Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 700,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 15,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads.
Actually the first settlements beyond the neolithic (late Stone age) to the copper age in which permanent settlements where built, animals domesticated and crops grown was in Jericho and some other places in modern day Turkey-/middle east dating back from 9000BCE and 8100BCE.
Actually the first settlements beyond the neolithic (late Stone age) to the copper age in which permanent settlements where built, animals domesticated and crops grown was in Jericho and some other places in modern day Turkey-/middle east dating back from 9000BCE and 8100BCE.
Does it take more than that for archeologist to consider an area a civilization? Do the people have to have writing and some form of government to be considered a civilization?
Sumer has always been considered the first "proper" civilisation" in the strictest sense of the term, ( large organised settlements with complex urban planning, irrigation, social structures, laws, art, science, a well developed road system and of monetary exchange,well established trading systems as well defined political structure etc...) but recent discoveries in India seem to indicate that India may be one of the oldest known "organised" urban societies or even the oldest.
Mesopotamia ,the fertile crescent, and Iran have all the pre-requisites but this discovery in India is really quite exciting.
Catal Huyuk in Turkey and Jericho are not considered to be full blown civilisations as such by archaeologists though they did play a critical role in transforming human societies in what we now recognise as "urbanised". Neolithic society changed irrevocably because of places like Catal Huyuk and Jericho. The advent of domestication and agriculture brought about the beginning of larger settlements which led to full urbanisation.
If Jiroft proves to be older than Mesopotamia, I would think it would create a sensation in archaeological circles. BTW, I found Jiroft on my atlas and it is in a very remote and arid part of Iran. The following website carried an interesting article about Jiroft:
Apparently, Professor Piotr Steinkeller of Harvard University, who recently presented a paper in Tehran during the International Conference on Jiroft Civilization, believes that Jiroft is the fabled city of Marhashi . I read in another article that the artists and craftmen of Jiroft were exceptionally skilled and were often called 1200 miles away to Mesopotamia to practice their craft.
Jiroft wouldn't be the first civilization thought to be a fictitious people. Until the 1870s, the Hittites, first mentioned in the book of Genesis of the Bible, were considered to be a mythical people. Then, from his private Bible studies, a scholar by the name of Archibald Henry Sayce, discovered something that piqued his interest. He went to Asia Minor to research the subject and came back convinced that the Hittite people had been a large empire. C.W. Ceram's
great book The Secret of the Hittites describes it this way:
"...in 1871 historians knew hardly anything about the Hittites. Today we are aware that in the second millennium B.C. this nation was a Great Power whose sway extended over all of Asia Minor as far a Syria, who conquered Babylon and fought successful wars against Egypt. [Indeed, they fought the great battle of Kadesh against the Egyptians.] From our present vantage point it seems utterly incredible that such a dominant political force, with a culture, a script, and a legal code of its own, should have become an unknown, forgotten people and have escaped the notice of archaeologists and historians down to our twentieth century A.D."
-- From C.W. Ceram's The Secrets of the Hitittes pgs. 4-5
It will be interesting to read more about the Jiroft project as the information develops.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 700,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 15,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads. 
Oldest Civilization?
Linear Mode
