Question

Show the difference between earlier settlement and modern settlement

Answer 1



The Maya city of Palenque in modern-day Mexico. Image credit: Peter Andersen / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Previous studies have shown that as contemporary settlements grow in population, so do their efficiencies and productivity. A city’s population outpaces its development of urban infrastructure, for example, and its production of goods and services outpaces its population.

What’s more, these patterns exhibit a surprising degree of mathematical regularity and predictability.

According to the study carried out by Prof Luis Bettencourt of Santa Fe Institute and his colleagues from the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, ancient human settlements function in much the same way as contemporary ones, despite notable differences in appearance and governance.

In the 1960s, surveyors examined all ancient settlements in the Basin of Mexico, spanning 2,000 years and four cultural eras in pre-contact Mesoamerica.