Talk:List of oldest continuously inhabited cities/Archive 5

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Matera and the definition of a "city"

Wikipedia and Wiktionary define a city as a "large human settlement" Since Matera has always had a sizeable human population since ~7,000 BC, is it not a continuously inhabited city since the 7th millennium BC? The town of Matheola was established in 251 BC by Lucius Caecilius Metellus, but I think it would be rather misleading to state that it has only been continuously inhabited since 251 BC, as it would be ignoring most of its history as a continuously inhabited settlement.

I would also like to point out that this article is a bit flawed in a way, as the definition of a "city" can become very blurry, and even the lead of the article admits "The age claims listed are generally disputed. Differences in opinion can result from different definitions of "city" as well as "continuous habitation" and historical evidence is often disputed." If an article starts by admitting that its contents are generally disputed, then perhaps the article needs a do-over.

Perhaps it would be best to create a new article titled "List of oldest continuously inhabited settlements", or to just rename this article to that, as I'm looking through many of these listings, and many simply point to the earliest inhabitation, which I think is fair enough. Limonizia (talk) 20:19, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

@Limonizia Neither Wikipedia nor wikitionary are reliable sources. And as you say, Matera wasn't a city before at least 215. Even then you are calling it a town. You might also like to look at Proto-city which describes places that aren't yet cities but have a decent population. We need a more rigorous definition. And I still don't see sufficient evidence to say Matera has been continuously inhabited that long. Doug Weller talk 07:41, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Ankara should be added

Ankara should be added as it is one of the world's oldest capital cities - although not as capital. Kindly research it and add it so as to reflect the reality. 178.244.117.41 (talk) 19:02, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Tunis and Carthage

Per https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Tunis and https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Ancient_Carthage, Tunis had been in existence since 4th century BC while Carthage (10 miles from Tunis) was founded in the 9th century BC. 47.156.150.127 (talk) 02:41, 17 November 2022 (UTC) Henry

Edmonton, Canada

Founded in 1795. Earlier than Victoria which is listed. 103.249.33.10 (talk) 03:06, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to clean up the article

From what I can tell, most of the entries do not satisfy WP:VERIFY (eg. those that are based on archaeological finds don't prove anything other than there was a settlement there at some point in history). I, therefore, suggest to restrict the entries to only those that have a source that says something along the lines of "city X has been continuously inhabited since Y". The exact dates are also ridiculous (for the old cities, we should be using approximate centuries rather than years, unless the exact foundation of the city is known). M.Bitton (talk) 00:58, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Per my above proposal (that you countered with this fake one after faking being a legit editor): references on continuity are impossible to find since no one can know if a place had been occupied or vacated all days of every year of every decade of every century of every millennium, and WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue. Now that science says Bosnia has the oldest settlements in Europe, you propose we either stop caring about dates (science!) or delete the whole article. The truth hurts that bad, huh? Ouch! lol AuoueioA (talk) 21:28, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I will ignore your aspersions (as anyone checking the article's history will see that I started cleaning it up before your turned up). Some of the entries are already properly sourced, so it's not an impossible task. It's true that one doesn't need to cite that the sky is blue, but when someone claims that it's purple, then we have every right to ask for a citation (per WP:VERIFY, which is a non-negotiable policy). I suggest you read my proposal again and think about it carefully before replying. M.Bitton (talk) 23:12, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

No one has any right to dictate what the article may or may not say. Get off your high horse. AuoueioA (talk) 23:40, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually, our policies dictate what the article should and shouldn't say. M.Bitton (talk) 23:47, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

The policies also say that radical changes to an article must be discussed first, yet I don't see that you had discussed any of the many changes you've made to the article (before "I turned up" as you say) that you now even brag about making singlehandedly. AuoueioA (talk) 00:26, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

MBitton's proposal is absolutely the correct plan; this page is full of cruft. Cities should not appear in this list unless we have WP:RS that they were "continuously occupied" - it's in the name of the article after all. Contrary to what has been suggested above, it is extremely common for urban sites to be abandoned and then resettled. London was abandoned in the 400s AD and then resettled in the 500s, for example, and we know that from archaeological research. Furius (talk) 23:30, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

