61–70 of 224 posts
As a Tunisian, I'm confused by why Carthage is not on the list. Yes, it was destroyed and rebuilt by the Romans, but the general vicinity has been continuously inhabited ever since. Actually, a few other Tunisian cities are missing that trace their origins back to late B.C./early A.D., such as Monastir, Mahdia, and El Jem. Any thoughts on this?
As a Tunisian, I'm confused by why Carthage is not on the list. Yes, it was destroyed and rebuilt by the Romans, but the general vicinity has been continuously inhabited ever since. Actually, a few other Tunisian cities are missing that trace their origins back to late B.C./early A.D., such as Monastir, Mahdia, and El Jem. Any thoughts on this?
Carthage does make this list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_through...
It was the world's biggest city circa 300BC.
Splitting these by continent is somewhat disingenuous since many of the oldest civilizations and settlements are at the intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe.
What interests me the most is not so much the #1 oldest, but more those cities where the past is still visible, or the city is similar to the same one that stood there thousands of years ago. Specifically, I find Yerevan very interesting. If someone from 2,000 years ago stood there today, they'd certainly realize it was the same city: the same Mount Ararat towering over the city, the same river Hrazdan running by the…
Downtown Athens and most of the suburbs are filled with ancient and byzantine ruins, despite the damage that wars, christians and muslims did.
I've watched plays in millennia old theaters. This is damn powerful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but when did it become a "city" versus just a caveman camp?
When do you have a handful of sand? If you take 1 grain of sand and put it in your hand, that's not a handful. Same with 2, 3. How many grains of sand constitutes a handful?
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Sure, there's some ambiguity, and of course there's not a hard number on it. But that doesn't mean you can't tell if something is a city. Nobody would argue that, for example, NYC isn't a city, or London or Amsterdam or whatnot.
As the world population grew, so did the definition of "city". 12,000 years ago, there were somewhere around ten million people in the entire world, so a definition of somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.1% of the world population (10,000 people) for a city seems reasonable, plus or minus one order of magnitude. I'll call it Owen's Law :) That holds for today: 0.1% of the world population is 7.8 million, plus or minus 1 order of magnitude - I'd say that's a fine definition for a city. In any case, it works very well today: at the large end you have cities like Chongqing with 30+ million in the municipality, and at the small end you have cities like Rotterdam with around 700k people in the city proper.
To check if my rule of thumb worked: At the year 1, assuming 200 million people in the world, that's setting a city around 200,000 people, plus or minus 1 order of magnitude. The largest city in the world was Rome, between 1MM-400k people; all the top 10 largest cities fell within the rule.
- It holds at the year 1000 (world pop. ~300MM, largest city Córdoba with 400k, smaller cities like Nimes with 56k.)
- It holds at the year 1500 (world pop. 500MM, largest city Constantinople 250k, smaller cities like Palermo, Florence, Madrid, Moscow with ~70k.)
- It holds at 1800 (world pop. ~1 billion, largest cities Vienna and London ~1MM, smaller cities like Berlin, Lyon, Venice 150k.)
- It holds at 1900 (world pop. 1.6 billion, largest city London 5.5MM, smaller cities Naples, Madrid, Amsterdam ~500k.)
What about London?
Wikipedia’s date for that is 43 AD, there’s a long list of European cities that stops a lifetime before that.
A list of "oldest cities" which contains places like Canbera and Detroit, but not places like London and Venice, seems very odd
What interests me the most is not so much the #1 oldest, but more those cities where the past is still visible, or the city is similar to the same one that stood there thousands of years ago. Specifically, I find Yerevan very interesting. If someone from 2,000 years ago stood there today, they'd certainly realize it was the same city: the same Mount Ararat towering over the city, the same river Hrazdan running by the…
Another Armenian city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van,_Turkey, which is older than Yerevan, would match it too, but it's not included in the list on wikipedia. (Maybe because a large part of Van have been ruined and left uninhabited in ~1920s).
I had the opportunity to visit Byblos, Lebanon and spend a few hours walking around. It was fascinating to me how many different civilizations had left physical imprints: Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, European Crusaders. I highly recommend a visit to any city on this list.
What interests me the most is not so much the #1 oldest, but more those cities where the past is still visible, or the city is similar to the same one that stood there thousands of years ago. Specifically, I find Yerevan very interesting. If someone from 2,000 years ago stood there today, they'd certainly realize it was the same city: the same Mount Ararat towering over the city, the same river Hrazdan running by the…
Jericho might interest you then. It's an oasis city, with a very distinctive view of surrounding hills. The most ancient structures are from 9kya, and the city existed in a lot of forms since that point. I believe the current city streets are from the Roman period, and probably date to the iron age or older. What fascinates me about the site is the architectural similarity between the oldest city (the 9kya, neolithic…
I had the opportunity to visit Byblos, Lebanon and spend a few hours walking around. It was fascinating to me how many different civilizations had left physical imprints: Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, European Crusaders. I highly recommend a visit to any city on this list.
When I brought friends from Europe to see Lebanon, we saw, I kid you not, the tour guide throwing an empty plastic water bottle down the crater that held sarcophagi.