Human Settlement

Demography is the study of population.

The First Human Settlement Most anthropologists believe that humans first appeared in the Great Rift Valley in East Africa many hundreds of thousands of years ago. From there, humans spread to the Middle East, Asia Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Around 10,000 years ago, people in the Middle East discovered that they could plant seeds to grow their own food. Wherever agriculture was introduced, people no longer needed to follow a nomadic way of life- wandering in constant search of food. Instead, populations settled in one location and grew. Although agriculture was first discovered in the Middle East, it was later discovered independently in China, India, Africa and the Americas.

The Emergence of Urban Populations In some areas, agriculture became especially successful. This was true in the river valleys of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, which had fertile soil from annual (yearly) flooding. In these locations, the first cities were built. People were able to grow a surplus of food to feed a non-farming urban population. Because fewer farmers were needed urban dwellers created jobs that included priests, soldiers, traders, scribes (writers), and craftspeople. As urban populations increased in size, a need for government developed.

Industrialization and Urbanization Starting in the 1700s, the Industrial Revolution (use of machines and factories) greatly increased the speed of urbanization- the movement of greater numbers of people into cities. People began to leave the rural countryside to find jobs in the new factories. Cities were created at points where goods were exchanged or transferred- such as seacoast ports where rivers met, and later, where different railroad lines crossed.

Summary At the bottom of your CN page write a 3-5 sentence summary explaining how population settlement (where people live) is impacted by geographic features.