London is an exemption which confirms the rule. In reality: radiocarbon dating remains the objective criterion to determine the age of a settlement, while it is difficult to tell when a settlement turned into a city and if the place was populated continuously or not. AuoueioA (talk) 23:40, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Radiocarbon dating doesn't prove that a city has been continuously inhabited. M.Bitton (talk) 23:45, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

If you can read, the above links explain how nothing can prove that. So if a place is now inhabitted and scientists established using carbon dating that it has been inhabitted in the past, and WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue, then the burden of proof is with those who want to prove that such a place was not ihabitted continuosly (your London is one good such example), not with those who take it obvious that it has been. Thus the article existed just fine for years before you and the radical M.Bitton appeared. AuoueioA (talk) 00:26, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

M.Bitton, i also agree with your policy-based proposal. I would have commented sooner, but i just noticed the discussion, which was initiated about an hour prior of the first edit i made to the page on 17 August (diff); i was not monitoring the article before then. AuoueioA, i believe you are commenting in good faith, but what you are proposing as an alternative, would be improper editorial synthesis and a violation of WP:SYNTHESIS. Furthermore, per WP:LISTCRITERIA, selection criteria should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources; original or arbitrary criteria that would synthesize a list that is not plainly verifiable in reliable sources should be avoided. If there is no reliable source that says something along the lines of "city X has been continuously inhabited since Y", then it simply doesn't belong here. There are more suitable list articles for presenting the numerous mesolithic and neolithic settlements that have been found and studied; the scope of this list article is very specific. Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:54, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, but that neolithic settlements list you moved to a separate article (without discussing it first?) lists not only currently uninhabited sites but also current settlements like Jericho (which also was carbon dated, btw). So you make no sense. In a lack of valid counterargument(s), I'll just stick to my understanding that the burden of proof is with those who claim that a current habitat was not inhabitted continuously back to the carbon-dated era in which humans lived there. For years, the article was based on a general understanding (meaning: shared generally -- see the links I posted above) that if a place is inhabitted now, and was inhabitted in the past, it's been inhabitted continuously in the lack of evidence to the contrary. Simply, WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue. AuoueioA (talk) 23:56, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

The onus for inclusion in this article (which explicitly requires a place to be continuously inhabited) obviously lies with the one who makes the claim; reversing the burden of proof here is simply absurd. It even more absurd to consider this a BLUESKY situation.

Archeological findings of ancient settlement in a presently inhabited area only prove the place was inhabited in the past too. Simple as that. Unless WP:reliable sources tell us that the temporal gap between past and present was bridged by continuous inhabitation, it is WP:original research to claim continuous inhabitation (if we really want to attacht the label "research" to such fluff).

@M.Bitton and Demetrios1993: I fully support your proposal. It is a corollary of WP fundamentals, especially WP:V. –Austronesier (talk) 19:09, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:You do need to cite that the sky is blue Furius (talk) 23:48, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Only when it is easy to find refs. AuoueioA (talk) 03:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

• I support M.Bitton's proposal. We need to be parsimonious in inclusion and careful in including reliable sources that attest to continued settlement. The presence of neolithic artifacts, for example, says absolutely nothing about both the nature of the "settlement" (note the quotes) or continued occupation of the site. (Neither does the mention of a name in a mythological text be it the Mahabharata or the Puranas.)RegentsPark (comment) 00:13, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

It is impossible to produce any (let alone reliable) refs for 99% of this article's entries that would say a place has been inhabitted continously since some deep past say 8000 years ago. So here the rules including that on reliable refs can be ignored since preventing us from improving or maintaining Wikipedia. AuoueioA (talk) 03:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

This is nonsense. Everybody has told you it is nonsense. The consensus in this discussion is clearly in favour of M. Bitton's proposal. There has been no support for your position in this discussion. You yourself admit that many sites like London may not have been continuously inhabited, so this sky is not blue. It might be red or green. In the absence of reliable sources we don't know and therefore can't include such material on WP as facts. Fortunately, it is extremely easy to find reliable sources for a place having been continuously occupied: here are several thousand [1] (admittedly this list includes some sources that are not reliable. You can review what counts as a reliable source here; your article on "howstuffworks.com" isn't one).

