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Urbanization began in Mesapotamia around the end of the fourth millennium BCE. Much later, at the end of the third millennium BCE, certain regions came to be organized around a capital and functioned like states. The state therefore only appeared in Lower Mesopotamia a thousand years after the beginnings of urbanization. Moreover, none of the excavated sites has yielded sufficient data to enable us to observe a steady evolution from village to town. The Uruk period, which saw many radical changes (including the beginnings of monumental architecture, towns, and writing), was not characterized by a continuous development of previously existing village sites, and the major reasons underlying the process of urbanization remain unexplained. In a way, the label “revolutionary” applies just as well—and perhaps even better—to the short Uruk period as to the long Neolithic period.