What are the oldest ethnic groups that still exist?

[VetLegion]

I find it impossible to answer the question from this thread topic

Certainly, it is not asking about the oldest group of people just as people, since all of us who live are of the same "generation", so to speak.

"Ethnic group" usually means people with common genetic ancestry. But that's a pointless thing to look at, as asking "who has the oldest genetic ancestry" is ridiculous. What does that leave us with?

Culture. But if I try to reformulate the question as "which are the oldest cultural groups still existing", it makes only slightly more sense than the original. Cultures change over time as they influence each other and lose some customs and acquire some new ones.

So to identify the same culture now and a thousand years ago, what can we do? Can we look at daily routines? Those have certainly changed a lot. Can we look at something more abstract, like ideas a group has, beliefs? Religion is certainly a pretty persistant feature.

But formulating the question as "which are the oldest religions" doesn't make much sense, since dates of founding of most important religions are at least vaguely known.

Brachy, can you reformulate your question so that it makes sense?

[Lul Thyme]

OP was about ethnic groups, but almost everybody was talking about cultural groups.

It is true that defining "old ethnic groups" properly is hard.
But it is not impossible, Vet Legion.
You could define them as a group such that their number of ancestors at a certain point in time is low, compared to others.
You could count ancestors up to multiplicity, to be more precise.
Basically it would be almost the opposite of genetic diversity.

[VetLegion]

What would that mean, that some isolated mountain valley where eveybody's been intermarrying is "older" than a city like Paris?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Terra Nullius

And I'm just going to leave the "no history" bit where I found it.

I did not know Aborigenes had writen texts. Care to link to them?

[GePap]

Originally posted by VetLegion
What would that mean, that some isolated mountain valley where eveybody's been intermarrying is "older" than a city like Paris?

Hey, then I claim victory for my suggestion, cause the aborigenes were all alone on Australia for quite a while.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by VetLegion
What would that mean, that some isolated mountain valley where eveybody's been intermarrying is "older" than a city like Paris?

I don't understand why you put a smiley, like this was a trick question. To me it's obvious.

As an "ethnic group", which was the question, yes.

How does a city like Paris constitute an ethnic group anyway?

An "ethnic group" is a population of human with a common ancestry.
The isolated mountain valley ppl has been such a group for a long time, while "a city like Paris" has not.


And yes, I agree with GePap that the aboriginals was a good answer. There could be better ones, and looking at isolated islands is a good place to start.

[VetLegion]

I put a smiley because the result of the question as you formulated it is obviousely not what the original poster had intended. Who cares about isolated islands and mountain valleys?

He obviously meant something else. I can kind of sense what, but I can't formulate the question well myself. I'm curious if anyone can.

[VetLegion]

BTW., I only now noticed your location tag is Ljubljana, Slovenia. I'm in Zagreb, Croatia. Razumijemo li se nas dvojica i bez engleskog?

[Blaupanzer]

Amer-Indians (Native Americans) have a history that goes back 13 to 18 thousand years at least. Some reservation situations may have preserved the ethnicity of an individual tribe into the 21st Century. Some isolated native groups in the Amazon or New Guinea may also have clean bloodlines back 20,000 or so years. However, Brachy-Pride's original examples are both cultural groups, with some intermixing with conquered locals to be taken for granted. Is this not so?

[Rebe]

Chinese, 4500 years
Persians (Iranians), 4000 years
Greeks, 3800 years
Jews (Israelites), 3500 years
Hungarians, 3000 years

[My Wife Hates CIV]

I don't think we know yet.

look at the artists view of something we don't know yet = way off.

look at pluto... these photos... if you where a scientied trying to acquire funder and said this is what we expect... you would be laughed at

the thread... so much history... ythere are groups of people and societies not yet known.

we don't know. that's the proper reply to this threafd

[pchang]

The Chinese calendar was introduced in 2637 BCE which makes the current year 4652. So, 4500 years would seem to be an underestimate.

[Lorizael]

Both han chinese and jews have over 3000 years of history I think

Well, over 3009 years now.

[Dinner]

Basque predate the Indo-European expansion.

[Dinner]

The Chinese calendar was introduced in 2637 BCE which makes the current year 4652. So, 4500 years would seem to be an underestimate.

A lot of calendars around the world have fictitious starting dates. Take the Maya calendar as an example. This might not be the case for the Chinese calender, I don't know, but it does show you have to be careful.