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The current list is a mess - completely arbitrary: Why, e.g. is Malang, capital of the Singhasari empire, documented as city in a 760 AD inscription, missing? What about Bethlehem, Mecca, Sana'a, Timbuktu, Hillah/Babylon? Padua, capital of the Veneti? Kalisz/PL, recorded by Ptolemy? Guatemala City, covering the Mayan site of Kaminaljuyu that dates back to 1500 BC? Instead, San Diego and Darwin are included among the World's oldest cities! Moreover, there is huge inconsistency between the information/dates in the list, and the linked articles on the individual cities in question (e.g. the Santa Fe/NM article stating settlement continuity since 900 AD).
This is not in any ways up to WP standards.
It has also been frustrating to spend several days of work on diligently screening and documenting sources, just to find out that none of that is used, but instead stored safely away from further review on the "Archive 3" page.
To improve the situation, I suggest the following:
1. Skip the "continuously inhabited" part: There is no place for which this ever will be provable beyond reasonable doubt, at least as concerns prehistory. In fact, most of Middle East archeology demonstrates just the opposite: Clearly segmented archeological strata, indicating a hiatus before the next settlement phase began. For several cities on the list, e.g. Belgrade, there is both archeological and textual evidence of devastation and later resettlement. EDIT: I have realised this would be overdone. No site that was essentially unsettled for a longer period during historic times should be taken onto the list. However, shorter breaks, i.e. destruction by war/ natural disasters, and subsequent re-settlement, should be tolerated (e.g. Carthage, Singidunum/Belgrade). We might define a "maximum hiatus" here (50 years?). For prehistoric times, my point remains, and is adressed via #3 below. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:58:AB5C:FD00:90F9:73A9:F983:98AF (talk) 22:05, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
2. Orient on today's cities: To get onto the list, a place should first and foremost be a considered a "city" today. I suggest a minimum current population of 50,000. That threshold would still cover places like Trier, Timbuktu, Balkh, Reykjavik, but prevent, e.g., every single place recorded in the Tabula Peutingerania (Jülich, Bitburg, Boppard, Bingen etc.) or in Scipio's Geography to get onto the list as well.
Still, there are easily more than 100 Roman towns to add, so a higher cut-off (100,000?) might be worth considering. In that case, exceptions may be warranted for smaller cities of significant current (e.g. Reykjavik as capital) or historical relevance (Trier, Timbuktu, Balkh, Bethlehem). The reason for exceptional inclusion should be given in the list's notes.
For purely archaeological sites, e.g. Mahasthangarh, inclusion or non-inclusion of which is anyway extremely arbitrary (no Uruk, Babylon, Harappa on the list!), this should apply even more. However, see 3c below.
3. Multiple columns (sortable):To get rid of inconsistencies, I suggest for each city the following entries (noting in BP, with BC/AD dates in brackets, would facilitate sorting):
a) First documented (Year BP): A second column may provide notes on the source. e.g. for Kutaisi: Noted in the Argonautica by App. Rhodus as "Aia".
To which extent the Vedas qualify as source, and their dating, yet needs to be defined.
b) Suggested foundation:Additional notes as above, e.g. Rome: Foundation myth (Romulus and Remus), palace building in the late 8th century BC archeologically evidenced.
c) Earliest Archeological Evidence:This first takes us back to the old question of what makes a city. Clearly not just singular archeological finds or some excavated farming/fishing village. I suggest here any (any two?) of either
The second question to deal with is geographic continuity. Not all cases are as straight forward as the Potsdam City Palace replacing a Slavic fortress that sat on top of a Funnelbeaker causedwayed enclosure. More often, we have to deal with a Rome-like scenario, which saw several shifts of the city centre by 3-5 km (and had the Forum Romanum being uninhabited since some 1,500 years). I propose to consider here any archeological evidence that isn't located more than 10km away from today's city centre, plus an additional 2 km in case of burial monuments (typically located extra muros). These distances are of course somewhat arbitrary and open for discussion. My proposal is motivated by the attempt to connect (Old) Cairo to the Pyramids of Giza, which I deem sensible.
4. Set cutoff years: Cape Town, Darvin or San Diego don't belong onto a list of the World's oldest cities. I wouldn't consult this list if were interested about colonial settlement of the Americas or Oceania, WP has seperate lists for that purpose. I suggest to take anything from the list that isn't either
a) documented before 1550 AD (in order to incorporate reports by early European seafarers), in Europe/ Near East/ East Asia before 1000 AD,
b) having a suggested foundation before 700 AD,
c) provides archeological evidence of urban functions before 100 BC. For the Americas and SSA, different cutoffs may be considered.
Once the criteria have been agreed upon, the list needs to be completely rebuilt. A lot of information is already included in the archived talks. The individual city articles appear to often be better sourced than the list. Ideally, they should be consulted in the language of the city in question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:58:AB13:CC00:4087:DF81:DD61:8A8 (talk) 05:03, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm not a regular wikipedia editor so I don't know how that works, but Tripoli was settled in the 7th century BC, shouldn't it be in the list? 41.254.6.23 (talk) 20:06, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Both the Wikipedia articles for "list of cities in the Americas by year of foundation" and "Panama City" state that Panama City was founded in 1519. The citation provided that states it was founded instead in the fifteenth century (1400s) doesn't have a hyperlink for verification. Should this entry be changed to 1519? Nicole Sharp (talk) 00:42, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Jerusalem's article itself is useless on this. No reliable sources suggest a 7000 year old continuously inhabited city, that was just someone's pov edit. This mentions some of the debate but is 10 years old. Doug Weller talk 15:33, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
User Sevt V keeps removing all entries of Greek cities, such as Argos [7], Athens, Thebes [8] and Chania [9], even these are impeccably sourced. I just added the sources for Thebes and Chania, but he removes them while pretending not to notice that they are sourced. Athenean (talk) 03:46, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
The user made legitimate removal as none of the sources cited above provide information for the age or the continuous habitation of these cities. Page 14 of the first source of Athens [10] does not claim anything about the age of continuous habitation of Athens. Much of the sources are falsificated. All these citations are challenged and will be tagged again. Before removing the tags, quote the sources here on the talk page, please.87.227.208.188 (talk) 18:51, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
(unindent) Argos: "...appears to have been continuously occupied till today, mostly as an urban site, thus offers 7000 years of settled continuity"
Thebes: "Thebes did not become a major city until the Mycenean period (1600-1250 BC)."
Chania: "Cydonia is one of the five great cities of Minoan Crete, although exact location of the ancient city was not even resolved until the latter half of the 20th century. The most powerful centre of western Crete, Cydonia produced Bronze Age pottery and Linear B writings circa 1700 to 1500 BC, and was one of the first cities of Europe to mint coinage.
About Athens we can debate and I will look for more sources, but about the other three, I really don't see how it could be any clearer. I think we are clearly dealing with a severe case of WP:IDHT and WP:IDONTLIKEIT from the IP editor. Athenean (talk) 02:57, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
What does that term exactly mean? If it's used to determine that a place has been incessantly occupied by a population (and that it has nothing to do with a place being officially founded or named), then wouldn't this technically mean cities like Sydney and Melbourne have been inhabited since 30,000 years ago? So instead of having their European colonization date then we should use their Aboriginal dates? Can somebody explain this? Meganesia (talk) 13:13, 05 October 2016 (UTC)
Taos Pueblo, Taos Nation, NM. established 2nd century CE|Circa 2nd Century CE. |Oldest continuously-inhabited site in Western Hemishpere. Tanoan town. Acoma Pueblo of Acoma Nation (NM) and Oraibi in Hopi |Nation (AZ) are possibly the 2nd and 3rd oldest places still inhabited in the Western Hemisphere, both being established |before 6th century CE. (Sources: Arizona State Univ. Dept. of Archaeology, Universidad de Nuevo Mexico Dept. Arcaeologico, |US Census Bureau, "Indians of North America," Driver et al. University of Chicago,1998 edition. [1][2] First source needs fixing. Doug Weller talk 12:40, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
References
UXL
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Tucson could be added to this list. What's the consensus? KC 17:12, 7 November 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boydstra (talk • contribs)
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First, the entry is unsourced. Second, it is incorrectly placed at the top of the table, as if it were the oldest city, and third, I find it very odd that according to the table, Heraklion has been continuously inhabited since "824 AD by Muslims". Which is ridiculous both because a) Heraklion has not been "continuously inhabited by Muslims", and b) we don't mention any other ethnic/religious group in any other city entry. Khirurg (talk) 07:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
Oh, and by the way, there already is an entry for Herkalion, somewhere near the bottom of the table. In fact, given it's rather late date of founding, I don't even know why we need an entry. It's not particularly old, it's actually one of the more recent cities in Greece and southern Europe. Khirurg (talk) 07:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
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IMO a list of the oldest cities of the world is pointless if half the cities on it were founded in the 17th or the 18th century. A 200-year-old city is not old by any standards. It should include the oldest 1-2 cities of a continent or the oldest cities by country, but right now it seems like it includes everyone's favourite city. – Alensha talk 21:32, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
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Eg Susa. Doug Weller talk 18:46, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Why was this divided by continent? It introduces a completely arbitrary division between Mediterranean settlements in Asia, Europe and North Africa, all of which belong to the same cultural sphere which also happened to produced the first cities. This makes the list very difficult to use. There used to be a culturally literate division into regions, but if you don't want to divide it up in this way, at least don't divide it at all and make it sortable by time and by region. --dab (𒁳) 12:31, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
Which part of "continuously inhabited" is confusing? Richard75 (talk) 21:27, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
With all respect, these aren't cities. I think they should be removed. See Puelo for a description of them, and the name itself is Spanish for village or town. Doug Weller talk 12:45, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
Neolithic "cities" also aren't cities by any modern standard. They are Stone Age cities. This is neither here nor there, the topic of this page is about places that are cities today listed by the date of their first establishment as (any type of) settlement. --dab (𒁳) 09:07, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, I realize that this is what you are saying, Acoma Pueblo is not a city, I agree. --dab (𒁳) 09:08, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Again, which part of "continuously inhabited" is confusing? Richard75 (talk) 09:13, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
The problem with this page is that no ancient city was strictly inhabited continuously (they were all sacked/destroyed and rebuilt several times over). In some cases it is also impossible to establish "continuity" with any certainty, so it becomes a matter of opinion or probability. The entire premise of this page was probably chosen poorly, the scope should be "cities by date of foundation" or similar. --dab (𒁳) 09:10, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
As stated, the area of Al-Ain, Al-Buraimi or Tawam is considered to have been inhabited for almost 8,000 years. It is the same area, but divided by the border between the UAE and Oman, with the city of Al-Ain being on the UAE side, and the town of Al-Buraimi being on the Omani side. Leo1pard (talk) 05:41, 18 November 2018 (UTC); edited 05:43, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Copied from my talk page, see below User:Gyerchak. Doug Weller talk 16:49, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi, my edit from oldest continously inhabited areas in europe was recently deleted; the settlement in town of Przeworsk existed before first mention in medival era, theres way more information about town at polish languague page of wikipedia; heres http://www.przeworsk.um.gov.pl/historia also option to view a bit about town in english languague. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gyerchak (talk • contribs) 19:35, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Also after 1394 Year Przeworsk get literally City Laws (pol. Prawa Miejskie) in past role of Przeworsk was higher compared to now; it was second biggest city in area after Przemyśl https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/pl/timeline/446682eb320bc250544a71005e700bf2.png population at 1490 was 2000; exactly same as of Kraków 1250, so it totally count as city, nevermind with that. in my oppinion it s just quite a bit not clear segregated on whole article with the cities : they are segregated by date of being inhabited as a village settlement, in my oppinion they should be segregated by something like when they get city status to look more clear and avoid miss-leadings. thanks for discuss. for example: Przeworsk was a long continously inhabitted settlement since 4500 BCE and became offically city at 1394 CE now is in curret standards a town (althought still with city laws becouse according to Polish laws there can be only City Status) *just for an example even if it don't count second example :Argos started as a village about 7000 years ago, but gained city role way much more later (around 1st Milenium Bce?) third example : Koszalin inhabitation on page is also counted as the time it become village
everything is sorted by starting the "continous settlement" which made me that mislead about Przeworsk, if it really count by it, in my oppinion in that case Przeworsk would deserve have such tittle to be honest. creating a tab with approx date of becoming city which would be sorted by it would be good idea.
Newbie here from Singapore. Pretty much every source online and offline I've encountered says that Singapore was founded in 1299. The 1170 claim is cross-referenced to a dead link. I'm not sure what the protocol would be to do a correction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ng.yisheng (talk • contribs) 15:33, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
How ignorant are the maintainers if this page? I have added Matera, 2019 European capital of Culture, because I was appalled at its missing from the list. From UNESCO to all major historians it is known as the third oldest city in the world. Only at Wikipedia they did not get the memo. Well they did from me but decided to erase it Mynollo (talk) 08:23, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Dear Doug Weller
You use the phrase "Goth, Longobard, Byzantine, and Saracen sieges of the city" to prove with a historical fact that somebody actually "saw" the city
and consequentially the city existed. But what about the fact that the city was very well know at the time of Romand and Ellenics?
Matera was already known by the ancient Greeks as Mataios olos then Mataia ole and then Mateola. A roman general
in the 2nd century BC had Matera's walls built and also built new towers. It was already considered city and its citizens were called Mateolani.
Not only "In Hellenic Age it welcomed refugees from the cities of Metaponto and Heraclea"
Not only: "Quinto Cecilio Metello Numidico who lived in the II century BC, built city walls and towers for Matera"
These are also demonstrations that the city existed. We don't need to go so further and disturb Goth, Longobard and Byzantine.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storia_di_Matera
Anyway I'm very sad to see how 9.000 years of history are just deleted because of a bureaucratic quibble. Most part of the "cities" in this list, weren't
cities at the indicated foundation date. They were settlements. A second thing: "foundation" usually means that a population coming from another territory, decides to found a city in a precise place. The story is different for settlements that existed naturally in an area. Usually these type of cities have a late official foundation date. Whoever studied history knows that.
Additionally Matera has been chosen together with Plovdiv as 2019 European capital of culture because they're both considered to be an example of oldest cities in Europe. There aren't other reasons. I absolutely understand the first comment by the user Mynollo, because it's very upsetting that a 9.000 years old city just gets deleted because the precise foundation is "debate".
Matera is known all over the world to be one of the oldest cities. It's like if you refuse to consider a baby to be a baby just because you don't see the birth certificate. There's isn't an official date for the foundation of Matera and there will never be.
So what we do? We delete Matera from this list because of this? I understand the difficulty of positioning Matera in a precise time line in the list of this page but many cities have a very large time-range when it's about foundation. Date likes "1st century BC" are very generic
If the foundation dates are so generic why this doesn't apply to Matera? Why can't be taken as a date the 2nd Century BC when the Roman general Quinto Cecilio Metello Numidico gave walls to Matera? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.183.159.162 (talk) 10:20, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
The article for Sana'a, Yemen, mentions that city to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in its introduction. Just wanted to get a consensus for this before adding it to the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uq (talk • contribs) 23:44, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
How is Carthage part of one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities? No-one lives in the ruins of Carthage. It doesn't even exist as a city today? Someone should definitely remove it! Also Canberra was founded in 1913, only about a hundred years ago, that is not old. If that is old then there would be way more cities on the list. This is the oldest continuously inhabited cities list not the over hundred-years old city list.CountHacker (talk) 23:09, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
indeed carthage did not stoped to exist you clearly did not visit Tunis the capital of tunisia, Tunis is founded on the site of old carthage all the ruins lay in Tunis city and if you think that carthage did disappear after the roman destruction you are wrong it did not it was the capital of the roman africa province for almost a millenium and the site did never loose its population even when Tunis was founded, and taking your opinion that no one inhabit the ruins so we have to omit many cities like Athenes because old Athenes is on the Acropolis and no one lives there because it is just ruins so new Athenes is not the old Athenes --154.121.32.64 (talk) 11:04, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
Does Honolulu count? It has been continuously inhabited for at least a thousand year and was recognized as capital in 1845. Papeete has been around since 1818 when it was established as a mission station by William Pascoe Crook. Nukuʻalofa seems to have existed since pre-contact and was made capital in 1875. KAVEBEAR (talk) 04:03, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Erroneous dating of Varanasi and omission of Dwarka (or Bet Dwarka) from the list continuously inhabited cities
I am shocked by the implicit bias shown by Doug Weller and RegentsPark in the dating of ancient Indian cities. I have provided citations that are more reliable than the citations used on this page but they are trying to cherry pick data and statements to reject these updates. What is even sadder is that both of them seem to using their Wikipedia credentials to send me warnings and silence my opinions.
They have been repeatedly discriminating against Ancient Indian history by rejecting the conclusions from reliable peer-reviewed articles. In one instance they both asked me to prove 'continuous inhabitation' of these cities. There is always an inherent vagueness when discussing the age of ancient cities that are thousands of years old, but these two have misused the concept 'scientific rigor' to reject valid claims.
I would like to reiterate (and seek support from other Wikipedia admins/editors):
Age of Varanasi is at least 1500-2000 BC -
History and inhabitation of Bet Dwarka (The port city 1km off shore from Dwarka) goes back to atleast 1000-1500 years -
Proof of continuous inhabitaion - http://drs.nio.org/drs/bitstream/handle/2264/284/Curr_Sci_82_1351.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Proof of ancient articles on excavation -
http://drs.nio.org/drs/bitstream/handle/2264/3085/J_Mar?sequence=2
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1095-9270.2005.00080.x — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spratap123 (talk • contribs) 22:28, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
Bad sources? - Doug Weller, You can not be serious about this.
Allow me to show you what bad sources are -
Citation 1- Biography (Biographies are not peer-reviewed) of a man who lived in 200CE as a citation for a city which has been claimed to be from 700BCE.
Citation 4 - A web page of a tour operating company.
Citation 6 - A city mayors website
Citation 8 - Moroccan embassy website
Citation 9 - How well does it fit your 'continuous inhabitation' criteria?
Five out of first ten citations are not robust - That's 50% of them!
It saddens me that I need to poke holes in other citations for you to be able to see your own favoritism. This is the very definition of an 'implicit bias'. It is not a personal attack but a reflection on your preset notion that data coming from India is 'sub-par' by default. In light of all the citations used on this page, your and Reagents Park's actions are an abuse (or selective use at best) of scientific rigorousness. I hope WP:RSN intervenes in time to stop you two.
Yes, I have received warning from Wikipedia that an administrative ruling is in effect, and administrators may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies. Good job Wikipedia! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spratap123 (talk • contribs) 13:53, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Doug Weller's post in WP:RSN brought this page to my attention. Isn't it overdue just to remove all unsourced entries? And then proceed with entries based on sources that do not meet WP:RS (including old sources which do not employ the methods of modern critical scholarship), or entries which are based on bold interpretations of reliable sources. –Austronesier (talk) 09:27, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
Currently Genoa has the oldest listing on this page. Yet the citation says nothing about "continuous inhabitation", merely ancient inhabitation. To my knowledge there is no particular evidence of continuous inhabitation before a few centuries BC. It wouldn't be surprising if it was continuously inhabited, but the evidence isn't there, especially not in that citation. 69.113.166.178 (talk) 06:55, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
According to this News Article :
www.iranian.com/2020/07/17/unearthed-workshops-push-back-history-of-isfahan-by-millennia/
The Oldest humans Remains In the city of Isfahan is nearly 3 Centuries BC , That would place the City Age as more than 2000 Years old !!!
Please consider Including the city in this list .
Thanks very much !!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.39.255.136 (talk) 21:41, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
There are two entries for Plovdiv at the section on Europe. Which is the correct one? Hope that an editor will fix this. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 06:14, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
The Bulgarian cities of Sofia and Plovdiv appear as two separate entries. This is really sloppy, and one could argue it even damages the reputation of Wikipedia. Also, the older of the two dates (for both cities) seems incorrect, given the timeline of how the agricultural revolution spread throughout the European continent. Gregorybard (talk) 04:51, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
I'm not even sure that there was a continuous habitation of Shedet until today, eg Britannica says it was a town in the medieval period[14] and several sources suggest that the modern Fairyum was built near Shedet, so thus again not continuously inhabited as a city. Doug Weller talk 15:44, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
What is the oldest city of which we have knowledge? I.e. based on the latest findings of modern archaeology and historical analysis, what is the most ancient bona fide CITY, not the most ancient, continuously inhabited city nor the most ancient settlement or village? Bardolotrous (talk) 19:41, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
Seems to me that there needs to be some limitation on what qualifies for inclusion. Why would Toronto, a city founded in 1793 AD (almost 200 years after Quebec City, the oldest continuously inhabited city in Canada), be on a list with dozens of entries from BCE? Or why would Canberra, founded in 1913 AD, appear? Seems irrelevant that "[a]rtifacts suggests [sic] early human activity occurred at some point in Canberra dating at around 21,000 years ago," that tells us nothing about old continuously inhabited cities.
I looked through the Talk archives and this question has come up a couple times, but never definitively resolved (as far as I can tell). A couple of users have proposed guidelines:
and
I'm inclined to agree with the first comment: pick a semi-arbitrary cutoff, and only deviate for cities that "clearly" merit inclusion based on notability, principally, the oldest continuously inhabited city in a country/region (and the Notes should clearly state as much). This does still raise the question of how to limit the number of cities before the arbitrary cutoff (e.g., the list already includes six cities from Illyria ranging from the 4th c. BCE to 1st c. BCA - do we really want to include all six, and if so, would we also then want to include every continuously inhabited city established in ancient Illyria?).
Interested to hear what others think. I won't be so bold as to start hatcheting at entries... yet (?) Theturbolemming (talk) 15:57, 15 April 2022 (UTC)