nzcamel
Nahtanoj the Magnificent
The Civ series has always done a poor job of abstracting this because it uses city names when each "city" is actually a region. Look at the size it takes up on the map. You're not building a single city, but essentially a whole province.
I view the "city" in Civ as being both the actual city and the outlying population surrounding the city. Hence all those farms, mines, etc. It's only as buildings get built and people take on the role of "specialists" in the game that they become true urban dwellers. Prior to that, most of the population growth takes place in the countryside, with the central town/city as simply the administrative hub and where people gather at market times and festivals.
That was easier to conceptualize in prior versions of Civ. The addition of districts in Civ 6 improves game play (in my opinion), but stretches the concept of how big the actual city is beyond the central hex. When Civ 6 was first announced, a number of people struggled with this, then rationalized it as the districts being their own, specialized towns/cities on the outskirts of main city.
Yeah, what both you guys have said re cities being regional areas was going to be my comment; but also noting that districts had jarred that a little.
There are far too many factors involved in the transition from hunter-gatherers to settled farming than our 'game' could ever possibly address. To answer your base question - yes, Civilization 6 has it wrong. In so very many ways! But it also has some right as far as the further development of empires and why they clashed.
The development of the city, however, is hugely important to human history and while I have not read Mr. Scott's suppositions yet, on the surface they seem to fly in the face of all other archeological evidence I've read about previously. For further reading, I would highly recommend historian Ian Morris and his books "Why the West Rules....for now" and "War...what is it good for?". They are both very broad sweeps of history studded with the sort of details necessary to allow the bigger picture to be seen. In both books, he describes how and why humanity has consistently grown and prospered through history. One measure he points to is the drastic decrease in violent deaths from the stone age to today which he directly attributes to the rise of the city-state-empire and the "stationary bandits" that both rule them and protect them. He comments often and freely that much of history is quite the paradox.
I've read 'Why the West Rules...for now"; and he presents evidence that would agree to an extent with the OP. I think, from memory, it was a bigger factor though as cities exploded with the industrial revolution. At least to begin with. A city alone sustaining it's own population is very much a modern thing; but as cities in Civ have farms etc, they realistically represent a province of sorts rather than just the city itself.
As I understand it, it was common for most of the time to raid the neighbours and take food and population (slaves) from them. (Slavery was part of Civ CtP and Civ 3.) So it isn't so that the player could do nothing.
But to create a civilization which stands the test of time (while fighting plagues, social unrest and external enemies) might be more difficult than it is now in Civ games. Is there a real example for a civ which stands the test of time from 4000 BC to now?
Egypt. Kinda

Slavery has been in previous Civ games. I want to say Civ 2? You used to not be able to buy things outright with gold. You had to sacrifice population in order to build things quicker (representing abusing slave labor). EDIT: It might not be 2 now that I think about it, it might be a later version. I could google but I always consider online forums a means of simple discussion with people. So forgive me if im incorrect.
I meant slavery more in terms of moving population from one (maybe foreign) city to another (own) city for work and population growth or even trading slaves (population / workforce). Civ 3 was very close to this.
This was a feature of Civ4. I don't remember if it was also present in Civ3.
One of them, Civ3 or CivCtP, had a slave trader unit which could steal population from foreign cities and allowed you to use them as workers or add them as population to your cities (until a certain size.)
Capturing a settler or razing a city in Civ3 provided a (stack of) foreign worker units (depending on size of the city) and allowed to use them as workers or add them as population to your cities. Adding too much foreign population to a city could cause loyalty conflicts when at war with the original foreign nation.
Civ3 also allowed to draft population, that is transforming population into (weak) military units in case of an emergency.
It was Civ III as historix69 says.