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Hello, in 1625 a traveler from Rome found himself in an antique land. In the sands of the desert he came upon ancient bricks, cemented together with tar, and stamped with strange symbols.

The site wasn't excavated until over 200 years later, but what emerged from the dust was the remains of the city of Irr. Along with other urban settlements in the Bronze Age Mesopotamia, such as Babylon and Nineveh, Irr is accorded to be one of the earliest cities.

Ever since, across the globe, cities have risen and fallen and risen again, though through many millennia, millions would never have seen one.

Nonetheless, the story of human civilization has been to a great degree the story of the city.

Today in the first part of a special two-part edition of Inartime, we're going to explore the growth, decline, and resurgence of cities from their beginnings until just before the coming of the railways.

We need to explore the development of the city from its origins until 1800, a Julia Merritt, associate professor of early modern British history at the University of Nottingham, Peter Hall, professor of planning and regeneration at the Bartlett School of Planning University College London, and Gregor, professor of ancient history at St Andrews University.

Gregor, what do you know about the way cities might have begun in the eight millennia, eight thousand BC?

Well, the story really starts with the beginnings of agriculture, not long after the beginning of the current warm period, and for a while, most people who are farmers weren't living in cities.

But there are one or two very early examples, Chattel-Huyuk in Anatolia, Jericho, where people seem to have come together into what were much larger villages than otherwise.

Then, by the fourth millennium BC, you begin to get real cities in Mesopotamia, then third millennium BC, in the 200th Egypt, north of the West India, China, and that's where it all starts.

What is all that is starting in the eight millennium? How do you describe it as a city? Why has it become a city and it's not a village?

Why are we using that word about something established in eight thousand BC, and you went along the dates, four thousand, three thousand, two thousand.

Europe doesn't appear to be a long time native, let's leave that aside.

When is a village a city? When it gets big, how big, difficult to tell, difficult to tell when you're excavating, any parts are very, very ancient sites.

Some people wouldn't use the word city for these early, nearly-ethic villages.

I think a city comes about in the fourth millennium when you begin to get writing, great monuments, huge structures.

And when you begin to see that the people living in a city are divided into classes, different occupations, the priests, warriors, and most of all these cities are created by kings, sometimes claiming to represent the gods.

But let's go back to the beginnings, because we did promise our listeners that we would start at the beginning.

And you yourself, we always dug up, there's Babylon, we're talking about the eights.

And then, are we talking about thirty or four thousand BC? We're talking about thirty or forty thousand people said to have lived there.

Is that where the first consequence of the change in agriculture bites in?

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