A town in the mediterranean scrub

With what grows here (wheat, barley and dredge, pulses), this land can feed a town of about 7,700 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Winchester around 1300.

Build a town in the mediterranean scrub

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 28 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). About 330 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 57 km around, 2.5 days by cart (fragile). A city of 150,000 cannot live off this land alone.

In history

Early Jerusalem stood on a hill, but its main water, the Gihon Spring, rose below it in the Kidron Valley, where any wall high enough to defend would leave it outside. The spring flows in bursts, so its water had to be stored in a pool. By about 1800 BC a channel through the bedrock already led it south to water gardens, and the Canaanites guarded the spring with a massive tower joined to the walls. Later, under King Hezekiah by the most common dating, as the Assyrian army of Sennacherib approached in the late eighth century BC, two teams cut a tunnel 533 m long through the rock from opposite ends. It led the spring to the Pool of Siloam, perhaps to keep its whole flow inside the walls and out of a besieger's reach.

In the oak foothills of California's Sierra Nevada, Miwok families ground acorns and seeds on one outcrop of marbleized limestone, Chaw'se, "grinding rock", until it held some 1,185 mortar holes, the largest group of bedrock mortars in North America. The valley oaks in the meadows around it supplied the acorns. Further south the Chumash, too, made acorns their staple plant food, though their toxins took real work to remove before they could be eaten.

How large a city?

PeopleGrain fromBy cartVillagesScholars
3,00016 km around1 day (comfortable)10012
10,00028 km around1.5 days (strained)33040
40,00057 km around2.5 days (fragile)1,300160
150,000110 km around4.5 days (not by land alone)5,000600
1,000,000280 km around11.5 days (not by land alone)33,0004,000

Living there

Its woods spare enough to burn: about 8,800 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops. Provisional figure.

Its market sells grain, vines and wine, olives and oil, herbs and maize, and buys iron and salt. About 34 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 30% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 50%, gardens 50%. That is some 3,300 livestock units on 50 km² of pasture. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

  • The spring sits below the walls. Defend the town and you may leave its water outside; a besieger who holds the spring holds the town.
  • A spring that flows only in bursts needs a cistern or a pool. A town that lets its stored water run low in summer has nothing to fall back on.
  • Four to six months may pass without real rain, and the rains of winter vary greatly from one year to the next: a dry winter means a thirsty summer.
  • The scrub burns. In late summer and autumn the hillsides are tinder, and a fire driven by a dry wind can reach the edge of town.
  • Acorns can feed a whole people, but only after grinding and the slow work of removing their toxins.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 600 of the 2,100 tonnes of grain its land gives it, with no water to bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 980 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

Grain (at a cost), Vines and wine, Olives and oil, Flax (at a cost), Dye plants (at a cost), Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses (at a cost), Cattle and hides (at a cost), Cheese, Pigs and bacon, Goats, Honey and wax, Timber, Charcoal

What it lives on

Wheat, Barley and dredge, Pulses

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, Handful of Almonds, Amaranth Seed, Black Bear Fat, Black Bear Hide, Black Bear Meat, Beeswax Block, Beetle Wing

Hear it

Mediterranean Scrub in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the mediterranean scrub, on a river, A town in the mediterranean scrub, on the coast

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