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The identification of such shared properties has been facilitated by research traditions in each field that define cities and settlements as areas that capture networks of social interaction embedded in space. Using Settlement Scaling Theory (SST) \u2013 a set of hypotheses and mathematical relationships that together generate predictions for how measurable quantitative attributes of settlements are related to their population size \u2013 we show that aggregate properties of ancient settlement systems and contemporary metropolitan systems scale up in similar ways across time, geography and culture. 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