Oldest civilization in the world?

Yes I remember reading about Catalhoyuk I heard that it was supposed to be around 10,000 years old, I beleive it lies in the Tarsus region and I think it was famous for its obsidian.

Originally posted by pinguin Well, I am not quite sure if Norte Chico is a civilization as we conceive it today. Yes, it is a very old culture, dating from 5,000 years ago, and quite interesting, indeed. Perhaps the oldest in the Americas. However, in the Old World there are cultures of equivalent level of development since 10.000 years ago, as is the case of Jerico.

Jericho in 8000 BC was not the equivalent of Caral in 3000 BC ... it was just inhabited (not a city). Alot of sites making the claim for "oldest city in the world" make their claim on the basis of being continuously inhabited (not necessarily a city) for that whole period - Jericho is one of them. 

Caral appears to have been roughly equivalent to the earliest Mesopotamian cities - trade, monumental architecture etc. Sumeria didn't just pop out of the ground fully formed! It, too, had a long period of really primitive urban centres.

Edited by edgewaters - 23-Nov-2008 at 08:29

Well, I am not quite sure if Norte Chico is a civilization as we conceive it today. Yes, it is a very old culture, dating from 5,000 years ago, and quite interesting, indeed. Perhaps the oldest in the Americas. However, in the Old World there are cultures of equivalent level of development since 10.000 years ago, as is the case of Jerico.

Originally posted by Vamun Tianshu How can we really know the oldest civilization,if all they mention is Asia and Eastern Europe?We canot really know for sure,becuase there were people living in America and Australia,and some experts speculate that life began in Africa.If it goes one-sided,we can never know for sure.

Edited by pinguin - 22-Nov-2008 at 23:28

Originally posted by catch22 Jerico, estimated 10.000 b.c.

Here's the problem.  Since the occupation (or reoccupation) of southern Mesopotamia, c. 5300 BC (until that time much of s. Mesopotamia was underwater), the culture of the region can be shown to not have outside influences, and was such, into the Early Dynastic Period, of Sumerian history.  Linguistically, Sumerian shows no relationship with the surrounding languages, hence it was an isolate.  Most of the names of the cities can now be shown to have Sumerian roots.  It then becomes difficult to try to detect outside migrations.  There probably was, but they got assimilated.  The Akkadians were amongst these.  They inhabited the region north of Nippur, and Semitic presence can only be glossed from the Sumerian Kinglist, where names of Semitic origin can be discerned from the later group of names of rulers of the First Dynasty of Kish.  Studies of Sumerian show only a brief borrowing from Akkadian, but Akkadian show much more borrowing from Sumerian.

I have that book.  The term he uses is "proto-Euphrateans", a term which was coined by Benno Landsberger in 1944.  However, since 1963, when the book had been published, Sumerologists, having a better understanding of the Sumerian language have demonstrated that virtually all of those Sumerian terms, said to have been of non-Sumerian origin did have Sumerian roots.  Of the 16 Sumerian words Kramer said were not of Sumerian origin, I was able to find Sumerian roots for 9 of these from a page on this site:

I had to look it up.  You're right, Italy was unified under Sardinia/Piedmont.

I supposed based on the turbulence that it has suffered over history- Germanic tribes invading, the Greeks occupying it for a lengthy period of time and after that- Small city states being fought over by Hapsburger Austria and Borbon France for the seemingly never ending power struggle in Europe- it's hardly suprising that the language has got somewhat mixed up! Allow me to Apologize- i thought that you were speaking about modern Italian!