Abstract
The emergence of the first urban centers was one of the most obvious consequences of a socioeconomic transformation whose first manifestations took place in the center and
east of present-day Turkey and the western Iranian area at the end of the 5th millennium BC, later developing in the middle of the 4th millennium BC in Mesopotamia.
Various theories have tried to explain the reasons and processes that caused some small Neolithic villages to become properly urban centers, as well as when they would have occurred. Other issues under study are the preconditions that must have existed to trigger these changes, why it originated in certain geographical areas and what is understood as an urban center. This article will present some of the most relevant hypotheses about the origin and
development of the urban phenomenon, its relationship with the first state manifestations and its main consequences in the Mesopotamian area.
