A look at the biggest cities over the ages, starting from 1 CE up to modern day... and beyond. Support me on patreon at: / atlaspro Music by www.bensound.com
I don't think he knows that Tokyo is still growing in population contrary to their national trend and that their birth rate has gone up significantly and may or may not continue to improve.
@@ArmyRangerSJ stop talking about tokyo anymore. it's not the biggest city in the world. when we saying 25-30million people of tokyo, it refers to the great tokyo area. this area included 5-10 cities together. it's not a single one.
imagine if you could visit cities like Babylon, Athens, Carthage, Tyros, Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople/Istanbul, Venice or Technotitlan in their prime...
@@skysthelimitvideos I don't think it's so much the population size that this comment was based on. I would love to have been able to experience places like Babylon, Alexandria, Athens & Carthage during the times they were at the peak of their powers and thriving.
@@arjunsatheesh7609 Honestly I still cant truly picture the steppe mongols on horsebacks and levied cheap infantry trying to penetrate the dense and thick flora of India defended by Elephants and massive amounts of indian citizens. What a time it was; and how ridiculous the situation mustve seemed to the poor indian populus...greeks; chinese; islamization, and then mongols...they mustve really been sick of random armies showing up on their doorstep being like "ayyy we will just *try* and basically send massive amount of troops into your general area until you belong to us xD"
@@EinFelsbrocken Well Indian culture has benefitted from the mixing but somewhere along the way it became stagnant. It would be wonderful to be able to see what all that was like, when it happened.
It is beyond scary. As of right now, agriculture and farming can barely sustain what we have. Either a miracle comes along or you better get ready to start eating crickets instead of bread.
If that's using the current estimate, it's going to change. As India and Africa become a lot more modernized and expensive people will no longer feel the need to have 10 children per family.
I was at first too, but then I thought about it and I think at a size between 1-2 million, a city might become untraversable by foot. For more people to be able to live and work in a city then, better forms of living (multi-story homes) and transportation (cars) would be necessary. So cities could only grow up to a certain size before hurting it's own functionality. Britain was really the first country to industrialize and therefore was the first to gain the technologies to allow cities to grow bigger. At least that's my thoughts.
@@AtlasPro1 That makes sense. Technology had to catch up. Just like more efficient trains and other forms of public transport will adapt as cities get bigger too
@@buffalospringfield1109 You could have guessed about 4 different English speaking countries and you would have been correct, but the USA is incorrect my friend.
Alexander Sullivan it honestly depends on how well managed and designed it is, I mean Tokyo runs perfectly fine even though it’s metropolitan area has a population of 30 million, so it isn’t that inconceivable that a Tokyo-like city with 100 million people, only roughly 3 times the current population of the Tokyo metropolitan area, would run decently and be comfortable to live in.
@@Volodimar That is a horrible idea. In order to decrease the ecological footprint of humanity, denser cities are needed until we reach the point where the global population starts to decline. The expected decline is still quite far off, and in order to feed the estimated peak population of humanity, we need every piece of arable land available to us.
@@MrAntice I think Singapore is having the right idea. The city is densely populated but about half of the area needs to be parcs or some kind of green spaces.
@@SoLazy100 Singapore have planned their future exceptionally well, even down to vertical farming labs and other such technological projects to help make the best use of the space available, as well as gaining space via land reclamation.
Another excellent video! Some nit-picky things though. The capital of the Western Empire was Mediolanum before it got moved to Ravenna. Diocletian didn't make Constantinople the capital of the East, he chose Nicomedia; it was Constantine that moved the capital to Constantinople. And finally, at 3:30 the picture you chose for the Siege of Baghdad in 1258 is actually the Siege of Constantinople in 1453. But that aside, fantastic work!
Haha thanks, I knew about the Mediolanum one, but I couldn't remember the name, so I decided to simplify. And yeah, there were no real pictures I could find for the siege of Baghdad, so I had to make due :P Thanks for watching!
@@AtlasPro1 Also one thing other, the high middle ages were the 1100s, the dark ages came 200 years later than you say. I know, it doesn't really change anything, and it's really nitpicky, but that all aside, this is the first of this kind I watched and it blew my mind, awesome job.
Just a nitpick on your nitpick. Constantine didn't move the capital to Constantinople. He moved the capital to Byzantium and then he renamed it to Constantinople.
God, growing up in the early 00s I felt like such a weirdo for playing games like Civilization 2 and caring about stuff like historical populations, demographics, and cities and movement of peoples etc. Thank god for RU-vid and content like this! It's awesome, and also quite reassuring to know that plenty of other geography/history nerds exist. It's important!
