Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 224 posts

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#161

Post by noobdood »

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…

Madurai in Tamil Nadu state, India, may be one, I think - partly. Area of lanes around the Meenakshi temple probably look somewhat like they must have n000+ years ago. Flower, idli, dosa, parotta, sari, clothes, etc. shops, knick knacks, man-powered rickshaws, tame temple elephants blessing humans with trunks, etc.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#162

Post by DictumMortuum »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #150
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.

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?

It's typical to see displays such as [1], even in the basements of cafeterias in Athens. This one is from the Syntagma metro station.

By the way, in settlements were people are living for thousands of years, they usually build on top of what there was already there.

[1] - https://cdn.theculturetrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/10...

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#163

Post by mytailorisrich »

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?

If I'm remembering my history:

Athens founded Phocacea (in modern day Turkey), which founded Marseille, which founded Nice. All were independent Republics.

My understanding is that it was peaceful, or mostly peaceful. The aim was settling a city to further trade, not military conquests. That came later with the Romans.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#164

Post by carlob »

Bayart wrote: post #140
carlob wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said! I would also like to add that history is also (in part) a construct of the times you live in. Greece post-1830 looks back at the ancient times while all but forgetting the centuries of Ottoman rule that also shaped the current culture (especially cuisine). Bulgaria, while having a similar history (the Thracians instead of the Greek and Macedonians, also Orthodox, also Ottoman) prefer to trace their mythica…

>I'm from Italy and here we are taught a linear history shooting like a bullet from the Romans to Renaissance (mostly glossing over the Middle Ages), and that has important political consequences in what it means to identify as an Italian. As a Frenchman I have always found Italians identifying so strongly to Romans a bit creepy. I've had very heated conversations with people who wouldn't balk from the notion that «…

And most French I know have this weird notion they somehow won WWII because the true French government was in London ;)

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#165

Post by awiesenhofer »

Wow, this is a great example of a rather terrible wikipedia page. Grouping it by continent. No mention of the Middle East at all (Erbil anyone?). Oceania is just a list of every major city in AUS/NZ, even listing 1913s Canberra while omitting basically every other country in the region.

Not trying to diminish the work that went into it so far, but it is a great example to always keep in mind how wikipedia works, how its content is built and to never trust it as a source in itself.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#166

Post by ketcomp »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #154
dilippkumar wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started studying Indian history and I immediately ran into problems. The first one is language - in the region I am interested in (the southern parts of India) - primary sources appear in several different languages. It's not sufficient to have passing familiarity with a language - a ton of these ancient writers were poets trying to out-do each other with their skills at crafting verses. To research Indian history,…

> Studying Indian history is hard. But the way you write about it makes it sound fascinating, too! Could you recommend a couple good books in English?

I don't know what OP of this comment (dilippkumar) thinks of Manu Pillai's various books but he is another author/historian whose book I would recommend - I got the same feeling of awe reading his books that I got from dilippkumar's comment here.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#167

Post by netcan »

lostlogin wrote: post #151
netcan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marhabat. This particular list is pretty strict on the "continuous" criteria. I guess when the Romans plowed salt into it, continuity was broken, for the purposes of this list. Carthage does make this list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_through... It was the world's biggest city circa 300BC.

I don’t think that the ‘ploughed salt’ approach is considered true anymore. The articles I want to link to are paywalled but there is a good discussion in the below reddit thread. The tldr is the salt was very expensive. http://www.jstor.org/stable/269786 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/...

Do you mean the literal salt, or the destruction?

I've often wonder about the salt. The salt ritual (or figure of speech) originates in the eastern Mediterranean, which is why it features in the bible. Being Israeli, I always figured the dead sea inspired the idea. I think you'd need a lot of salt to do it literally though.

I wonder how the expression got to Rome? Punic culture & language came from Lebanon, and was similar to biblical Hebrew. It makes sense they used the same metaphors & rituals. Rome though? Was Scipio using a Carthaginian expression? Did he do their own ancient victory ritual to them?

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#168

Post by sterlind »

jgwil2 wrote: post #158
owenversteeg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Language is constantly changing. No one alive 2000 years ago would be able to readily communicate in a modern vernacular, so I don't think that's a good standard on which to judge.

iirc modern Icelandic is somewhat mutually intelligible with old Norse, to the point where students can read 1200+ year old Viking writings with only a gloss, like we might read Shakespeare. Icelandic is unusual among languages for this though.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#169

Post by TheGallopedHigh »

nanna wrote: post #129

In the UK there's a common derision of tourists from (sorry but) the USA who find themselves dumbfounded by the age of some rickety old pub from the eighteenth century they've tracked down. This Wikipedia page emphasises how little this old rock's got on the rest of the world. Apart from Australasia. Though seriously, I appreciate that Oceana's indigenous peoples are highly nomadic, but is it really the case that the…

Yes I think the idea here is that the distances over seas to reach islands took many many years until Polynesians delevoped the necessary skills and tech were able to navigate them and settle the lands. I don’t think any archeological evdince have been found otherwise.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#170

Post by throwaway8879 »

DictumMortuum wrote: post #141
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nitpick. Socrates was given a choice. His decision to kill himself was his own. I'd probably do the same. He was 70+ anyway. A lifetime of annoying dialectic tends to make lots of enemies quickly.
Post reply on HN