The Birth of Settlement

For over 200,000 years, humans moved. They followed herds, tracked ripening fruits across landscapes, and carried everything they owned on their backs. Home was wherever you stopped for the night. Then, in a few thousand years, something shifted. People began to stay.

The decision to live in one place permanently, to build a structure meant to last, to invest in a landscape you would not leave, was one of the most radical behavioral changes in human history. In some cases it preceded full agriculture. In others it outlasted the reasons that originally motivated it. And it created a set of problems humanity has been dealing with ever since: how do you live with the same people, in the same place, all the time?

The story of settlement begins not with farmers but with foragers who found a place so rich they never needed to leave.