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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by Samudragupt
PS : If I were you I wouldnt work on my Math but certainly on my attitude  . |
Bleep off. Is that enough attitude for you? If not I am sure I can manage more but I could get banned that way.
Benares or Varanasi as far as I can tell is frequently claimed to be the oldest or one of the oldest cities continually inhabited either in the world or in India but I can't find a thing to back the claim. Its mentioned on a bunch of sites that Buddha was there in 500BC but that isn't far enough back to qualify. I haven't found a thing to support a date of 6000BC. Not even 2000 BC for that matter.
Can you supply a link that has some actual dates? Preferably with some evidence unlike all the tourist sites I keep finding that don't even give a general idea of the city's actual age. I don't care what city is the oldest except for I like to know everything I can. Which city it is doesn't matter to me. Everything I can find so far still points to Damascus for Oldest Continually Inhabited city. Lots of cities make the claim but Damascus seems to have evidence to support a claim of at least 5000 years of continual habitation.
There a LOT cities making claims:
Knya, Turkey
http://www.khgm.gov.tr/isd.htm
Konya, one of the Turkey’s oldest (6800 B.C.) continuously inhabited city was known as Iconium in Roman times.
Even Athens is into this hyperbole as if it needed more recognition.
http://www.travelling.gr/helloathens/Capital.html
The oldest inhabited city in the world, the cradle of democracy and Western civiliza-tion as we know it today, was begun as a small fortified village built on top of the Acropolis rock as far back as 3.000 years B.C.
Here is one in Bulgaria making claims of being the oldest. No evidence just claims.
http://www.plovdiv.org/history.html
Kendros, Eumolpia, Philippopolis, Pulpudeva, Thrimonzium, Pulden, Populdin, Ploudin, Filibe -- those were the ancient names of Plovdiv throughout its 6000 to 8000 years of existence. The name Plovdiv first appeared in 15 century documents and has remained till today.
The 6000 year claim seems a tad more likely. That puts it at the start of the Bronze Age in the Balkans and surely bronze wasn't usually being made in villages.
From what I can see just about any city that has no idea of when it was founded is making exagerated claims of age.
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Ethelred
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Forgot about the Game we are supposed to be discussing Thatdeus? The cities in Civ III are founded in 4000 BC.
Unfortunatly there is no silicon equivalent of C14 so I couldn't make a good joke about that to counterpoint his. All the naturally occuring istotopes of silicon are stable and all the radioactive isotopes are fairly to very short lived. Longest is silicon 32 at 160 years. The rest are hours or less.
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Theseus
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The warmonger formerly known as rpodos. Gathering Storm! Apolyton Spirit!!
Apr 2002
time: 00:22
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Thanks, Ethelred.
Although the tennis match has been interesting thus far, I think you guys should relax. As well as I understand dating, quantum brouhaha is going to seriously screw up exactitude in any form of element approach... thus leaving a combo of dating methodologies as good as we can get, and, in the absence of sediment layers, a great deal of uncertainty.
More interesting, I think, and certainly more OT: what defines the beginning of a civilization? In a pretty funny way, you have both referenced the same 'event' as the entree point... the first city (i.e., my Settler built a town!!).
I'm not as into this subject as you guys, but I'm fairly well read... in post-school reading, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" has been my favorite.
4000BC... I'm sticking to it.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by Theseus
As well as I understand dating, quantum brouhaha is going to seriously screw up exactitude in any form of element approach... thus leaving a combo of dating methodologies as good as we can get, and, in the absence of sediment layers, a great deal of uncertainty.
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Its not quantum effects that are the problem with C14. Its the quality of the sample and the lab and the choice of the sample. A bone could be from someone that ate a lot of seafood which often has a lot of old carbon in it or a piece of burnt wood might have come from a tree that died a long time before it was put in the fire pit. The sample can be contaminated with old carbon from ancient sources or from newer carbon as well.
