Even before the Roman Empire, there were trade focused sea faring groups with significant influence, as seen on a map of Greek & Phoenician colonies[1]. The Carthaginians even sailed around West Africa and reached as far as Gulf of Guinea to search for precious metals[2].
I would expect the largest, most successful cities to be located on the coast, or in extremely fertile regions like the Nile Delta or Mesopotamia. Couldn't find any pretty visualisations that would show that though, so I might be wrong.
I would expect the largest, most successful cities to be located on the coast, or in extremely fertile regions like the Nile Delta or Mesopotamia. Couldn't find any pretty visualisations that would show that though, so I might be wrong.
1 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Griechis...
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_the_Navigator#Modern_ana...