Today’s modern cities, from Denver to Dubai, could learn a thing or two from the ancestral Pueblo communities that once stretched across the southwestern United States. For starters, the more people live together, the better the living standards.
That finding comes from a study published today in the journal Science Advances and led by Scott Ortman, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. He’s one of a growing number of antiquarians who argue that the world’s past may hold the key to its future. What lessons can people living today take from the successes and failures of civilizations hundreds or thousands of years ago?
Recently, Ortman and Jose Lobo from Arizona State University took a deep dive into data from the farming towns that dotted the Rio Grande Valley between the 14th and 16th centuries. Modern metropolises should take note: As the Pueblo villages grew bigger and denser, their per capita production of food and other goods seemed to go up, too.
Continue reading at University of Colorado at Boulder
Image via University of Colorado at Boulder