One thing I notice is that whenever there are depictions of ancient towns/cities in movies and tv (Athens, Rome, Troy, Alexandria, Babylon, Jerusalem, Sparta, etc), they are depicted as sprawling, sometimes vast cities. How historically accurate is this? I have been trying to find maps of these ancient cities, but the ones that I do find depict much smaller areas of land. Were ancient peoples even capable of building and sustaining cities over a certain number of square miles? What modern day towns and cities are most comparable to an accurate representation of these ancient examples in terms of size?
Uruk, at its height around 2700 BCE (at which time it would've been one of the largest cities in the world), had a population of ~50,000 (lower estimate) in a city area of 6 square kilometers. That gives it a population density comparable to that of New York City, interestingly enough, although it would have covered only about 2 to 3 times the area of Central Park.
This chart is somewhat informative, it shows the size of the world's biggest cities over time along with a figure for the estimated population.
http://static.businessinsider.com/image/52ab47e569bedd092c0aafc4/image.jpg
Teotihuacan located in the Basin of Mexico covers an area of approximately 53 square kilometers. However, the city did not occupy every square kilometer at any one point in history. Ceramic chronology seems to point towards occupation in the northern and western portions early on and then in the southern and eastern portions towards the end. The core area alone which most people are familiar with is 23 square kilometers. This includes the Moon and Sun Pyramid as well as the Ciudadela. Teotihuacan was occupied from roughly 200 BC to 600/700 AD.
