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List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

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Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#141

Post by DictumMortuum »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #90
DictumMortuum wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Born and raised Athenian here, oldest capital of Europe. 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.

Slightly off topic, but playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey brought out an infatuation with Greece within me. I am truly envious of your Greek heritage and that you get to enjoy such a rich history, a relatively secular society, and gorgeous scenic areas. I am actually Persian and although we also have a rich history and scenic lands, I find Greece and Greek history far more appealing. Getting to explore many facets of…

Don't feel envy about such generalities. To give you an example, my hero and fellow Athenian, Socrates, was killed by his own people.

DNA doesn't matter. How you choose to live your life does.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#142

Post by egypturnash »

InitialLastName wrote: post #52
egypturnash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lived in much younger cities? How does the weight of history in the old city compare? Do you prefer to live in a younger city, or an elder one, and why? I grew up in New Orleans and every other US city I’ve lived in has felt kind of... unmoored... in a certain way, what history there is in much of the rest of the country has been thoroughly torn down, and it’s not like there’s much history in a 1940s buildin…

Have you lived in any of the older cities on the East Coast? The Philadelphia and Boston areas have an enormous amount of history still present and visible, especially in the outskirts that haven't faced as much commercial pressure. Even downtown in both cities there's quite a lot that's been maintained from the colonial era.

I was in Boston for a while. I think I am allergic to its Puritan history. :)

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#143

Post by Bayart »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #55
owenversteeg wrote: post #34

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…

Quite a few of the cities of Ancient Greece and its colonies have survived to this day. Obviously Athens and many places in Greece but not only. For example in France, Marseille and Nice (both Greek colonies) are 2,600 and 2,300 years old, respectively. The first inhabitants would definitely recognise them immediately today from the unique landscape (like Yerevan). As for Puning, it's not so much related to China's r…

>The first inhabitants would definitely recognise them immediately today from the unique landscape (like Yerevan).

I doubt someone would recognize Marseille at first sight. If they looked hard enough they might recognize the harbour having vaguely the same shape and some mountains outside the city being the same.

I actually annotated a drawing of Roman-era Marseille with the names of modern features a few years back [1].

The natural features were massively overbuilt or even erased (like during the 19th c. to make way for avenues), which made things level off somewhat. The same goes for every city. Go to Rome someday. The famed hills are now invisible, expect for the Capitol (although it would look far less remarkable if the Forum hadn't been excavated).

[1] https://i.imgur.com/zsc0Zz1.jpg

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#145

Post by Bayart »

owenversteeg wrote: post #80
mytailorisrich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few of the cities of Ancient Greece and its colonies have survived to this day. Obviously Athens and many places in Greece but not only. For example in France, Marseille and Nice (both Greek colonies) are 2,600 and 2,300 years old, respectively. The first inhabitants would definitely recognise them immediately today from the unique landscape (like Yerevan). As for Puning, it's not so much related to China's r…

Mm, but it's not just the towering Mount Ararat and the river of Hrazdan that make Yerevan obviously Yerevan. The name of the city has remained extremely similar for about 2,000 years, the language, the writing... Nice, in my opinion (I've only been there twice) has very little connection to the Nice of old. The geography is not very unique (travel the Mediterranean coast and I promise you you'll find plenty of place…

>I get much less of an "ancient" feeling there than anywhere in Armenia or Iran, for example.

All the old town was blown up with dynamite within a few days during the 1940's...

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#146

Post by Bayart »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #92
mytailorisrich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few of the cities of Ancient Greece and its colonies have survived to this day. Obviously Athens and many places in Greece but not only. For example in France, Marseille and Nice (both Greek colonies) are 2,600 and 2,300 years old, respectively. The first inhabitants would definitely recognise them immediately today from the unique landscape (like Yerevan). As for Puning, it's not so much related to China's r…

> Marseille and Nice (both Greek colonies) No shit?! I had no idea the greek empire(s) stretched up this far. Was it a peaceful colonisation?

They were in constant conflict with the surrounding Gaulish tribes. In fact the invasions of Gaul (plural, Caesar only finished it) started by Marseille asking help from its Roman ally.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#147

Post by AftHurrahWinch »

ben_w wrote: post #134
elorant wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well heritage is a double edged sword. From one hand you do feel proud and blessed to live in a place so rich in history because it's everywhere around you. But in the same time it's kind of a burden that drags society in worshiping the past. A lot of fellow Greeks live on the premises that because our past was so glorious everyone else is dipshit and we shouldn't even bother finding our place in the modern world.

Mmm. I’ve only seen one country that doesn’t collectively see its history with gold-tinted glasses — yet even here, there are people like my landlord, who has told me he didn’t understand why the DDR fell despite being a student in it.

Having conversations with people in South Africa, Ghana, and Rwanda about their country's history felt a lot like talking to Germans.

Lots of nuance.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#148

Post by dilippkumar »

raz32dust wrote: post #125
TriNetra wrote: post #106

Indian history hasn't been well researched because of various reasons. However, recent efforts are pushing back continuous settlement dates by multi-thousand of years. For instance: Varanasi is in above wiki link with 1200 BC as inhabited since. However [0] pushes it back to at least 4500 BC. 0: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/Varanasi-is... >>> The results that have come from a detailed geo-explorat…

We need more than a single, probably biased and non-peer-reviewed study in an unreliable newspaper and without any references for such claims, especially given the nationalistic propaganda being pushed throughout India right now.

If there is a peer-reviewed article, this newspaper article does not link to it.

Edit: This article is speculating what might be discovered even before the people doing the research have found something:

>... by the time the data collection is over, there would be enough to prove that this date can be pushed back to about 4500BC.

sigh

Edit 2: For context: The era of the proto-indo-european language family is dated to start around 4500 BC somewhere near the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.

4500 BC would imply a culture that co-existed with the Harappa civilization. Such a discovery would have made news all around the world. This newspaper article would not be the first place to mention it.

I'm not convinced by any claim made by this article.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#149

Post by magicsmoke »

lunaru wrote: post #117
owenversteeg wrote: post #34

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…

Xi'an (on this list as one of the oldest cities) has a fully preserved (but often refurbished) city wall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortifications_of_Xi%27an It's complete so you can still walk the entire 4 sides of the wall in one hike, or rent a bike and circle the entire city in ~1 hour or so. When you're atop the city wall, there's definitely a sense of being in two different times, both ancient and modern, a…

The current Xi'an walls were built in the 1370 during the Ming dynasty.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#150

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

DictumMortuum wrote: post #64
owenversteeg wrote: post #34

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…

Born and raised Athenian here, oldest capital of Europe. 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.

I've always wondered how super old cities like Athens and Rome deal with infrastructure. I mean, if you need to install new sewer or cabling systems underground you're dealing with literally thousands of years of stuff under the city, and I'm guessing there is no good documentation for what's there. How do civil engineers know where it's safe to build?
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