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Lost Cities - An Oldest City and a legend verified

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  • Lost Cities - An Oldest City and a legend verified

    2 links

    The first refers to probably the oldest known city now known to mankind ... and no it is not in Egypt or Mesopotamia

    BBC, News, BBC News, news online, world, uk, international, foreign, british, online, service



    And here is an interesting verification of a legend

    BBC, News, BBC News, news online, world, uk, international, foreign, british, online, service
    Last edited by Samudragupt; October 11, 2002, 10:49.
    "Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, even older than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together" - Mark Twain
    Your face, your ass; whats the difference - Da'Duke

  • #2
    Interesting, but I don't think I can count the massive amount of "Could"s and "Maybe"s and "Potentially"s and "Believed"s and "May"s in the article


    Cheers, and keep hunting for the truth!
    ~Thadalex
    "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion"
    -Democritus of Abdera

    Comment


    • #3
      you are right but then most of history is a big "it probably was ..." itself
      "Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, even older than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together" - Mark Twain
      Your face, your ass; whats the difference - Da'Duke

      Comment


      • #4
        Thats true

        Which makes the article interesting to me like all history (heck i have a doctorate in ancient history) but as with all history, you need to take it with a grain of salt and not take anything too seriously.

        But nice article, thanks for posting it

        Cheers
        ~Thadalex
        "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion"
        -Democritus of Abdera

        Comment


        • #5
          Oldest in the Sub-Continent not the world.

          Jericho is older. Close to 10,000.

          Carbon dating is usually pretty accurate but in this case its been under the ocean for a long time. Very carefull selection of what to test and then carefull cleaning would be needed to be sure there was no contamination with more ancient carbon.

          Comment


          • #6
            Since your link has a space in it I will try posting it.

            BBC, News, BBC News, news online, world, uk, international, foreign, british, online, service


            Maybe it won't break this time.

            Comment


            • #7
              This shows us that a lot of our ancient history is undiscovered and if found in the future it may challenge our current believes. Very interesting!

              So long...
              Excellence can be attained if you Care more than other think is wise, Risk more than others think is safe, Dream more than others think is practical and Expect more than others think is possible.
              Ask a Question and you're a fool for 3 minutes; don't ask a question and you're a fool for the rest of your life! Chinese Proverb
              Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. Warren Buffet

              Comment


              • #8
                Ethelred : how precise is the age of Jericho. From what I remember the earliest cities were in Mesopotamia and dated to about 5-7000 BC. Also then there is the question of when did the settlement become a city etc. Either way let us see how old this one turns out to be. Also thanks for reposting the link - I went back and fixed it too.
                Pioneer : Yes isint history fascinating - and it is so pitiful that one of the most ancient of places (Palestine) can not be visited 'cause of historical strife . Ironical.
                "Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, even older than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together" - Mark Twain
                Your face, your ass; whats the difference - Da'Duke

                Comment


                • #9
                  New Civ Timeline: 9500BC!

                  Well,
                  Based on this find, we need a patch already for PTW!

                  Civ3 gamers will now need to start at 9500BC!

                  Hey, wouldn't it be cool if during the first 5000 years (9500BC - 4500BC) your fledgling civilizations had to contend with being wiped out by totally natural causes (Floods, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Meteor strikes, etc.)?

                  Turn lengths could be as much as 100 years or so....

                  Just a thought.
                  My Reach always exceeds my Grasp...

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Ethelred : how precise is the age of Jericho.
                    From C14 with the added advantage of not being in water. Then again as you can see further on in my post my memory on this may be faulty.

                    From what I remember the earliest cities were in Mesopotamia and dated to about 5-7000 BC.
                    Jericho goes back to 8000 BC. Its frequently referred to as the oldest known walled city. Its not as large as the one you linked to but then its not in as a fertile a region nor was it coastal which should increase the available food supply.

                    Damascus is the oldest inhabited city known. It goes back to at least 6000 BC.

                    Here is a link for Jericho:


                    Hard part is finding something about Jericho that is about the archeology and not the Bible. For instance that site above has dating from Kenyon who claimed the cyclopean walls were from the time of Joshua something that does not jibe with other people dates for both Joshua and the wall.

                    However I personally suspect the standard biblical timeline is off by as much as three hundred years since its based on the Egyptian timeline which,at that point, is based on a series of sacered bulls at time when Egypt had a overlapping Pharoahs and possibly an overlapping set of sacred bulls. If this is true than the cyclopean walls may fit Joshua a bit better. With the standard timeline Jericho was uninhabited at that time which to me makes the timeline at least as suspect as the details of the Joshua story.

                    Looking for something that matches my memory of C14 testing from the lower levels of Jericho. So far I can't find what I am looking for. All the mentions of C14 dating involve Joshua not the lowest levels of Jericho. Crank sites galore, even Stormfront, a Neo-Nazi site, is in the search results.