And even if it were impossible to find such sources, that would be no justification for filling a WP page with material that was not supported by reliable sources. That would not be improving Wikipedia, it would just be propagating misinformation. Furius (talk) 17:38, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

@Khirurg: I noticed that you are restoring some cities and just wanted to make sure you are aware of this discussion and what was agreed. M.Bitton (talk) 00:12, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi there, yes I did restore a few cities, for which I found references. For one of them (Argos), the source explicitly states it has been continuously inhabited. For the others, there is no record of total depopulation since the founding date, and no break in continuity. I do agree with your proposal and edits, the situation had gotten out of hand with unsourced additions. Only cities with strong sourcing should be added. Khirurg (talk) 01:34, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree. For Argos, since the source explicitly states that it has been continuously inhabited since X, then it obviously makes sense to add it, but the others have to go (until a source that meets the inclusion criteria is found). there is no record of total depopulation since the founding date is the kind of WP:OR that we're trying to avoid here. M.Bitton (talk) 11:40, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Furius: with regard to this edit: do you think that "Encore Provence" by the businessman "Peter Mayle" is a reliable source for such a claim? M.Bitton (talk) 11:52, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Penguin is a reputable publisher. There is also a source cited for this point in the lead of Marseille: Duchêne, Roger; Contrucci, Jean (1998). Marseille, 2600 ans d'histoire [Marseille, 2600 Years of History] (in French). Paris: Editions Fayard. ISBN 2-213-60197-6. (but the ref unfortunately lacks page numbers). Furius (talk) 12:25, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Penguin publishes fiction and non-fiction to the mass market, but regardless, Peter Mayle is a businessman and as such, any claims he makes about a scholarly subject such as history are unreliable. M.Bitton (talk) 12:32, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

For Marseille, would this [2] do as a source for supporting continuity? Khirurg (talk) 13:09, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

For Thessaloniki, I found this [3], which should do the job. Khirurg (talk) 13:10, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I can't verify whether the sources support the "continuously inhabited" claim as they are not accessible. All I can tell is that the "Marseille Mix" is written by an architect (neither a historian nor an archaeologist), while "Conflict at Thessalonica" is written by a professor of Christian Scriptures (again, not a specialist). M.Bitton (talk) 13:19, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

(1) It's not necessary that you personally be able to access a source for it to be a reliable source. (2) I think you are making extraordinarily high claims of what counts as a reliable source for a basic fact. See WP:SOURCE; there is a preference for "academic and peer-reviewed publications" but "Editors may also use material from reliable non-academic sources, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. Other reliable sources include: University-level textbooks; Books published by respected publishing houses; Mainstream (non-fringe) magazines, including specialty ones; Reputable newspapers." Furius (talk) 20:22, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

The dismissal of the source on Thessalonica, which is clearly peer reviewed and includes a quarter-page footnote on the archaeological history of Thessalonica citing nine other academic sources is absurd. Furius (talk) 20:25, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Both sources amply meet the WP:RS requirement and can be used. The Marseille source is published by MIT Press and explicitly refers to Marseille as being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in western Europe on page 43, while the Thessalonica source is an academic publication that explicitly states that Thessalonica has been continuously inhabited since 316 BC on page 63 and backs the claim with a nearly page long footnote citing another nine academic sources, as Furius points out. Khirurg (talk) 20:37, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

1) when did I say that a source needs to be accessible for it to be reliable? 2) What's beyond absurd is paying attention to what a businessman has to say about history. See WP:RS and especially WP:RSCONTEXT for what counts as a reliable source. 3) I personally see no point in raising the bar for inclusion, only to drop it to the floor when it comes to the reliability of the sources. M.Bitton (talk) 20:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

The Thessalonica source is about Church history, and the "nearly page long footnote citing another nine academic sources" does not explicitly come in support of the statement that Thessalonica has been continuously inhabited since 316 BC, it rather says: "For an introduction to the archaeological record, see...", "For a discussion of the archaeological material of Jewish origin in and near Thessalonica dating from around the third century BC onward, see...". The author's point is that absence of evidence for a Jewish presence in Luke's times is not necessarily evidence of absence, and he needs continuous inhabitation (NB only from 316 BC to 50 CE) as an argument to support this point. Context matters indeed. –Austronesier (talk) 08:57, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Personally, i don't find unreasonable the suggestion of M.Bitton, to try and rely on sources that are written by archaeologists or historians. Having said that, scholarly sources from different academic disciplines, could also be acceptable if they include references to studies by archaeologists or historians. Furthermore, if there is disagreement about the reliability of a particular source, we do not necessarily have to remove it immediately; we can always tag the relevant claim with {{better source needed}}. My time is limited, but i tried to find some additional sources to support the items of Thessaloniki and Marseille; in the case of the former, i added one by an archaeologist, and in the case of the latter, i added one by two historians. Demetrios1993 (talk) 04:05, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree that sources written by archaeologists or historians are the ones that we ideally should rely on for this article. But we should also allow for a certain grey area of sources which don't set the trigger of immediate removal, but can be handled with a bcn-tag for lack of an ideal source, as suggested by Demetrios1993. The earlier Thessalonica source could have been such an example (source quality-wise).

