How did humans go from small bands of wandering hunter-gatherers to massive, noisy cities with skyscrapers, traffic, and corner coffee shops? In this episode of Explain It Like I’m 5, Alex explores how cities began and whether they really were just a “sleepover that never ended.” We break down what counts as a city—not just lots of houses, but permanent buildings, large populations, job specialization, trade networks, rules and government, and shared culture.

Alex takes us back to life before cities, when humans roamed in small groups, and explains how the Agricultural Revolution—the shift to farming and domesticating plants and animals—made food surpluses and permanent settlements possible. From there, we meet some of the first cities like Jericho, Çatalhöyük, and Uruk, and see how farming, trade, religion, and security turned villages into complex urban centers.

The episode also explores why people stayed in cities despite disease, inequality, and crowding, and how cities sparked huge innovations: writing, money, laws, architecture, infrastructure, and politics. Alex explains how cities reshaped human life—encouraging diversity, specialization, culture, and civilization itself—and even compares cities to ant colonies and beehives as a kind of “natural” human structure. By the end, modern city life—traffic, noise, and all—looks like the latest chapter in a 10,000-year-old human group project that started with staying put to grow food.