                    Closest found so far



                    Radiocarbon methods can date sites that are up to 40,000 or 50,000 years old. These methods have revolutionized archaeology over the past half-century. For instance, radiocarbon testing of materials from early farming settlements at Jericho, in what is now Jordan, dated these settlements to as early as 7800 BC, indicating that they are more than 3500 years older than was once thought.


                    But that reffers to the agricultural settlements not the city itself.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      nice links
                      its a pitty that we know so little about this ancient times.
                      Imagine how different life was 10000 (!!!) years ago.....

                      greetings................gwylim

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I have a phd in ancient history. Trust me, C14 testing is very inaccurate. If you test it on certain compounds that you know exactly how old they are, it can give you large ranges of dates. You can carbon test living animals and it'll tell you that they've been dead for thousands of years.

                        If I've learned one thing, its this. Don't ever use the word "oldest", because that changes rapidly. Especially within cultural borders ... people in Israel will tell you one thing and people from the lands around ancient mesopotamia will tell you another. Carbon testing is only what people want it to be... it gives massive ranges of dates and people tend to make an average of what they think. Sadly, what often happens is "oh they say that city X dates from 6000BC, well our city dates from 6500BC! HAHA!" weither it be for political, ethnic bias, or personal gain. I wrote many a paper onthis topic that it really starts to make me SICK how many scientists are out there to warp facts, not present them. And more importantly, how many just cannot say "I don't know".

                        *Sigh* okay now i'm on a rant ...

                        What I'll add lastly is something you might want to think about. A city isn't always stones put atop one another. There are cities far older than Jericho or the one in the article by thousands of years (apparently) but they can only be seen in areas of ground hundreds of feet down that's been burnt with fire from campfires, small stone arrangements and now near-petrified or rotten wood ... and those cities have been found thousands of miles away from the "cradle of civilization" and i've been to a few of them.

                        SO if you want to talk oldest walled city then thats different, but lets stop arguing what city is the oldest in the world because its no city that has a name, and its none that have been mentioned here.

                        Cheers
                        ~Thadalex
                        "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion"
                        -Democritus of Abdera

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          edited to remove faulty math
                          Alexander : Hey Doctor cool down . I guess one important thing about this newly discovered city is that if its date is approximately true then it predates Indus Valley civilization by at least a couple of thousand of years.

                          Ethelred : at the site mentioned below it says that Damascus was founded in 3mil BC and not 6000 yrs ago. or are the Syrians understating their heritage .

                          Founded in the 3rd millennium B.C., Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the Middle East. In the Middle Ages, it was the centre of a flourishing craft industry, specializing in swords and lace. The city has some ...


                          This leads to the question as to which is the oldest living city in the world i.e one where people still live i.e a still which still functions ?

                          My vote is for Benares (or Varanasi or Kashi) ~(atleast) 6mil BC


                          I found a cool Mark Twain quote about Benares too :
                          "Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, even older than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together"

                          what are the other candidates ...

                          Hmm.. maybe their should be an oldest city wonder in Civ3 which all civ want to capture. I mean the wonder is present in the world and you have to capture it ...

                          Skeeve : Civ III would be immensely more entertaining if we had to combat mother nature who was devastating in 9500 BC and who, from recent reports on hurricanes, can still pack a terrific punch.
                          Last edited by Samudragupt; October 12, 2002, 20:05.
                          "Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, even older than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together" - Mark Twain
                          Your face, your ass; whats the difference - Da'Duke

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            As these discoveries show, some of the oldest cities in the world may lie underwater submerged by any of the three main pulses of water released by the end of the last ice age - approx. 5000, 9000 and (11000/)14000 years ago [ i forget the exact numbers for the first one ].

                            IIRC about 100 million square kilometres of land has been lost to the sea since the end of the last ice age ( I've probably erred low as I again forget the exact numbers - been a while ). Landbridges between the UK and europe, malta&sicily to italy and huge areas of the east indies are all now submerged.

                            Stuff like Atlantis, as reported by Plato is supposed to have disappeared 9,000 years ago at the time of one of the water pulses, is now thought to have a grain of truth in it.

                            Even if only a fraction of what could be, actually is, then it certainly makes you think. I wonder just how much early civilisation has been lost underwater.

                            To put this in context with Civ3, you'd have to implement a similiar system to the one that existed in SMAC and have oceans whose level raised over time, swallowing land. If you built your city too low, it'd get submerged and inland cities might suddenly have an ocean view.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by ThaddeusAlexander
                              I have a phd in ancient history. Trust me, C14 testing is very inaccurate. If you test it on certain compounds that you know exactly how old they are, it can give you large ranges of dates. You can carbon test living animals and it'll tell you that they've been dead for thousands of years.
                              It sure is refreshing to here someone in the field admit that Carbon14 dating is not the end-all and be-all of ancient history.
                              I just can't figure out how some highly educated people put such blind faith in a test that is riddled with assumptions and inaccuracies.

                              Oops, I guess I'm ranting now.
                              My Reach always exceeds my Grasp...

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