Which is the Oldest City in the World?

Take into account the city you live in. The mess, the houses, the streets and life. These are what one can think, now imagine that someone made the first city. No blueprint, no Google Maps, no reference point. Just people who decided to stay at one place.

This happened thousands of years ago. And the story of  the origin of the first cities in the world. It is one of the most fascinating chapters in human history. 

So, which city has the title? Which of the places on the earth is the oldest? 

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Which is the Oldest City in the World? 

The main answer can be quite debatable. When establishing the oldest city in the world, the list of factors is the continuity of history of the area, archaeological and the degree of the development of the city. It is not a simple task, as the criteria used can make a great impact. 

Do we consider the city that was first settled? Or the one which has always been inhabited without being abandoned? These are very different things and that is why the archaeologists and historians are still arguing on this. However, if we consider age then there is one answer.

Jericho in the Jordan Valley is the occupied West Bank and is the oldest city in the world with an age of about 11,000 years. The city has witnessed 23 layers of ancient sites and civilizations.

It is one more chapter of human life, piled on the top of the other, like the pages of the fattest book of history.

The Natufian culture developed into proto-city formations in the Neolithic period, such as the Tower of Jericho, built in 8,000 BCE, the oldest known stone building discovered. 

Jericho is also the place which is written in the Bible, where the city walls were caving in whenever Joshua began blowing his trumpets.

The UNESCO mentions: “By the 9th to 8th millennium BC, Neolithic Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan was already a sizeable permanent settlement, as expressed by surviving monumental architectural attributes such as a wall with a ditch and a tower. It reflects the developments of the period, which include the shifting of humanity to a sedentary communal lifestyle and the related transition to new subsistence economies, as well as changes in social organisation and the development of religious practices, testified by skulls and statues found.”

Another reason that Jericho has been settled for so long is because the city is enclosed by many natural springs which supply fresh sources of water. 

However, Jericho cannot claim to be the place with the oldest human settlement, but it is the winner in the contest at approximately 11,000 years old. And in the case of the city that has constantly been inhabited and never abandoned at all, the majority of historians would refer to Damascus. Similarly when the civilisation is in question, then it is Eridu.

No matter the criteria, these places all have something in common. They are facts showing that human beings have the necessity to unite, to build, to share, to worship and to belong to something.

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