C14 is produced in the upper atmosphere by cosmic ray bombardment and the production of it varies from day to day and more to the point year to year. Tree ring dating has been used to calibrate it but the living trees don't go back as far as the habitations we have been discussing. The oldest tree in the world isn't as old as Damascus may be so the calibration gets a bit hazier back that far although it has been done with long dead trees from the same forest. The catch with the dead trees and even the live ones is they grow very slow so counting the rings is subject to error and cross dating the dead ones with live ones and with each other adds in more room for error.
Nice page on the Bristlecone Pines
http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/home.html
Page specific to dendrochronolgy. He seems more certains about the results than others are.
http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/dendro.html
A nicer site at least it looks better
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/methuselah/
quote:
More interesting, I think, and certainly more OT: what defines the beginning of a civilization? In a pretty funny way, you have both referenced the same 'event' as the entree point... the first city (i.e., my Settler built a town!!). |
Depends on what you are calling civilization. While it literly means citification what a city is is the question. Towns are cities. Just small ones but does a village qualify and what differentiates a large village from a small town. Well at one time a wall certainly would do that but its not the only criterion available.
Personally I don't see a jumble of houses as a city. To me a city has reached the point where the city is more than a collection of families or kin groups where everyone lives pretty much the same except maybe a shaman or three. Specialization by people to have different ways of making a living is a big change from everyone being farmers and hunters even when they are community leaders.
quote:
I'm not as into this subject as you guys, but I'm fairly well read... in post-school reading, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" has been my favorite.
4000BC... I'm sticking to it. |
I need to get around to reading that but I read a lot Jared Diamond's articles in magazines and I had allready seen much of his thinking on this from them.
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Demerzel
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IIRC someone who ate a lot of fish in their life will indeed have a C14 "date" that is older than truly accurate, however they will also have an elevated nitrogen count which can be used to recalibrate the data.
Saw that on a documentary on the Discovery channel, where the lab initally went for it being a 12th century bone from a priest but then revised it to 13th century due to the priest being a bit of a fish fanatic.
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gsmoove23
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Anyone for Catalhoyuk in Turkey? Dated to the 8th millenium BC, no stone wall but lots and lots of houses clumped together. Doesn't seem to get as much press as Jericho for some reason. But neither of these are cities, nor are they on the massive scale of this 'lost' city in India. Catalhoyuk has been described as an overgrown town and the problem with Jericho is its a wall around a mud layer so the actual nature of the settlement is difficult to discern. The wall is impressive and obviously took organization to put together, but organization does not necessarily make a city. Chieftain gathers people from the surrounding countryside and voila.
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gsmoove23
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Anyway, some people also call Catalhoyuk the oldest city, whether it deserves the claim or not.
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Ethelred
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Perhaps if you had posted a link you would have gotten more of a response.
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Ethelred
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No I don't want to look it up. I looked up other cities and the BS index was exceedingly high. Now if you want to support what you said you are very wellcome to do the search (and find out how its spelled on the net) and post a link to something other than a BS tourist site I would like to look at it. Today I don't have the time to hunt through the BS.
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gsmoove23
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Oh for crying out loud, you should know the name if you've ever picked up a history of civilization book written after 1960, but you're right and please forgive me. Here are 3 sites I've found in 2 minutes of looking.
http://www.telesterion.com/catal1.htm
http://www.focusmm.com/civcty/cathyk00.htm
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupc/ca/caa/...adolu/hoyuk.htm
They all seem to differ on the date of establishment but they all claim it to be the oldest city. I didn't bring it up because I wanted to challenge Jericho's claim, Just to show another example of a settlement widely claimed to be the oldest city since the 1950s and 60s with a little evidence to back it up.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by gsmoove23
Oh for crying out loud, you should know the name if you've ever picked up a history of civilization book written after 1960, but you're right and please forgive me. Here are 3 sites I've found in 2 minutes of looking. |
I have done that and I hadn't heard of the city. I admit I don't get every issue of Archeology.
http://www.telesterion.com/catal1.htm
quote:
The oldest layer of Catal Huyuk yet excavated (virgin soil has not been reached) is reliably carbon dated to 6,500 B.C,, and reveals a thriving, completely developed and planned, city. |
Nice but not quite as old as Jericho or that new Indian site. Might be a bit of hyperbole however since the page also says that only one acre has been excavated. Not much excavation for claiming it was planned. It might however be enough to establish that is wasn't just a jumble.