When Cádiz was introduced by an IP, the entry was only supported by a source for the purported founding date. So I tried to look for an explicit source as a kind of case study (and also because Cádiz is generally known as probably the "oldest" city in W. Europe), and a lot of news and travel sources popped up. These included an local official site, and respectable news media like BBC and the NYT. While these are reliable (primary/secondary) sources for many types of content, our topic clearly requires scholarly sources, or at least broad-audience sources written/edited by scholars. The best one I could find on a quick search is the Routledge series International Dictionary of Historic Places, which is admittedly not an academic source, but at least went through a wider editorial process than a NYT travel article. –Austronesier (talk) 09:34, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

You summed it up well Austronesier. At least the way i see it, an example of a reference that would fit in a grey area, but could be kept as long as it would be tagged with {{bcn}}, is "Urban change and the persistence of memory in modern Thessaloniki" (2020) by Eleni Bastéa and Vilma Hastaoglou-Martinidis; in Thessaloniki: A City in Transition, 1912–2012, edited by Dimitris Keridis and John Brady Kiesling:

• pp. 260–261: Urban transformation is the rule rather than the exception in the evolution of cities, particularly those like Thessaloniki with a long history. Founded by Cassander, King of Macedonia, around 315 BCE, Thessaloniki was built upon the major crossroads linking Europe with the maritime routes of the eastern Mediterranean. During the 23 centuries of its continuous existence, Thessaloniki passed successively through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods that restructured its space with their specific architectural and urban models.

The above is part of a collective work that was published by Routledge. Generally speaking, the work as a whole and the publisher are reliable; however, the authors of that article are professors of architecture, which is not an ideal academic discipline for such claims. On the other hand, if such a source was accompanied with one by an archaeologist or historian, no tag would be required.

Another example of a reference that would fit in a grey area, but i wouldn't consider keeping even with a {{bcn}} tag, is the article Europe's 16 oldest cities (2018) by The Telegraph:

• These are the continent's 16 oldest continually inhabited [cities]. ... 9. Larnaca, Cyprus: When did the earliest inhabitants settle? 1,300 BC – Modern-day Larnaca sits on the site of ancient Kition/Citium, which was colonised by both the Greek Achaeans and the Phoenicians, who came from what is now Lebanon, and then belonged to the Persian Empire. ...

Newspapers such as The Telegraph are considered reliable; have a look at WP:RSPSOURCES. We could have taken the source at face value, and used it to support the recently added (diff) and removed (diff) item of Larnaca. However, it is not a scholarly source, and we would also have to consider WP:NEWSORG. In this case, we don't even know who the author was, and for all we know, they could be a journalist who took their information from an unreliable tertiary source such as Wikipedia. Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:11, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Rome

Umm ... how is Rome not on this list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1702:3470:2670:187B:25CD:F254:857C (talk) 17:57, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

 Done: Furius took care of it (diff). Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:36, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Recent additions

@Johann S. Weiss: I did go through the cited sources before i removed the items you added. I know your edits were done in good faith; however, just because the sources describe different historical periods, it doesn't necessarily mean that the cities have been continuously inhabited without any interruption. We can cite similar sources for just about any city that exists since antiquity; that doesn't mean they were continuously inhabited. In order for a city to be included in the article, a reliable source should say something along the lines of "city X has been continuously inhabited since Y"; otherwise, it is essentially a violation of WP:SYNTHESIS. There was a recent discussion about this. For example, from the source for Fasa, we read:

• Apart from these myths, archeological as well as historical linguistic evidence indicates that the antiquity of Fasā goes back at least to the Achaemenid period, when Fasā was an important settlement site with fortifications (...) or, in Harold Bailey's interpretation (...), the southern stronghold of Persia in that period. According to George Cameron (...), the origins of Fasā probably antedate the Achaemenid period[.] Moreover, Aurel Stein, during his archeological explorations in Fārs (November 1933 to May 1934), found prehistoric mounds (mostly belonging to the Eneolithic period) at numerous places in the area of Fasā including, for instance, the Tall-e Sīāh (...). The nearby mound of Tall-e Żaḥḥāk (see below) is surrounded by abundant archeological remains and contains archeological strata indicating human settlement in that area in different periods (...).

