Great video! I was born in aleppo There is a debate in syria about which city is older aleppo or damascus The story people used to say is about how aleppo was founded by profet abraham 12 k years ago where he milked his cows and therefore was called (halab) which means ( the verb milks) Fun story
Hello Patrik, I'm from Syria. Although we have several theories on the name of Damascus, the one I think is the most credible is the theory that says the name comes from the Aramiac phrase "Dar Masqa" which means "the well watered home" because of the river Barada and it's tributaries.
@@marmac83 Roman word endings I'd assume. Besides some languages omit that last part, like French. We just call it Damas. In Arabic, it's just Dimashq, which is even more similar (although Syrian Arabic replaces the q sound with a glottal stop). Tmshq, dmshq.
A well in Hebrew is "be'er" and wells are "be'e'rot" which is similar to Beirut. The name Jerricho is pronounced in Hebrew as "ye'ri'kho". The Arabic name "arikha" is basically the same. It's just a little difference in pronunciation. And the Hebrew word for moon is "ya're'akh" which is similar.
The etymology on this one is pretty clear. In the Galilee there was a tendency for glottal stops to weaken so "be'erо̄t" was likely pronounced as "bērо̄t" by the time the Arabs got there, who, unable to pronounce "e" or "o", changed it to "bairūt" (in English spelled "Beirut")
Varanasi, India has been continually inhabited for the last 4,500 years with the same name (along with Kashi). Kabul, Afghanistan is also one of the most ancient cities on the planet, it was called Kubha during the Vedic age - 5,000 years ago and still carries a derived form of the same name. It is high time Indian history was given equal importance as much as middle eastern and European histories.
I totally agree. I know so many intelligent people who know about ancient life in the Fertile Crescent (Egypt and Mesopotamia), Yellow and Yangtze civilizations, even the comparatively younger Olmecs of early Mesoamerica, but would stare at you blankly if you asked them about the Indus Valley Civilization. This glaring and unforgivable oversight in historical education must be corrected.
In the West, most people know their history very well and are trying to practice ancient Indian stuff like yoga. In India, most people only want to become like the West, while ignoring their rich history.
@@Think_Inc not true, no one In india wants to become western infact quite opposite is true and also what is western and not western needs to be fixed first.... What you see is globalisation effect and western people are equally influenced as they have influenced
@@manj73 Luoyang and Changan of China are also about the same age as Varanasi or Kashi. But Mesopotamian civilization is older. Again none of those existed after 1400 or so. Damascus included. Uruk is the oldest city giving its name to Iraq but that city is nothing more than sand dunes now. Same is the case Ur is the 2nd oldest even that is now a sand dune. 3rd is Babylon which became Baghdad. So here it is
I think Jericho and Ariha maybe the same name. Ariha in Arabic is written with ح wich is usually written as H in Latin letters. The corresponding letters in hebrew is written nowadays as CH in Latin letters. So the old Hebrew name may have been pronounced like Yeriho (j=y in Latin). That is my theory.
Your theory is correct. "Jericho" is the English corruption of ירחו (y'recho, yereho, and plenty of other romanizations but identical to Arabic يرحو). Over the years, the "y" must have weakened (which is common across languages) and with Arabs unable to pronounce "o", you end up with Ariha
thought the same. But without the knowledge base. Just looked at it and thought: this looks like it could be the same name with just adjustments for writing systems / language.
You have lots of variants of names, which are just natural derivations of each other or from a common root. Look at York, whose oldest recorded name is the Roman Eboracum, which is probably derived from Celtic Eborako. When the Romans left Britain, it became the capital of the Kingdom of Ebrauc, and the Welsh still call the town Efrog, while in Gaelic, it's Eabhraig. The Saxons conquered the town, and in their language and pronunciation, it turned into Eoforwic. When the Vikings conquered Northumbria, it became Jorvik. And after the end of the Viking rule in Britain, it morphed into York. It is still the same name, just formed through a series of languages and tongues from (probably) Eborako into York.
Cholula, Mexico, still called Cholula, 500 - 200 BCE, with the village starting 1000 yrs before, 1500 - 1200 BCE, older than London, still the same name.
@@PennyAfNorberg Over the great antiquity of Cholula, yes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholula_(Mesoamerican_site) About the antiquity of the name, there are more doubts.
@@PennyAfNorberg As I mentioned, the antiquity of the city and his continuous habitation to these day are a known matter, but the antiquity of the Nahualt name is not. We don't know if the city was renamed when Nahualt became the dominant language of the region, or if the Nahualt people only adapted the local name to their language like the Spanish did.