http://www.focusmm.com/civcty/cathyk00.htm
That site is better. I think the distinction between it and Jericho is the walls though this city looks larger. However the claim on the previous that it was a planned city seems a tad exessive based on the images on this page.
http://www.focusmm.com/civcty/cathyk04.htm
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupc/ca/caa/...adolu/hoyuk.htm
Not as usefull as the second link. Don't see anything to comment on there.
quote:
They all seem to differ on the date of establishment but they all claim it to be the oldest city. |
Its a fairly small range in comparison to some of the cities claimed as oldest. 8000 to 9000 years. That puts it in about the same range as Jericho and the underwater Indian site. Give or take a thousand which seems to be range of error. 500 hundred years either way of the middle.
quote:
I didn't bring it up because I wanted to challenge Jericho's claim, Just to show another example of a settlement widely claimed to be the oldest city since the 1950s and 60s with a little evidence to back it up. |
Thank you. Looks like a lot more than village. Too many people to call it just a village. More like a town which is what can be expected for early cities. I can't yet see signs of a merchant class which I consider the most important aspect of a city, the tools could be from specialist or maybe just the best at it amongst farmers. I don't know if Jericho had signs of a merchant class either till the higher levels.
To me the key item of civilization is the emergence of specialized ways of making a living. Merchants, skilled craftsment and the like. A religious class probably arose before even the earliest city maybe even without villages so I don't consider that an attribute only of cities. A rulling class might have arose around the same time as larger villages. Hard to tell since even when cities and trade are firmly established some rulers still apear to have been farming on occasion.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by Demerzel
You might want to calm down Ethelred, you seem to be giving a tad bit stressed over a simple discussion. |
Just argueing. I like to argue.
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Ethelred
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quote:
Originally posted by gsmoove23
On the basis of this discovery, archaeologists have claimed that Jericho is the "oldest city in the world." Clearly such monumental construction reflects social organization and central authority, but there are good reasons to question both its dating to the 8th millennium B.C. and its function as a defensive fortification.
-from http://www.bibleplaces.com/jericho.htm
I haven't been able to find reasons for the questioning of the date but I did find these sites which elaborates on the finds at the site.
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Well the tower is in the second level at Jericho. This earliest wall is older from I have read before. The thing about dating with Jericho is that the Fundamentalists don't want ANYTHING older than they think the Bible allows. Since Jericho is in the Bible its treated from a religious point of view far more often than from a more academic archeologist viewpoint.
http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/07.html
http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/J...ell_Sultan.html
Those sites are both using the same source. Anyway the source is basicly saying the C14 dating has a bigger range of error then he would like. To me the dating seems OK but not perfect, close to being within the range of error. The British Museum and the Philidelphia lab have a fairly small gap between them when you take the error range into account.
That Turkish site didn't give the error range. So we can't judge it accuracy againt the Jericho tests. Especially since the dating may have been done longer ago than the Jericho dating. In other words with older equipment.
quote:
The dating seems to be earlier but its status I think is questionable. There doesn't seem to be much evidence of a large population and the existence of large walls isn't a reason to automatically assume a large population. |
I don't think Jericho had a large population at least early on. The only thing the walls do is show a higher level of orginizational sophistication than many unwalled cities do.
quote:
Catalhoyuk seems to lack much in the way of higher organization unless u consider the organization involved in simply sustaining such a large pop evident by the amount of dwellings found. |
Its likely most of the organization was in the fields. Who worked what land and such. Without signs of irrigation there isn't a lot of high level long term organization needed. Many of the early civilizations were built around irrigation which forced them to develop a beuracracy of some kind.
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13-10-2002 05:03
Again you need to set a firm borden on when it started as a "city" which in itself is a crude term now. Regardless, I'll check back up on that... but there were no credits in the text.
Oh god, not again... 
I checked out yours(if you think I'm being combatative please realize that I also like to argue and you're right, I am combatative:naughty
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