What are the oldest ethnic groups that still exist?

[Barnabas]

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

Armenians 2 milleniums and a half

Can you think of others?

[Wycoff]

How specific do you want to get?

Greeks have been around for at least 3000 years, but its unclear how similar genetically modern Greeks are to ancient Greeks.

Germans and Celts have been documented as existing for over 2000 years. If Italians count as the modern-day Latins, then the Latins have been around for 2500+ years.

[Dr Strangelove]

What about Egyptians?

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove What about Egyptians?

I don't think that they count. AFAIK, Modern Egyptians are Arabs, while Ancient Egyptians were a completely different ethnicity. There's very little Ancient Egyptian left, if any is in fact left at all. I'm far from an expert on this topic, though. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Barnabas]

Egyptians have been arabiazed, only speak arab and are muslims, even a few decades ago they attempted to create a big arab state with syria and libya.

Altough maybe the few million native egyptian christians can be considered to be real "egyptians", since a few centuries ago they still spoke copt (the native langauge of egypt), and still use it as a liturgic langauge, pretty much like catholics before the 60´s or jews before they resurrected hebrew as an every day langauge.

Coptic is the most recent phase of ancient Egyptian. It is the direct descendant of the ancient language written in Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts. The Coptic alphabet is a slightly modified form of the Greek alphabet, with some letters (which vary from dialect to dialect) deriving from demotic. As a living language of daily conversation, Coptic flourished from ca. 200 to 1100. The last record of its being spoken was during the 17th century. Coptic survives today as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Egyptian Arabic is the spoken and national language of Egypt today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_language

[GePap]

The Aborigene in Australia. They have no history per say, but they have been a distinct cultural and racial group for probably 10,000 years or more.

[LordShiva]

Dravidian Indians (like half of my family tree )

[Barnabas]

If australian natives count, then I guess basques too

[TheStinger]

Humans

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by GePap
The Aborigene in Australia. They have no history per say, but they have been a distinct cultural and racial group for probably 10,000 years or more.

Pardon???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australian

The exact timing of the arrival of the ancestors of the Indigenous Australians has been a matter of dispute among archaeologists. The most generally accepted date for first arrival is between 40,000 - 50,000 years BP. A 48,000 BC date is based on a few sites in northern Australia dated using thermoluminescence. A large number of sites have been radiocarbon dated to around 38,000 BC, leading some researchers to doubt the accuracy of the thermoluminescence technique. Some estimates have been given as widely as from 30,000 to 68,000 BC.

Humans reached Tasmania approximately 40,000 years ago by migrating across a land bridge from the mainland that existed during the last ice age.

Stone tools also found at Lake Mungo have been estimated, based on stratigraphic association to be about 50,000 years old. Since Lake Mungo is in south-eastern Australia, many archaeologists have concluded that humans must have arrived in north-west Australia at least several thousand years earlier.

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

[General Ludd]

He did say "or more"

[fed1943]

If the question is about culture,then the Chinese (about 7000 years).

If about genes then all are equally old (unless some are not humans).

Best regards,

[Heresson]

Chineese, Greeks, Copts (but their language got extinct), Assyrians, Armenians, Jews, Persians
Arabs are a more complicated matter

[Buck Birdseed]

The San (Bushmen) of southern Africa live essentially according to the same cultural pattern that they did when they first moved there, and there's good reason to believe they did right around the birth of modern humanity (archaeological evidence, not least). Genetically, they and the Khoi ("Hottentots") were separated from the rest of humanity about 100 000 years ago. Thoughout most of Africa Khoisan ethnic groups have been replaced at a much later date by younger Bantu groups, or have changed their cultural patterns significantly, so I'd say the San are the winners here.

[aneeshm]

Indians (I do not subscribe to the AIT, and I consider all Indians to be of one race. IIRC, genetic testing showed no racial difference between the so-called Aryans and Dravidians).