myriadoptimum

James Scott, in his book Against the Grain, offers an in-depth and nuanced exploration of the factors that led to the appearance of projects such as writing and irrigation channels in Mesopotamia as intensive agriculture gradually became the only possible means of sustenance. There was a lot more going on than a simple/linear intensification, and it was less cut and dry than the brief summary given of that development in this article would suggest.

Jennifer Pournelle's 2003 paper[1] presenting new evidence for the area's landscape in antiquity is also quite eye opening, as the presence of the coast further inland than was previously believed upended a lot of long-established notions about the development of civilization there.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258858442_The_Litto...

Depending on where you are in France (especially places with lots of housing stock being older buildings), it's common (if not the norm) for there to be no unit numbers and to direct people to apartments by floor number / door position relative to stairwell.