A town in the hot desert, on the coast

With what grows here (barley and dredge, wheat), this land can feed a town of about 72,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of London around 1300.

Build a town in the hot desert, on the coast

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 9 km around, 0.5 days by cart (comfortable). About 420 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 19 km around, 1 day by cart (comfortable). Grown to 150,000 people, its grain comes from 36 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). On the water, ships can bring part of the grain: for a city of 1,000,000, 95% of it keeps the haul within a day.

In history

In the Gulf, the island of Bahrain most likely held the capital of Dilmun, a land named in Sumerian tablets of the late third millennium BC. Artesian springs, long since dry, watered its fields, and the island lay on the sea route between Mesopotamia and the Indus. Mesopotamia knew it as a source of copper, and timber, ivory, carnelian and pearls went north in exchange for silver, tin, woollen cloth, olive oil and grain. Dilmun even used the weights of the Indus, not those of Mesopotamia. Pearls stayed the island's fortune: Pliny called it famous for them, and before the First World War about 400 boats still worked its oyster beds.

On the Atacama coast of Chile and Peru, the Chinchorro lived from about 7000 to 1500 BC in small communities where rivers crossed the desert to the Pacific. Seafood made up about 90% of what they ate. On the other side of the world, on the Red Sea, Suakin was already called an ancient town in the 10th century: a Beja harbour on an island at the end of a long inlet, built of coral, where Venetian merchants lived by the 14th century. When the Portuguese opened the sea route round Africa its merchants left, and in the early 19th century the traveller Burckhardt found two thirds of its houses in ruins.

How large a city?

PeopleGrain fromBy cartVillagesScholarsBy ship to fit in a day
3,0005 km around0.5 days (comfortable)12012–
10,0009 km around0.5 days (comfortable)42040–
40,00019 km around1 day (comfortable)1,700160–
150,00036 km around1.5 days (strained)6,20060055%
1,000,00093 km around4 days (not by land alone)42,0004,00095%

Living there

There are no woods to spare here. The town needs about 5,300 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops: it burns straw (about 7,100 tonnes a year), dung and brush, and buys the rest. Provisional figure.

Its market sells grain, flax, cotton, dates and dye plants, and buys timber and iron. About 23 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 40% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 30%, fish 50%, gardens 20%. That is some 2,700 livestock units on 40 km² of pasture, and about 970 fishers in 240 boats. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

  • Fresh water comes from a few springs and wells, and they can fail: the artesian springs that watered Dilmun's fields have since dried up.
  • The sea is the larder, not the fields. A town that eats mostly from the water goes hungry when the boats cannot put out.
  • The water itself can poison slowly. On the Atacama coast, natural arsenic in the drinking water left its mark in the hair of people buried thousands of years ago.
  • A port lives on a trade route it does not control. When ships found the way round Africa, Suakin's merchants left and its coral houses fell into ruin.
  • Rival harbours make war on each other. In 1264 Mamluk Egypt attacked Suakin, with the help of the rival port of Aydhab, after its ruler had seized the goods of merchants who died at sea nearby.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 530 of the 1,800 tonnes of grain its land gives it, and the water lets it bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 680 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

Grain, Flax, Cotton, Dates, Dye plants, Orchards, Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides, Cheese, Pigs and bacon (at a cost), Goats, Camels, Honey and wax, Fish, Salt fish (at a cost), Pearls, Shipyards (at a cost)

What its land cannot give, a town here must buy: timber.

What it lives on

Barley and dredge, Wheat

Underground

What a city digs depends on the rock under it: Granite, Volcanic rock, Ultramafic rock (peridotite, serpentinite), Schist and gneiss, Marble, Limestone and chalk, Sandstone, shale and clay, Salt beds, River gravels and sands

Found here

Gathered (Rerum): Agave Leaf, Aloe Vera Gel, Beetle Wing, Bighorn Sheep Meat, Camel Fat, Capers, Century Plant Fibre, Aguamiel

Hear it

Hot Desert in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the hot desert, A town in the hot desert, on a river

By city size

1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000

Sources

Open the city builder — MGS Toolbox