"And China was engaged in a large amount of internal conflicts" You're telling me there was a time when they WEREN'T engaged in a large amount of internal conflicts?
back in the day (in a loose sense) China is structured very much like modern day Europe, with different regions having their "own thing" going on, and often when one nation state has power, it's origin city becomes the "capital". so it isn't really the same group of chinese going back and forth, but more like there has always been multiple capitals, corresponding to each different regional power, and they shifts.
@@AllCatsAreBlack for most cities the issue of relative sea level rise has to do with both the land itself sinking and the sea rising. The reason we have so many ruins of cities underwater (specifically in the Mediterranean) is because the land can sink. Source: first year geography class.
Only the russians, capable of using the winter to their advantage, could stop them. But when the world needed them the most, they were defeated. Some hundreds of years passed, and my brother and I discovered a new leader, a glorious man named Stalin. And although his leading charisma is great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe Stalin can save Russia.
Just found your channel. (The rare earth vid. oc) And I have to say: Excellent! Hang in there. I think you will grow to over 100 000 by the end of this year! At least you would deserve it. Quality channels are so rare, and I am always happy and excited if I find a new one! Great topics!
He's at 105 K at the time my writing; 4th of March 2019. I think the RU-vid algorithms found the channel. Got multiple videos from it in my recommendations anyhow.
@@squillamsquallace2468 What are you talking? Me? I-investing in Southern Kalimdor?!? N-no, no, you must be delusional, its probably all that A-azerite you've been smoking... Yes! Yes! Its the Azerite, yes, there are no Pandaren C-colonies in Southern Kalimdor.
@@olbiomoiros Then maybe it's time the UN actually did something and help fund Urban Planners to help them out. We're all in this world together, after all, so it's success could be beneficial. Not that politics will let it happen, wishful thinking.
@@Regard1ess Not talking about China clearly because China don't allow slum using the huko system. I am talking about those Indian and especially African cities that cannot even handle their current population
Africa historically has been a very thinly populated place. Most great empires of history have surpassed by far it's population. (Rome, China, India historically had a much greater gap).
@@skagereistad7771 In the last few decades the cities keep changing position and the way to measure keep changing, Mexico city for sure was in the talks to be the biggest city depending on the metric used in some points of the last 30 years, as was New York, and of course Tokyo, and now São Paulo and some Chinese cities are in the fight as well.
Maxence, I thought so too, but really don't know where I heard it from. One possibility is that the whole population of the Valley of Mexico was bigger than any single city elsewhere? Or maybe that Tenochtitlan was bigger than any European city but, still eclipsed by Baghdad or one of the Chinese cities? Or maybe we just heard wrong! At any rate, I was a little disappointed not to see Tenochtitlan here.
@Mason Freer Thanks to new LIDAR technology massive cities and ruins have been discovered in Central America and it is now estimated that the Maya megalopolis of El Mirador was home to at least 1,000,000 and could have housed upwards of a shocking 5 million people around the time Rome was being repeatedly sacked and declining (the region was home to 15 million)... it would have easily been the largest city on earth.
You have missed Angkor Wat, which was the biggest city outside of Middle East during the Middle Ages and also Aztecs capital in today’s Mexico City just before the European conquest which is believed to be the largest city world at that time.
I would have stopped after the current date with a prediction of the next 20 or 30 years. The later projections are extremely unrealistic. Not every city can sustain its current growth rate. Especially places like Kabul (projected place 10 in 2100) will never have enough water for 50 Million people.
Obviously This projections are based on the "CURRENT GROWTH" rate . Any political/economical / climatic situation can change it from fastest growing city to a dead city
You're right. How should a fucking Kongolesian jungle or a Taliban hole become such large population centres? You first of all need an actual government for that
That's a big problem in a lot of thinking, trying to mirror image the past on to the future. If you look at population growth projections from 1960s and 70s, some of them were very dire and would have us in a depopulation phase after a Malthusian crash. There were unforeseen agricultural innovations and overall enough improvement in human rights in the third world to keep the "population bomb" from exploding. We are facing a lot of scenarios in the next fifty years were human population could radically boom or bust, including scenarios were ranging from the singularity and the uplift of humanity to extinction.
