Throughout human history, nearly all people were close to the soil. Therefore their lives were profoundly affected by the alternation of winter and summer, by the coming and going of the full moon, and by the pattern of rain and drought and the annual harvest. Steadily the ever-expanding city replaced the countryside as the home of most of the world's people, and the big cities now have dwarfed the biggest city of several hundred years earlier. In 1995 at least 25 cities each  held more than seven million inhabitants