First of all, the antiquity of Fasa cannot be used to support the claim of continuous habitation since these early periods. Furthermore, you arbitrarily chose the Achaemenid period, which lasted from approximately 550 to 330 BC, and then, again arbitrarily, added c. 500 BC to mark the beginning of the continuous habitation. Besides that, even if we were to follow your rationale, we also have quotes like the following, which bring into question the claim of continuous habitation:

• By the first decade of the 6th/12th century, Ebn al-Balḵī wrote that "although Pasā is as large as Isfahaņ, it is in complete disarray, and the largest part thereof in ruiņ Šabānkāra [tribesmen] had destroyed it; the atābeg Čāvlī had it rebuilt" (...). Probably on account of its gradual decline, Fasā is seldom mentioned in later chronicles.

It is similar with the other three items you reinstated. If the authors don't explicitly describe these towns as continuously inhabited since a certain period, then we are essentially doing improper editorial synthesis. If these cities have been continuously inhabited since the purported periods, which they very well could be, then it shouldn't be hard finding reliable sources supporting the claims in a plain manner. Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:50, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Proposal for Europe's new Top 5

The Europe table is seriously outdated, so I propose the following change in the Top 5 based on the most recent results from carbon dating. This proposal meets the standard used for most (if not all) entries of this article: (1) that a place was a human habitat in the scientifically established past, and (2) that the same place is inhabited by humans today. (Please refrain from demanding to see references on continuous settlements at these places, as that would seek to impose a standard too high/impossible to meet since no one can know for sure if a place had been occupied or vacated during all days of every year of every decade of every century of every millennium, so such demands would not be following the standard used for most entries, and WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue.) Note how vividly the old entries for Pogradec (Albania) and Argos (Greece) depict/expose the article's low standard (so much so that, if the carbon dating were a requirement for inclusion, those two would probably not make it into the list). AuoueioA (talk) 00:41, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

The high standard of continuously inhabited part was imposed by the nature of the list itself, as this is a list of oldest continuously inhabited cities. Also, your list is based on a book about neolithic Bosnia and an article about an albanian location. Much larger databases are needed (eg. 14SEA covers all the southeast Europe). C messier (talk) 21:54, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Also, you made a mistake, Date BP means Before Present, not BC. C messier (talk) 22:02, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Name	Historical region/period	Present location	Continuously inhabited since	Notes
Kakanj	Neolithic Europe, Kakanj culture	Bosnia and Herzegovina	6795 BC	Carbon dating of a human settlement (archeological charcoal fragments) at Obre in Kakanj, within the Bosnian Neolithic Kakanj culture.
Tuzla	Neolithic Europe, Starčevo culture	Bosnia and Herzegovina	6640 BC	Carbon dating of a human settlement (archeological charcoal fragments) at Gornja Tuzla settlement in Tuzla, within the Neolithic Starčevo culture.
Pogradec	Neolithic Europe, Illyria	Albania	6000 BC	"The Lin area has been inhabited since Prehistoric times new Archaeological findings confirm it is the oldest settlement in Europe. Archaeological findings from the hilltop above the present-day village include foundation walls and mosaics of an early Christian Byzantine church, dating from the 6th century.".
Sarajevo	Neolithic Europe, Butmir culture	Bosnia and Herzegovina	5938 BC	Carbon dating of a human settlement (archeological animal bone fragments) at Ilidža settlement in Sarajevo, within the Bosnian Neolithic Butmir culture.
Argos	Neolithic Europe, Mycenaean Greece	Greece	5000 BC, continuous habitation as a city uncertain	The city has been cycling between village and city status for 7,000 years. Recorded history begins in mid 2nd millennium BC.

References