the demographic character of cities remained essentially the same. The earliest cities had populations of less than 10,000 people with the possible exception of the ancient city of Ur, whose population may have reached 40,000. The Roman Empire and its capital city, Rome (all roads lead to Rome), may have attained a population between 350,000 to 600,000 people. Some of the central and South American cities of the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations may have reached a size of 200,000. But, relatively speaking, for more than a thousand years cities remained relatively small. Between 800 AD and 1,600 AD, very few cities in the world had populations of more than 150,000 people.