I think you should have Looked into India too. Like the City of Varanasi is one of oldest Continuously inhabited City, it's True that It's name was standardized but old names Like Benares and Kashi are still prevalent and used too
T-M-S-Q is possibly just the written version of Demascus as some of the earliest writing systems only wrote the consonants and left the vowels to be sort of assumed.
@@KootFloris Cool I guess Hebrew is pretty old but also languages can develop in different directions. For instance the Alphabet A wasn't used for a vowel until the Greeks inherited the symbols and included vowels. Apparently some languages stuck with consonants only but use extra dashes here and there to show vowel sound which I think Hebrew might be one of. Then there's Japanese with something like 3+ symbol sets? The one closest to an Alphabet called Katakana has a different symbol for every combination of consonant and the 5 main vowels. A few look alike but most are unique symbols.
@@KootFloris Yar I love stuff like that. I'll find a good video I watched last month about Egyptian development and link it. ua-cam.com/video/d_oFUrgC9rA/v-deo.html
Actually Mesopotamia does have a very ancient city that retains it's original name (though it has evolved a bit). ERBIL has been inhabited since the 5th millennium BCE and enters recorded history in about 2050 BCE with the name "Urbilum". That "um" at the end is just the Akkadian nominative suffix btw. So it was also called Urbilim, Urbilam or just Urbil. A bit later it's known to the Assyrians as the city of Urbilu, Arbela, or Arba-ilu. All of these are clearly direct ancestors to the modern name Erbil. This comment is sure to get buried but Name Explain, please see this!
You are correct. Susa was even named after the God 'InSHUSHinak'. Susa would also be pronounced as 'Shush' in Persian / Farsi (شوش), "Soosa" is simply an evolution of the Greek word 'Sousa', an attempt by Greeks to spell "Shush" in their own alphabet. In fact, the ancient city and modern city have exactly the same name in Farsi. The modern city is "شوش" ("Shush") The ancient city we call Susa is "شوش" ("Shush). As much as I like this channel, he makes far too many obvious mistakes in etymology.
Yes. Old Persian cuneiform even refers to the city as Çūšā, not Susa! It is a very clear and direct etymology, as is the case with Spadanam -> Isfahan and Tiraziš -> Shiraz.
In Turkey, there are many ancient cities that have been inhabited constantly and kept the same or similar names. For example, the capital city Ankara was founded 2600 years ago, it was called Ancyra, ten Angora and now Ankara. Another city is İzmir, which has been known as Smyrna for thousands of years. In fact, the name İzmir is the Turkified version of Smyrna. The city of Kayseri has been inhabited for more than 5000 years, but the name significantly changed. However, since the Roman Conquest in the 1st century, the city is known as Caesarea in honor of Emperor Caesar Augustus. Also, the city of Edirne was founded as Adrianople. And again, the name was Turkified for better pronunciation.
Byblos in Lebanon has had the same name since its founding, and was founded before Beirut! Its early inhabitants also (arguably) invented the alphabet, neat city overall.
Yeah, in the Iron Age, it was abandoned for about 400 - 500 years. Then built again and destroyed during the Babylonian and Persian conquests. Afterwards, they built Jericho in a different location, about a 30 minute walk away.
Joshua 6 records the destruction of Jericho, the walls being derrumbated by divine power. Hiel rebuilt it, as recorded in 1 Kings 16:34, but lost two sons in the process, as Joshua prophesied.
You seem to imply there aren't ancient names in the Americas but some cities carry their native names to today. Cuzco is a very old city and worth at least an honorable mention.
the modern country took the name from the tribe that used to live there. Belgium itself is the manifestation of whining white men who wanted a kingdom for themselves on flimsy reasoning. There was no "Belgium" before 1830. It was either part of the United Dutch Republic, Holy Roman Empire, Spanish Netherlands, Gaul or Burgundy. Belgium is NOT an old country at all, as is its name.
“Human civilization didn’t kick off in this part of the world until much later”. Gonna be real for a second, when I woke up today I didn’t imagined I would hear such historic misinformation coming from you name explain. My disappointment is immeasurable.
That happens everywhere, not only in eastern Asia. For example in former eastern block, many cities were renamed after communistic leaders (mostly cities originaly named by some capitalists) and renamed again after 1989. :-)
Also in Greece ancient cities have the same name as today: a) Thiva established 1.510 b.C., b) Sparti, about 950 b.C. and c) