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Talk:List of oldest continuously inhabited cities/Archive 4

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Proposed general lines of review

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

  • (i) traces of a settlement that is likely to have had more than 1,000 inhabitants;
  • (ii) evidence of large-scale industrial activity such as salt-making, mining, metal-processing;
  • (iii) evidence of long-distance trade, i.e. finds occuring more than just sporadically, which originate from at least two sources that are each more than xxx km away (xxx=300? 500?);
  • (iv) monuments evidencing a site's regional (not just local) relevance, such as an accumulation of "royal burials", astronomic installations (pyramids, observatories), menhirs, etc.
  • (v) larger (>5 ha?) defensive structures such as causedwayed enclosures, hill-top fortresses etc.

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 can understand your frustration.
1. I'd oppose skipping the "continuously inhabited bit), which would obviously entail a discussion about moving the article to a new title. I see you've actually suggested that we simply allow a hiatus time, which seems reasonable. That would still leave out Guatemala City though if the related articles are correct.
My immediate concern was places like York or Belgrade, for which the related articles suggest some kind of hiatus during the early medieval migration period (Belgrade also at the time of the Third Crusade). In fact, this should concern almost all European cities with the possible exceptions of Rome, Ravenna, Cologne and Byzantium (oh, skip that one for the 3rd century earth quake). Even for Trier, it gets difficult to put together an unbroken chronology between the 451 CE Hunnic destruction and the late 6th/early 7th century. There are very few contemporary texts available, and archeology may have problems to specify whether it was only parts of, or the whole city given up in this period. I don't think in-depth research on all the cities in question will be feasible. Unless we take a pragmatic approach, there will be another hundreds of comments coming in on the talk page claiming recent discovery of a couple of huts within former Roman city walls as proof of continuous inhabitation.
So, to make this operational, I propose any city appearing on the list must (a) lack textual or archeological evidence of having been given up for more than 50 years during historical times, and (b) during prehistory be archeologically documented as a city (see below) at least once during each millennium that follows the date noted under "Earliest Archeological Evidence". "Dark ages" may count as "prehistory" for that purpose (not ideal, but the best I can come up with at the moment). Rather than moving the article to a new title, I suggest a somewhat longer introduction describing the technical problems associated with proving continuous inhabitation, and the approach chosen to deal with these problems.''
As concerns Guatemala City: Apparently, Kaminaljuyu was given up in favour of a better defendable place, Chinautla, which is located some 2-3 km uphill on the same plateau, and still (though barely) within 10km distance of Guatemala City's center. Some ceremonial use of Kaminaljuyu continued . If we apply the same criteria here as for Rome, which saw early medieval abandonment of the Forum Romanum, I think Kaminaljuyu - Guatemala City belongs onto the list. Late pre-Columbian population of the Kaminaljuyu-Chinautli area (including surrounding hamlets) is estimated at 19,000. Rome had some 15,000 inhabitants around the same time (Athens less than 10,000 by the middle of the 19th century).

2. Definition of city. Here we part company, as it isn't population size that determines a city at least from an archaeological perspective. We've discussed this before.
I may have made my point in a misunderstandable way. The rationale was that we need a mechanism to keep the "long list" manageable. Nothing against Vincovci/HR, Bitburg (Vicus Beda), Chester, or Briancon (Brigantium). We may actually want to review them in, say, five years from now. But for the moment I see a lot of more pressing issues to be dealt with. To me, a city's current population size is a main criterion for ranking the "still to do-s". A signal to all potential contributors here that priority will be given to cities above a current population threshold should be appreciated, acceptable, and could help to prevent frustration about comments not being immediately considered.

In my opinion the definition should be functional. I would argue that to be a city you need at least public building and a political structure, although as we progress through history these attributes may not be necessary but not sufficient to define a city. There's an interesting discussion here The archaeologist Gordon Childe did stress population size and the economic role. But the important thing is whether archaeologists call it a city. I see that Çatalhöyük, which some have called a village due to its lack of any public buildings, even for worship, is now called a city or proto-city at times. So if it is referred to in several clearly reliable sources as a city, we should include it.
I am afraid this might not work as long as archeologists haven't agreed among themselves on the functional criteria to use. Point in case is Rome: Recent research shows a late 13th century BCE settled area of around 35ha, which would indicate a population between 3500 and 7000. To me, that's a city (actually a quite large one for the period in question). Archeology, however, still debates whether Rome at that time was a cluster of larger hilltop villages, proto-, or semi-urban. Equally hotly debated is its status after the mythical foundation date of 753 BCE (construction of a palace building is evidenced, but early laws still show "village-like" character). OTOH, the term "urban" is now regularly brought forward in research on "Mega-Sites", e.g. the Kapellenberg (City of Hofheim, Hesse, Michelsberg Culture, 3700 BCE) (see p. 405 ff for the need to review Childe's criteria, and various individual cases including Colchester on p.410). As much as I appreciate a broader perspective with less of Mediterraanean/ Near Eastern bias, I still have some question marks here and there (less on functions, they clearly were urban, more on the settlement sizes).

I believe we will need our own list of functional criteria, as specific as possible, also to ensure that any proposals for list inclusion can be easily confirmed or rejected without having to go through dozens of academic publications and interpretations.
3. Columns and dating. Columns good, but we can't use BP except where that's the only dating, as it refers to an archaeological dating method and isn't the same as before 1950. Personally I prefer BCE dating for such articles but am not going to argue that.
It is only relevant for list sorting, to prevent BCE and CE dates getting mixed up. We may use rank numbers instead, but that would mean another three columns, and a lot of maintenance work whenever a city is added to or removed from the list.
First documented and suggested foundation seem good.
Earliest archaeological evidence. Major industrial activity has taken place in areas where there was clearly nothing that could be called a city, so that wouldn't be enough.
Well, we'd obviously need a permanent settlement at the site. But in general, industrial activity marks a key distinction between a village and a city. The "industrial" part can quite easily be demonstrated archeologically - stone knapping residue, spindles, briquetage, kilns/ furnaces, differentiation between "houses" and "workshops", etc. The "major" (compared to off-season self-supplying) part is more of a question and might require a sharper definition. Still, I think verifying this criterium may be much easier than the "political structure" point that is being brought forward by you. [Not that "political structure" is irrelevant - to the opposite! But how do you prove it for prehistory?]
I wouldn't agree with population size, either, but the other criteria look good. Hm, no, I wouldn't expect menhirs in a city, they are usually part of a "sacred landscape". But again, public buildings such as temples, etc. I'll add that the Giza plateau was never part of a city and am confused by your statement about that.
"Sacred landscapes", whether made up by Pyramids, Menhirs or other installations indicate a place that is relevant to a population from a wider region. They served as area for worship, convention, political decision making, probably jurisdiction, and typically also longer-range commercial exchange. IOW, they assumed urban functions. "Royal burials", e.g. the pyramids of Giza, provide us with the additional information that a center of territorial authority (commonly called a "capital") was located nearby.
I am having problems with the "public buildings" part. First, it is quite difficult to distinguish a temple from a "sacred landscape". Athen's Acropolis is approximately as distant from the antique Agora, as is the 50 ha Funnelbeaker circular enclosure of Halle-Dühlauer Heide that holds Central Europe's second largest menhir from the city's town square under which dense iron age housing and saltmaking evidence has been found. Döhlauer Heide is one of the Central/Eastern European "Mega-Sites" that archeologists are in the process of re-defining. In any case, places like Rome or Jerusalem make the "temple on the hilltop - market and workshops in the valley below" pattern looking to be quite widespread. Some cultures built their temples with wood, others with stone, and the latter are obviously easier to identify in the archeological record. But should we base understanding of a "city" primarily on the preferred construction material?
Another problem is defining a "public building". There are many buildings that differ from standard residential layout, be it in the Cucuteni-Tripolye "Mega-Sites", or in Neolithic Great Britain and Scandinavia. In the latter contexts, they are typically interpreted as some sort of "men's assembly and drinking halls" - I think "public house" is the proper English term. Is a pub already making a city? I wouldn't say so. A church/ temple? Neither (and also not a pub next to a church). Five pubs around a market square, OTOH .. Sport/ entertainment venues, btw, might be an urban indicator - Mayan ballcourts, Roman amphimtheatres etc. (not sure on the Asian pologround evidence, though)
Reviewing my previous proposal: I ideally would like to see evidence of (a) population concentration clearly above standard village size (>1,000 people?), (b) economic centrality (long-distance trade, artisanship/ industry) and (c) socio-political centrality (worship, defence, "royal burials", "public buildings"?). We might not get too many places with archeological evidence for (a), (b) and (c) combined; one or two of those three may have to do. Personally, I think already just one out of a list of clearly defined criteria is better than the current situation, where any settlement trace is equalled to having been a city. But I am fine with a more restricted approach, as long as it can easily be verified, and is applied consistently. Maybe we do a test run (in a separate talk section) to figure out which (combination of) criteria would lead us to which archaeological date for commonly accepted "ancient cities" - say Jericho, Aleppo, Balkh, Rome, Luxor, Xi'an.
Cutoff year - to be discussed after everything else is settled. Doug Weller talk 09:40, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Agreed.
I even find it dubious in principle to speak of a "city" in a clearly prehistorical (not even protohistorical) period. In a culture that has no writing and that has not even been documented by another culture that has, there's just not a lot to go on, only scattered, fragmentary, accidental and heavily ambiguous archaeological evidence. Arguably, the label of "city" requires a literate culture by definition. In the case of Damascus, the problem is quite evident. Personally, I'd exclude prehistory and keep things to the oldest verified historical documentation – who except overzealous nationalists with an inferiority complex cares whether Plovdiv is 2400, 3200, 5000, 6000 or 8000 years old, and has an interest to arbitrarily inflate numbers in a way that conveys no useful information, because tons of cities stand on ground that has been settled for millennia? When you accept the flimsiest archaeological traces as evidence for "continuous inhabitation as a city", you allow the list to degrade into a pathetic dick-measuring contest. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:41, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Tripoli

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)

Panama City

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)

No, to 1673. It was destroyed by fire and rebuilt 2 years later 5 miles away. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doug Weller (talk • contribs) 05:12, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Date for Jeruslem

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)

POV disruption by User:Sevt V

User Sevt V keeps removing all entries of Greek cities, such as Argos , Athens, Thebes and Chania , 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 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)

You are quite mistaken. You link to the wrong page of the book, and on Greek Google Books no less. Page xiv in Roman numerals is not the same as page 14 in what we call Arabic numerals. The ref is correct, here is the correct page, which says "Chronology: c. 4000 BC Neolithic settlements on Acropolis". Carlstak (talk) 19:19, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
I think it's quite obvious the IP user is a Bulgarian nationalist who simply cannot and will not accept certain things, no matter how well sourced they are. From past experience there is no point in engaging such people. 19:39, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
I won't argue about that, but the age given for Athens is wrong. Again, this isn't a list of oldest inhabited places, but cities, and Athens wasn't a city in the 4th millennium. Doug Weller talk 20:08, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
Carlstak, see List of Neolithic settlements and make difference between continuous habitation and that. There are double standarts in the table. That the age of continuous habitation of almost all cities is unsourced within the table is quite obvious, undisputable and does not need any further explanations. Even further ages not in the citation given have been inserted today.87.227.208.188 (talk) 20:50, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
It's a moot point, IP editor, because as Doug Weller said (and I think you're trying to say), "Athens wasn't a city in the 4th millennium." But when you accuse someone (it wasn't me) of falsifying refs, please get your own citations right. Carlstak (talk) 21:31, 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)

Only the statement for Argos claims continuous habitation, but if you don't point a page of the quotes they are hardly valid. Though the continuous habitation is possibly true for the rest of the cities, it is not claimed by the sources, i.e. the last two quotes. For them it is not said that continiuty may have not been broken. Nobody is even required to like your edits, this is not even a policy.87.227.208.188 (talk) 04:19, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Regarding Argos, I'm starting to think you are joking. I have provided both a page number and a link. There is no evidence that Thebes and Chania have not been continuously inhabited, unless you can prove otherwise. By the way, for Plovdiv, one of the sources used is a newspaper (telegraph.co.uk), two are something in Bulgarian without any links or bibliographic information, and the fourth one is not viewable online. If I hold Plovdiv to the same standards as you hold the Greek cities, I should remove Plovdiv. Athenean (talk) 04:46, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
You alleged users what they are (either disruptive or nationalist), now you discuss with them by some your nationalist criteria. I only tagged sources that are not used correctly. I marked the sources for 4000 BC next to Plovdiv as dubious and old, in fact there is no evidence for both Sofia and Plovdiv for unbroken continious habitation before 350 BC. 87.227.208.188 (talk) 05:13, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
No you didn't, in fact you added a source that allegedly said Sofia has been continuously inhabited as a city since the 8th millennium BC . Athenean (talk) 05:27, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
I followed incorrect intension, judging by Neolithic settlemnts, as you have added to Athens so many milleniums of age only due to a Neolithic settlement. Athens is much younger than Mycanean Thebes. You should have used that kind of sources indicating continious habitation. It is dubious why google recognizes your quote on Thebes, but not the quote on Argos, but however. 87.227.208.188 (talk) 05:44, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Linear B in 1700–1500 BC? I call bullshit. Apart from the Kafkania pebble, which is very dubious and was found on the mainland, not on Crete (it might be Linear A if authentic), no Linear B inscription is dated that early. Hogan, who is a physicist and only a hobby archaeologist, evidently doesn't know what he's talking about here. That source doesn't look reliable at all; it's just the personal website of Julian Cope, a musician without any relevant academic credentials to act as a competent editor. No actual archaeologists were involved. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:12, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
I suspect that Hogan, the author of the cited article on Chania/Cydonia, simply confused Linear B with Linear A. Still, my point about the unreliability of the source stands. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:29, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

"Continuously inhabited"

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)

As a city. And no one can prove continual habitation for 30,000 years. Even proving it for a few thousand can be difficult. Doug Weller talk 19:35, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

What should we do about these pueblos?

External links modified

Heraklion

External links modified

External links modified

What's the point of this list?

External links modified

Should we include cities that dwindled to settlements?

Division by continent

Cities that don't exist today don't belong on this list

Pueblos should be removed

Cities that were destroyed and abandoned don't belong on this list

Al-Ain / Al-Buraimi / Tawam in Eastern Arabia

Przeworsk

Singapore

Matera

Sana'a, Yemen

How are Some Cities even on here.?

Oceania

India

Delete all unsourced entries?

Genoa

Isfahan

Two Plovdiv entries

Bulgarian cities of Sofia and Plovdiv

Faiyum (as Shedet) - clearly not 7000 years old

What is the oldest city on record, not the oldest continuously inhabited, not the oldest village or township, but the oldest CITY?

Cut-off year

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