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List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

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Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#191

Post by 205guy »

lisper wrote: post #123
asveikau wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unexplored by whom though? The Americas are a great example of places that might have made the list in greater numbers if history had gone a little differently, but those settlements were wiped out except for a handful of prominent ones. Then suddenly in the 1500s you get a lot of new Spanish settlements making the list. It doesn't qualify as continuously inhabited, but that doesn't make it unexplored. In many cases…

I probably should have used a different word. What I meant was that the last 200 years or so is the first time in history that human civilization has extended across the entire planet simultaneously.

I still think this is unfairly discounting the native populations, because this thread is talking about Australia and Polynesia. Australia had been settled for 10s of thousands of years, and Polynesia for thousands of years, perhaps down to 1000 for the last islands to be settled.

I do think the concept of "continuously inhabited city" is interesting, but ultimately distorting in several ways, especially in the Americas. Adding the loaded word "civilization" just further muddies the waters.

However, if you consider that Antarctica was finally sighted in 1820, your figure of 200 years is very accurate.

That said, I think it is interesting that there are probably islands on which no human has ever set foot. At least I think that's the case, I don't have proof. Large swaths of ice as well, but islands are easier to think about.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#192

Post by namenotrequired »

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…

> is it really the case that there's no continuous settlement there until European colonisation?

Settlement yes, city no.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#193

Post by owenversteeg »

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.

That's one reason why I chose Yerevan, actually! Old Armenian (1600 years old) and modern Armenian are fairly similar! Same writing system with only small changes, and modern Armenians (or at least the handful of random Armenians I've asked) can understand old Armenian. It takes a good bit of extra effort, but it's definitely possible.

Fascinating language (and alphabet) by the way.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#194

Post by philwelch »

dntbnmpls wrote: post #175
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…

> Anyone know more of these cities, where it'd be obvious to the ancient inhabitants that it was the same city? According to your definition if there are recognizable major natural landmarks ( "Mount Ararat", "river Hrazdan" ), then it means nothing has changed since people in the past would recognize it and be able to place themselves. So using your logic, any city near a major mountain, river, etc would be recogniz…

Mt. Rainier is only visible from Seattle on exceptionally clear days.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#195

Post by raz32dust »

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 recently read "Kerala History and Its Makers" by Sreedhara Menon. It focuses on the southern state of Kerala, as the name suggests. A relatively light read and probably good for beginners. It covers a broad range of time quickly. The author also comes across as unbiased and there is little to no speculation, which I like very much in non-fiction books.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#197

Post by dredmorbius »

netsharc wrote: post #30
corebit wrote: post #13

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?

Sorites Paradox.

The fallacy lies in the question, that a collection of sand is either individual grains aggregated, or a heap. One response is that "heap" describes not quantity but behaviour, or even more crucially, useful mental models.

The old parable of grains of rice doubled on successive squares of a chessboard gives a useful visual image, here: http://all-funny.info/rice-chessboard-story

I'd argue that the transition between "grains" and "heap" occurs somewhere between 16 and 128 grains, the 6th to 8th squares (2^5 to 2^7). Sixteen grains is still, mostly, individual grains. 128 grains is almost certainly a heap.

In urban geography, urbanisations are virtually always classed by the log, usually base ten, of their population. This gives settlements of class 0 (one inhabitant) to about class 7.6 (roughly 40 millions of souls, greater Tokyo). Distribution nearly perfectly follows a power distribution -- frequency distribution is linear with the log size.

Going back through human history, the first settlements we might have termed "cities" may well have been only a few hundreds of inhabitants, but they would have dominated their regions. Anthropologists typically identify Uruk as the first settlement recognised as a city. "Many ancient cities had only modest populations, often under 5,000 persons."

https://www.ancient.eu/city/

A city is a permanent settlement of size and complexity which acts as a city.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#198

Post by dingoegret »

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.

Damage that secularists and pagans did as well.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#199

Post by dwohnitmok »

netcan wrote: post #58
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…

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…

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho it looks like the city has moved around a bit (not a huge amount, but a few kilometers) over time. It looks like the modern city's location was finally decided in the 4th century AD. Also it seems to have been razed and rebuilt quite a few times. Given that many structures from the Byzantine period had to be excavated (as in they were buried beneath the ground), I suspect the current city streets are quite a bit younger than dating from the Romans.

Re: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities

#200

Post by dwohnitmok »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #100
barbegal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I don't mind lists like "Largest countries" as that is fairly definitive but when you get into subjective lists of things that are hard to properly define, measure or record like "costliest hurricane damage"[1], "longest-living organisms"[2] or "deadliest animals"[3] then the articles become a joke. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricane_rec... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_…

How would you approach those things? Do we altogether avoid making those lists because they don't fit a strict criteria? I think they serve a very useful purpose and taken in the correct context, are incredibly informative. At the very least it stimulates curiosity which is a positive effect in itself.

An age old question.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflicting_Wikipedia_philos...

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