The world goes to town 《The Economist》Fri, May 11, 2007
當世界充斥城市…
After this year the majority of people will live in cities. Human history
will ever more emphatically become urban history, says John Grimond.
過了今年之後，大多數的人們都將住在城市裡頭。經濟學人編輯，約翰．格里蒙德說
：「人類歷史會更著重在城市這一部分。」
Whether you think the human story begins in a garden in Mesopotamia known
as Eden, or more prosaically on the savannahs of present-day east Africa, it is
clear that Homo sapiens did not start life as an urban creature. Man’s habitat
at the outset was dominated by the need to find food, and hunting and foraging
were rural pursuits. Not until the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years
ago, did he start building anything that might be called a village, and by that
time man had been around for about 120,000 years. It took another six millennia,
to the days of classical antiquity, for cities of more than 100,000 people to
develop. Even in 1800 only 3% of the world’s population lived in cities. Some-
time in the next few months, though, that proportion will pass the 50% mark, if
it has not done so already. Wisely or not, Homo sapiens has become Homo urbanus.
你所認為的人類歷史，無論是源起於美索不達尼雅的伊甸園，或者是枯燥乏味的東非
莽原上，智人都並非是始於城市的生物，這實在是再明白不過了。最初人類的住所是受限
於找尋食物的需求，而狩獵和採集則是對農業的追求手段。直到上一次的冰河期末尾，大
約是一萬一千年前，人類才真的開始有所謂的「村莊」建築，離人類繁衍之初已有十二萬
年之久。莫約又過了六千年的時間，也就是古典文明時代，才有超過十萬人的城市出現。
甚至到了西元一千八百年，世界人口才僅有3%居住在城市裡。然而再過幾個月後，這個
比例就會突破50%的指標，即使現在尚未來到。不論明智與否，智人這名詞早就變成「城市
人」了。
In terms of human history this may seem a welcome development. It would be
contentious to say that nothing of consequence has ever come out of the
countryside. The wheel was presumably a rural invention. Even city-dwellers
need bread as well as circuses. And if Dr Johnson and Shelley were right to say
that poets are the true legislators of mankind, then all those hills and lakes
and other rural delights must be given credit for inspiring them.
以人類的歷史觀點看來，這也許是個可喜的發展。不過若說沒有什麼成就起於窮鄉僻
壤的話，那可得引發不小的爭議了。像輪子就被推測是農業上的一項發明。即便是住在城
市的人，生活中仍會需要麵包及馬戲表演。如果英國詩人強森和雪莉所述的恰如其分：
「詩辭是人類真正的立法者」，那麼所有鄉野間動人的湖光山色，必然成為他們靈感來源
的一大保證。
But the rural contribution to human progress seems slight compared with the
urban one. Cities’ development is synonymous with human development. The first
villages came with the emergence of agriculture and the domestication of
animals: people no longer had to wander as they hunted and gathered but could
instead draw together in settlements, allowing some to develop particular skills
and all to live in greater safety from predators. After a while the farmers
could produce surpluses, at least in good times, and the various products of
the villagers—grain, meat, cloth, pots—could be exchanged. Around 2000BC metal
tokens, the forerunners of coins, were produced as receipts for quantities of
grain placed in granaries. Not coincidentally, cities began to take shape at
about the same time.
但是和都市比起來，農村對人類進步的貢獻似乎是少了許多。城市的發展與人類文明
的進程是相與並進的。最初的農村起源於農業發展及畜養動物，使得人們不再需要漫遊於
四方打獵與採集，而是群居安頓於一地；這使得一些特殊技能得以發展，同時亦可避免食
肉動物的襲擊而更加安全。過不久後，農人開始生產多餘的存糧，至少在較好的時節是如
此，各式各樣的農村物資也開始交易，像是穀物、肉類、布疋和陶罐一類的。約西元兩千
年前，金屬代幣(硬幣的前身)開始在農業地區成為換取穀物的收受額。說巧不巧的是，城
市也在同一時間開始成形。
They did so, first, in the Fertile Crescent, the sweep of productive land
that ran through Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Palestine, from which Jericho, Ur,
Nineveh and Babylon would emerge. In time came other cities in other places:
Harappa and Mohenjodaro in the Indus valley, Memphis and Thebes in Egypt, Yin
and Shang cities in China, Mycenae in Greece, Knossos in Crete, Ugarit in Syria
and, most spectacularly, Rome, the first great metropolis, which boasted, at its
zenith in the third century AD, a population of more than one million people.
首先興起的是肥沃月彎，這片橫跨了伊拉克、敘利亞、約旦和巴勒斯坦的豐饒大地，
她的子民相繼建立了耶利哥、烏珥、尼尼微和巴比倫這些城市。緊接著其他地區也開始有
了發展，諸如印度河谷的哈拉巴和摩罕吉達羅、埃及的孟斐斯和底比斯、中國的殷商城邦
群、希臘的麥錫尼、克里特的克諾索斯、敘利亞的烏加列，以及最引人注目的羅馬─
─史上第一個首善之都，以其西元三世紀的黃金時期聞名於世，擁有超過一百萬的人口。