Hi, we're here from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about the similarities between problems facing ancient and modern cities

from archaeologist and author Monica L. Smith.

We'll also answer a listener question about whether you have a dominant ear.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

If you've ever been in a major city and gotten stuck in a traffic jam or had to deal with some

other problems of urban life, then you might be surprised to learn that your modern day problems

are not necessarily unique to the modern day. That's according to today's guest for the second part of our Sunday

City's miniseries, Monica L. Smith. She's an archaeologist and a professor in the Department of

anthropology at UCLA, and she's the author of a new book

called Cities the first 6,000 years I asked her about when traffic and congestion

started to really plague cities and here's what she told us.

Well actually even the problems of traffic are not new.

There's an ancient Roman writer juvenile who talks about walking down the sidewalk and you can't move because there's a crowd ahead

of you and people are poking you in the ribs. So even the problems of traffic are not

things that are unique to the modern world, nor are problems like trash.

We are very concerned about trash and waste and recycling, and yet we forget the fact that

trash is evidence of human creativity and that cities are places

where people are buying and consuming and using goods at a much higher rate per capita than in rural places where there's much

less variety of things to own.

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