I can't say the say the same for most like Kabul which gets it almost exclusively from Euphrates and Tigris which is also shared all the way to Turkey. Water is literally more expensive than oil is in the middle east. Most modern Metropolises get their water and other needs, by getting it from somewhere through the wonders of modern water engineering and pipes plus diplomacy if its from another country. I live in Metro Manila, Philippines the most densely populated city on Earth and 0 potable water to be found in this concrete jungle. I can never forget the figure as it's always studied in our Hydrology Engineering course, 96% of the city's water needs is supplied by Angat dam up north in Bulacan province that has also rapidly urbanized. Singapore on the other hand gets most of its water from Malaysia. Conflicts over water will be inevitable in the future as conflicts over oil currently are.
what a miserable existence it would be to live in a city of 58 million. You could live your entire live and never see nature, just the sterile and dehumanizing sprawl.
@@norgepalm7315 I mean, wearing clothes is pretty unnatural and weird too, but you don't see me complaining about it. If you don't like parks, fine. But don't pretend everyone feels stifled by city life and wants to return to the days of working the fields.
Come on, I was waiting for you to mention Hampi (Vijayanagar) and go a bit into Indian history. Great video tho, it's really interesting how you put each city in the context of its history.
There were multiple great cities in India at any point in time. Therefore none grew to be biggest in the world. India's population is evenly distributed unlike china or middle East
Chongqing is pronounced "Chongching", other than that, pretty good video. If you want a super quick guide to reading Chinese sibilant sounds just remember: C = ts Z = dz X = sh Q = ch Zh = j Its actually quite a bit more complicated than that, but if you do this and pronounce the other consonants the same as in English, you should be close enough for most purposes.
@@AtlasPro1 The Sh, Ch, and Zh sounds are pronounced with the tip of the tongue curled up against the roof of the mouth. The X, Q, and J sounds are pronounced with the tongue body moved forward against the gum ridge, near where the tongue tip would be in the English sounds. These are apparently 6 distinct phonemes in Mandarin phonology, though I, and presumably most native Anglophones, can't really hear any difference.
@@ruedelta Hm the way I heard it when living there, "Q" like in "Qing" is much closer to "ch" than "ts". It's more like "tsh", hard to describe with English letters. But you'll sound more understandable to a Chinese person if you make it sound closer to "ch". In my experience at least. The difference between "Q" and "Ch" in sound is hard to hear for a native English speaker, it took me a while to get it. It's pretty subtle, and given the context of what you're saying in a sentence the person you're speaking to will almost always understand.
@@dayvancubensis Really the vowel combinations of those two sounds are the big difference. There isn't a 'chi' to match 'qi', while 'chu' and 'qu' are very different. Looking back at what I had said, yeah it's not that accurate. The sound just doesn't really exist in the daily life of an Anglophone.
Almost immediately, the “myth” that sharks can’t stop swimming or they die isn’t a myth. Many species of shark need to continue moving for water to enter the gills or else they’ll asphyxiate
Just wondering how the predictions for 2075 and 2100 were calculated? Like Khartoum only has 5 million people and is in a country that barely has a government. Sure it's got a lot of potential, but that's a huge jump to being the 6th largest city in the world.
they go by straight population growth , which is fairly accurate as we know the general trend, and old people can be estimated by current amount of young people and the life expectancy. of course they dont ask how those people will be supported by a inept government and ignore any possibility of disasters whether man made or otherwise.
Well unless something happens most of us will probably live to see 2075 so we can use this as a reference point and see what became of it then. (why am I suddenly terrified about the thought or making it to 2075)
As soon as everything goes stable in the middle east, syria and iraq are expected to become huge population centers by 2100. Let's hope that time arrives soon!
Watching these videos shows how much things change over time, so I'm sure it will be stable and booming again. Unless climate change makes the area uninhabitable...
@@swedneck Buddy...thats fish.He mentioned Sharks.Sharks dont have these mechanisms.Sharks need to swim forward in order for water to pass trough their gills.
Not all sharks have to swim to breathe..makos and great whites..yes they have to swim..but nurse sharks dont..they can rest on the sea floor..by forcing water through their gills.
@@prizmprizn Ur Right Bullhead and Nurse Sharks dont need to swim in order to breath.But these are the only sharks that use Buccal Bumping.All other Sharks need to swim in order to get water through their gills.
I think it's worth noting that even as Japan's population has shrunk, Tokyo has continued to grow, as there's a lot of people from the rest of the country moving to Tokyo (leaving many abandoned rural areas, where that shrinking population actually shows itself - not in Tokyo)
@@AnuragDDethe No there isn't, the American continent has a billion people and Europe has 750 million, India has about 1.35 billion, which is less than America and Europe combined, unless you are talking about the USA and Europe combined, than that's true.
I am sorry, by the American continent i wanted to say North America which has 579 million people whereas Europe has 741 million people which is 1.320 billion whereas India has a population of 1.33 billion people.
