What is the longest living civilization?

I've heard some Jews claim its Judism.
And on it goes.
Everyone wants their's to be the longest living, continiously existing, oldest, whatever, and they all have a carefully designed set of rules to swing it their way. Very predictable and lame.

Civilisation is essentialy a pattern of settlment, i can't think of many that have remianed totaly andf completly unchanged over the millennia. In fact, i can't think of any, peroid.

If your going to play it that way, they i'd nominate the San of South Africa. Archeological records point to a fairly consistant existance going back 20,000+ years. But even there, we see a few changes as they adopt new technology and techniques.

Of course, they were semi-nomadic. No civis, no civilisation. Don't you just love the Roman world view?

Thats when they are supposed to have arrived there,, but they are not a consistant civilisation in the simplified sense, their lifestyles varied considerable depending on where in Oz they lived (climate and enviroment), not to mention changes, otherwise, yes, they are pretty damn old too, but African hunting societies are older still.

The question is, do we go with the Romano-Urban centric notion of Civilisation and exclude them, or do we try to take a more ethnicity/lifestyle group approach, in which case the Greek/Chinese/etc. come accross as relative babies compared to the likes of the San, and other African and Australian groups.
Generaly speaking, people put the Civis in Civilisation and exclude nomadic hunter types as 'tribal', and thus their often greater and easily traced continuity is ignored.

I doubt that Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world, i'd reckon there are animist religions in Africa that are older.

Every religion has some type of organisation. What you mean by organised?

Temples, case of priests(shamans), prays and artifacts i think are part of all religions from animism to christianity. If you talking books probably the oldest then would be Zoroastrianism which was founded around 1200BC based on revealed scripture.

I personally believe that the longest living civilization is yet to be percieved. My bets go on to the USA as being the longest living civilization....EVER!

It depends on what what concept of civilization you are using. For example, one can conider China as one continuous cvilization but can also think of China as 3 successive civilizations (Arnold Toynbee divides up Chinese history into the Hsia-Shang, Classical Sinic, and Buddho-Sinic civilizations). I happen to follow Toynbee's conception of a civilization, and So I consider the longest-lasting civilization ever to be Ancient Egypt (Around 3,500BC to around 500AD).

Originally posted by Ponce de Leon I personally believe that the longest living civilization is yet to be percieved. My bets go on to the USA as being the longest living civilization....EVER!

"The oldest civilization has to be the Middle East"