We originally featured this lecture series in the 9-07-2018 Scout Report, and these talks offer fascinating scholarly perspectives on several ancient civilizations. Readers curious about how cities developed and functioned in different civilizations throughout history may enjoy Rise of the City, one of the Penn Museum's most recent annual public lecture series. This series of nine intriguing talks presented by scholars and curators in 2017-2018 "explore[s] what makes a city a city in diverse regions of the world." For example, in "The Urbanized Jungle: Ancient Maya Garden Cities," Simon Martin (Associate Curator of the American Section at the Penn Museum) explores how Mayan cities located in the middle of the jungle operated in an entirely different way than more familiar high-density city systems like Rome. Each roughly hour-long talk includes an audience question and answer session at the end. Formally called the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and founded in 1887, the Penn Museum is "dedicated to the study and understanding of human history and diversity."