What is the world's oldest city? Damascus or Jericho?

Answer 1

Its funny, really. It is very hard to discover which ancient city is the oldest and one of the main reasons for this is that so many countries and areas want to claim this fact without regard to scientific findings. There are many ancient cities still occupied today in many lands, especially in the middle east and all seem to claim their city as the oldest. Syria alone has several. Another problem is that is very hard to find records that date back to ancient times or none exist at all. If you find the ruins of an ancient city and they are claimed to be from 6,000 B.C. how do you substantiate this? That is the problem facing archaeologists studying this problem.

Sign-posted as "the oldest city in the world," Jericho is located in the center of the sun-baked Judean desert, with a history going back over 11,000 years.

The earliest description of a city is that of Sodom (19:1-22). Damascus is said to be the oldest existing city in the world.

Damascus seems to win out however :)

Answer 2

female, from one female to a different, there is not any Palestine yet, so there at the instant are not any Palestinian citys, there's a Jerico, and that's between the oldest. some say Damascus is the international's oldest constantly inhabited city with comments going returned a minimum of three,500 years. it is the capital of Syria and has a million.4 million inhabitants. Damascus is found on a plateau 680 metres above sea point. at the same time as modern Damascus is a customary middle eastern city, it is been popular for hundreds of years and oftentimes spoke of because of the fact the 'Pearl of the East'. .

Answer 3

True, neither. But of the two, Jericho has existed for longer, but not always as a city.

It's hard to measure, but Catal Hoyuk is only a 'village' - the oldest we've found so far. The oldest cities to have first existed were in Mesopotamia - Uruk is probably the oldest. It's mentioned in the Epic Of Gilgamesh and is prpbably Erech in the Bible.

Answer 4

Catal Hayuk in what is now Turkey circa around 8000BCE.
Babylon(Bab ilim, meaning gate of the gods) only goes back to 2000BCE. Ur, a Sumerian city, and Ashur the old Assyrian capitol were large cities, dating to around 3000BCE, both older than Damascus. Jericho or Arbil (Arba-Ilu) an Assyrian/Akkadian city in Iraq are probably the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world.

Answer 5

The oldest city in the world is Damascus. t has been a city for 4,000 years

Answer 6

Its neither of these two but i cant be bothered to copy and past half a book on here about it like a few others just to get some points.... but neither is with out doubt the correct answer.

Answer 7

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1808

Evidence of an ancient "lost river civilisation" has been uncovered off the west coast of India, the country's minister for science and technology has announced. Local archaeologists claim the find could push back currently accepted dates of the emergence of the world's first cities.

Underwater archaeologists at the National Institute of Ocean Technology first detected signs of an ancient submerged settlement in the Gulf of Cambay, off Gujarat, in May 2001. They have now conducted further acoustic imaging surveys and have carbon dated one of the finds.

The acoustic imaging has identified a nine-kilometre-long stretch of what was once a river but is now 40 metres beneath the sea. The site is surrounded by evidence of extensive human settlement. Carved wood, pottery, beads, broken pieces of sculpture and human teeth have been retrieved from along the river banks, according to a report in the Indian Express newspaper. Carbon dating of one of the wooden samples has dated the site to around 7500 BC.

"The carbon dating of 7500 BC obtained for the wooden piece recovered from the site changes the earlier held view that the first cities appeared in the Sumer Valley [in Mesopotamia] around 3000 BC," said B Sasisekaran of India's National Science Academy.

Tom Higham of Oxford University's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit says submerged wood is often well-preserved and should be relatively straightforward to carbon date. "I don't see how you could get it grossly wrong," he says. "In the past, it has been said that you shouldn't pin all your interpretations on a date from one sample. But that's not so true these days. And dating a sample that's between 5000 and 10,000 years old is pretty easy."

Critical examination
If confirmed, the find would also push back the date of India's earliest known civilisation by 5000 years. The Harappan civilisation has been dated to about 2500 BC. The newly identified site "looks like a Harappan-type civilisation but dating way back to 7500 BC," said minister Murli Manohar Joshi.

However, he cautioned that a "more critical examination" of the finds must now be carried out.

Sharad Rajaguru, a former head of archaeology at the Deccan College in Pune, said: "These collections represent an exciting breakthrough in offshore archaeology. Further investigation of the area is important as this might throw light on the development of human civilisation, besides having a bearing on Indian history."

Joshi said the government is now forming a group of archaeological experts from institutes around the country to investigate further.

i found this short piece somewhere, hope it helps.

Answer 8

Hard to guess.
History has been lost during all those empires' succession.
Pehaps we will never know.... even if my personal guess goes to Damascus.

Answer 9

Jericho!

Answer 10

There are plenty of older cities in China, South America, even Europe.

Sorry but I cannot give you a definite answer or even say where you would start to look on the web.