I recall a middle school history teacher telling us that during the Renaissance in Europe, the largest city in the world was Tenochtitlan. I’m sure this was an example of Asian erasure and that Beijing was in fact the biggest at the time, as stated. However, I’m still curious how the largest meso-American cities compared.
we just need a new spanish influenza or black plague, only longer lasting and faster at killing, so vaccines are not developed as quickly. Oh, and continue trusting antivaxxers to do their job in densley populated areas, i guess?
BTW Nanjing means Southern Capital and Beijing means Northern Capital, Chang'an is now called Xi'an or in the past Xijing which means Western Capital. Basically these biggest cities in China were capital cities There was also an Eastern Capital but it wasn't as big. Jing in Chinese is a way to say capital. The kanji for Tokyo in Japan is Eastern Capital, same characters as the Chinese, but that is just the Japanese Eastern Capital.
Among the Chinese, there's something they call "The Seven Ancient Capitals"--the capital cities of their biggest dynasties. All of these cities had the character 京 in their names, "jing," which means "capital" in Chinese. Beijing (北京) and Nanjing (南京) are called "northern" and "southern" capitals because they are the last two cities among "The Seven Ancient Capitals". They thus got stuck with the character for "capital" in their modern names.
8:15 that surprised me to see São Paulo ranking the 2nd place in the ranking due to urban area, I mean, I know that my city is huge, but that was kind of mind blowing
Largest mountain ranges/largest volcanoes!! If you look it up, 7 of the 10 largest ranges are really just the Himalayas, so not really that interesting until #8.
I cannot immagine how people can live in million strong cities. I would go insane! I live on the countryside, just on the edge of the 25k strong town and i already think that is enough of 'city experience' for me.
Most of your data does not tally. Already Delhi has 10 million more population than Mumbai (D: 28 Mil, Mum 19Mil). It is growing much faster. There is no way Mumbai becomes larger than Delhi. But even by today's standards, Jakarta, and Delhi are nearing 30 + million. And there is no mention of Brazil.
Actually, you can expect China and Japan to remain on top for a while, due to infrastructure projects connecting massive cities, enough interaction to consider them one metropolitan area, with the pearl river bay area (made of Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Macao, Hong Kong) at 70 million people, while the Central Japan Area (I have no idea how to call it. It's made of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka) of 73 million people.
Funny thing is 300 years ago #Bombay was just a collection of 6-7 islands. Then the British received the island as #dowry from the Portuguese and through land reclamation projects changed the face of the land.
Mumbai has stopped reclaiming lands. Mumbai's growth has stagnated. Navi Mumbai is growing which is technically not Mumbai. Similarly, half of the so called Delhi population is from nearby sister cities (like new jersey and new york) of Gurgaon, Faridabad and Noida. So technically, no indian city will be in top 10 in future, nor is it now.
3:10 minor nitpick, the term "Dark Ages" used to refer to the earlier half of Medieval period (c. 500 - 900s), but is largely no longer in use in academic circles because it's a misleading term.
Hey, I love these videos, but if I could help you with your Chinese pronunciation a little: x makes the sh sound (not a soft j sound) a is always like the o in Bob e is like the u in uncle. q makes the ch sound. i makes the long ee sound. No part of the Chinese language has a soft j sound like garage or the french name Jaques, so Beijing has a hard J like the word “just". A couple other comments have gone into more detail, but I think this would keep it easy enough for any westerner to easily pronounce proper names in Chinese.
vivek sharma Mumbai will be on top in future but will be left behind by African cities. Lagos having 90 million people in future. This is the prime limit of human urbanization
Climate change and mass migrations will likely torpedo those population projections. The people being born in Africa aren't going to stay in Africa. They will emigrate elsewhere possibly giving old world cities in Europe such as London, Paris, and Rome a chance to be on top again. To have a big city you have to build infrastructure and it just doesn't seem like any African city (or Indian city for that matter) will get their act together in the next 50 to 80 years. The only African city that has a chance would be Cairo / New Cairo as the one city taking infrastructure seriously right now.
Idk about African cities as political instability is prominent. Indian cities will be short lived ,for the most part as after a massive population boom,India is expected to witness a population drop just like China . Cities of India, Phillipines & South East Asia are improving infrastructure by large scale.While South East Asia has fairly good infrastructer.India is already spending billions of dollars in urban infrastructure and growth of new cities since India is still a rural country with 60% of population living in rural areas.
