Here is the list, courtesy of kottke.org. Fez as the largest world city in 1170 was a surprise to me. At 300 A.D. the list leaves the Middle East, breaking into Pataliputra (Patna), India. I am not sure what kind of data they are using for the New World at earlier points in time.
Actually, that’s 300 B.C.E., not 300 A.D.
Pataliputra (Patna) in Indian history is known to hold one of the first university of that time and was very well known for its education .
I think Larry’s the guy from Nigeria with zero feedback who just bought my Sony camera on ebay. . .
Tom,
Clearly the unit is solidly built up metro area, although
this does get murky sometimes. It is solidly built up
between Tokyo and Yokohama.
I was told personally by the Housing Minister of Tokyo
that the actual population of extended metro Tokyo is
closer to 40 million.
Within the US one can see the issue clearly. There are three
different definitions that one can use: the city itself, the
metropolitan statistical area (MSA), and the consolidated
metropolitan statistical area (CMSA). Thus, there is the
city of Washington, only about 600,000. There is the
Washington MSA, which includes million plus Fairfax County
and nearly a million each Montgomery County and Prince
George’s County, among other jurisdictions. Then there is
the Washington-Baltimore CMSA, not sure of its current
population, although the last time I checked, it was number
4 in the rankings of these.
There can be bizarre variations. Washington, Boston, and
San Francisco cities are all quite small really, but their
CMSAs are mid-top ten. Because of friendly-to-cities
annexation laws, three Texas cities are in the top ten on
the pure cities list (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio), but
they are much further down when one gets to the CMSA list.
I’m a little surprised Mexico never appears on the list – I remember reading in the early ’80s that it was the largest in the world, having passed Tokyo. I also thought that Shanghai (or whatever we’re calling it these days) was also in contention for largest.
BTW, it is not just Mexico City that is ignored, but
Sao Paolo, Brazil is either 3 or 4, depending if Mumbai
is really ahead of it or not, ahead of New York, and
Buenos Aires has been on the edge of the top ten for
some time.
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