Discussion 1

Zenith Taskin 211350345

In the first four chapters of his seminal book “The City in History”, Lewis Mumford demonstrates and outlines various vital issues that intertwine to explain the beginnings of the city and its various institutions, behaviors and social norms that exist within. The three key issues that are the most striking are the reason for the existence of cities aside from animal needs, the dominance of women in Neolithic culture and finally, the developing role of the Paleolithic hunter. Although Mumford dissects each of these issues in isolation, he ultimately demonstrates how they all come together to become part of the earliest of cities. Before cities came into existence, Mumford explains how “there was the hamlet and the shrine and the village: before the village, the camp, the cache, the cave and the cairn” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 5). Mumford further observes that the pattern of human settlement is common with the settlement patterns of other animals such as birds and insects-­‐-­‐-­‐the need to breed and feed. However, Mumford also recognizes that the “…propensity to store and settle down may itself be an original human trait” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 5), as he quotes Carl O. Sauer and ties such a unique human trait with man’s fascination with the concept of death. Unlike any other animal counterpart, even the most primitive man’s trail demonstrates his interest, anxiety and respect for the dead. As Mumford muses over the continuous trade off in life between movement and settlement, he goes on to suggest that perhaps death “had an even greater role than more practical needs in causing [man] to seek a fixed meeting place and eventually a continuous settlement” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 7). The evidence of the Paleolithic man’s fascination with death lies in the cavern, mound and collective barrow he has left behind. Such a preoccupation with the death not only establishes a spirituality in man, but also finds expression in caves where the Paleolithic man comes back again and again to perform rituals and illustrate vivid and imaginary paintings of life and death. Such a fascination with death thus also justifies how the Necropolis antedates the city of living as Mumford finally concludes that even though hunting and food gathering may not “encourage permanent occupation of a single site, the dead at least claim that privilege” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 7). Thus it is not necessarily the animalistic needs that drive men to settlement, but their wonder and awe with the dead, which leads to the spiritual and ceremonial rites in the caves and finally “draws men into cities, where all the original feelings of awe, reverence, pride and joy [are] magnified by art and multiplied in responsive participants” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 8). Permanent settlement is followed by general domestication, which is marked by the agricultural revolution. Although the man’s hunting skills, territorial nature and alertness were very useful, especially in the Paleolithic culture, the guarding, patient and nurturing role of women became more prominent in the process of domestication and Neolithic culture. Thus Mumford insightfully suggests that the agricultural revolution was preceded by a sexual revolution, which gave predominance not to the hunting male, but to the more passive female. The woman spearheaded the agricultural revolution as “she wielded the digging stick or the hoe: she who tended the garden crops and accomplished…cross fertilization which turned raw wild species into…richly nutritious domestic varieties.” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 12).

Furthermore, the Neolithic culture is marked by women’s invention and creation of “the first containers, weaving baskets and coiling clay pots” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 12), which are not only symbolic of the “collective container” that was the Neolithic village, but also became essential in the storage of surplus food that came with expertise in agriculture in the revolution. Unlike the Paleolithic tools which address the hunters movements and muscular efforts for aggressive activity, the Neolithic containers and tools address the woman’s nature to hold, enclose and protect-­‐-­‐-­‐a directly symbolic of essentially what the village is: “a collective nest for the care and nurture of the young” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 12). Thus, the concept of the village is also directly attributable to the nature of the woman-­‐-­‐-­‐security, receptivity, enclosure and nurture. As Mumford insightfully observes, without the habits and functions that are tied to the “village component, the larger urban community would have lacked an essential base for physical permanence and social continuity” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 13). Although the role of the woman became secondary to that of the man as the Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures united in the origins of the city, the city owes much to the woman in the village whose range of inventions of permanent containers to the extent of irrigation ditches, canals, reservoirs etc. were crucial in forming the city, which as Mumford shrewdly observes, “is nothing less than a container of containers” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 16). Finally, the developing role of the Paleolithic hunter is one of the most interesting issues that Mumford eloquently puts forth in his discussion of the fusion of secular and sacred power followed by the union of Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures that lead to the emergence of the city. As the two cultures unite, the role of the hunter, which had become subordinate to role of the woman during the Neolithic culture, “returned with redoubled vigor…above all, to exercise partly by command of weapons, a predatory power over other human groups” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 21). Mumford observes that the hunter played a useful part in the Neolithic economy, as a protector of the village and with his mastery of weapons and hunting skills. The village protected by the hunter flourished unlike ones without a protector, which might have been trampled by wild herds or whose children might have been mangled by marauding wild animals. As the village prospered under the watchful protection of the hunter, his role became more valuable and he demanded “protection money”. The villagers submitted according to the hunter’s wishes lest he “show uglier teeth than the animals he offered protection against” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 23). Thus, the natural evolution of the hunter into a “political chieftan” easily paved the way for his further ascent to power, such as the king. Furthermore, as the city emerged, “struggle, domination, mastery and conquest became the new themes” which gave even more prominence to the natural characteristics of the hunter. Mumford also suggests that without the evolution of the protective hunter into the tribute-­‐gathering chief, the concentration and mobilization of power in the first urban implosion would not have been possible. He quotes Henri Frankfort, who suggests that “the most important agent in effecting the change from a decentralized village economy to a highly organized urban economy, was the king” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 35), who evolved from the Paleolithic hunter. It is the king “that stands at the center [of the urban implosion]: he is the polar magnet that draws to the heard of the city and brings under the control of the palace and temple all the new forces of civilization” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 35). Alone the king, marked by the hunter’s brute coercion and force, however, would not have been able to accomplish “the maximum possible social and vocational

differentiations consistent with the widening processes of unification and integration” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 38). Thus, what religious/spiritual rites alone could not accomplish and brute force alone could not either, together, the king and priest brought all the “inchoate parts of the city and gave them a fresh form, visibly greater and more awe-­‐inspiring” (Lewis Mumford, 1961, 38) in order to command the destinies of the city and set the mold of civilization. Thus, the journey of the wandering, Paleolithic hunter ascended over thousands of years into the form of the king who became the “mediator between heaven and earth” and the centralized power, which brought order to the earliest cities. It is evident that though Lewis Mumford provides independent analysis into each of the three issues discussed, it is easy to discern how they flow into each other and give meaning to one another-­‐-­‐-­‐the spiritual reasons for the existence of cities, the role of women in inventing the collective “container” that is the city and finally the same spirituality that justifies the ascent of the hunter to king in the union between two very distinct Paleolithic and Neolithic culture which finally gave birth to the earliest forms of the city. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mumford, Lewis. (1961). The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. New York: Harcourt Inc.