I’m not sure this is a good thing. We had cities ranging from 500,000-1,000,000 people for 2000 years but then from 1900-2100 we’re going to go from 1,000,000 to 100,000,000. Think of all the pollution and destruction of natural habitats and all the trash produced and how packed full of people cities will be by then.
Didn't you miss some cities? As far as I remember Angkor, in the Khmer Kingdom, was the biggest cities around the Middle ages in Europe. Also I think there was one city in the Americas which was the biggest at it's time. Tenochtilan by the Aztec or Tikal (Yax Mutal) form the Mayas?
I live in the city of Budapest which is around 2 million. It's pretty nifty if you're in a suburban area but I hate the downtown. It's just too dense and smelly. Can't imagine what living downtown Lagos in 2100, a population of 88 mil, would be like.
19paperclip89 This is just common myth and missconception. Just so you know, around the year 1300, 2 centuries before Europeans discovered America and before the black death, it is estimated that the total population of Europe reached 90 or possibly even 100 million. Compare that to the peak population of both Americas combined (before 1500) which is estimated at between 10 to 20 mil and you will understand why this is the case.
@@nsk370 it's being uncovered that many cities in the Americas were multiple times larger than previously thought, keep in mind much of what we know about the new world is still limited. I've seen recent estimations that reflect the potential for many population centers to be larger than in the old world at the same time, it really depends on what the final findings will be though.
@@nsk370 No, population of Americas was much larger before epidemics devastated it. Most likely same as Europe or little smaller, which would still mean smaller density of course
Fun fact: Beijing's name means 'Northern capital' and Nanjing's name means 'Southern capital'. Additionally, Tokyo's name means 'Eastern capital' and Seogyeong, an older name for Gaesung(a city in North Korea) means.. well you can probably guess it.
@@howtubeable atleast say sub sahara this is insulting to me, its like saying europe is shit and worst continent to live in because ukraine is not that good
not when indiA and china become powerful enough to kick western imperialist out of asia . if westerner gets out of asia then asia will become stablw whil unstability will move to europe.
Its quite surreal to think that today we think of having 30,000,000 people in a single area is already too much, but later on it will be seen as meager numbers. Imagine a future like that, what sorts of technology do we need to have in order to sustain a population like that? What sort of administrative system will it run? Imagine being stuck in traffic in that kind of a city, what sort of public transportation will it need? At the same time its good that we live in denser areas, in that way we reduce our ecological impact on the planet.
I'm sorry but Europe in 1200 was not in the middle of the "dark ages". It was a time of innovation on almost every conceivable front. Not least in architecture. Most historians would call this the Medieval Renaissance.
I can certainly imagine within a couple hundred years, once we've mastered urbanized agriculture (i.e. vertical farms, cultured meats, etc), that 90-95% of humanity could be living in cities, while much of the no-longer needed farmland across the world undergoes rewilding efforts
you forgot to mention Angkor - from Wikipedia (source national geographic) - In terms of spatial extent (although not in terms of population), this makes it (i.e. Angkor) the largest urban agglomeration in recorded history prior to the Industrial Revolution, easily surpassing the nearest claim by the Mayan city of Tikal.[4] At its peak (i.e around 1000 AD - 1200 AD), the city occupied an area greater than modern Paris, and its buildings use far more stone than all of the Egyptian structures combined.[14]
FeelItRising the good news is that as countries develop, birth rates tend to fall. It is likely our population will peak at 10 Billion and stay roughly the same. A couple resource wars, the final strangled cries of the industrial revolution, and the world should be at a stable equilibrium. Nature always reaches equilibrium. (Make no mistake, I'm not claiming a peaceful process, but it'll level out eventually, no need for global plague).
I dont know about you all but this is kinda scary... Overpopulation and all is a huge problem already and earth doesnt have enough resources for so many humans...
I just discovered your channel and am enjoying your videos. FWIW, though, I think the 'flash-text' distracts more than it adds (_especially_ when it's down at the bottom of the screen where the controls cover it up).
Mongols were the White Walkers of our world. Ps. shoutout to Baghdad, born there, no longer living there. Kinda sad that it was once the most stable city with education.
I really enjoyed the video but I find it strange that you left out the south American cities of Inca and Mayan cultures. I'm pretty sure the Inca at one time had the largest empire and largest population in a their capital city at the time.
Excellent effort - it is clear you put in a lot work in these videos. You will have more credibility and accuracy if you accurately incorporate all the historical civilizations of India in your videos. Good luck - keep pushing!
It should be mentioned that the Guangzhou-Shenzhen metropolitan area (including Hongkong, Macao and other Chinese cities around) has around 70 million people.
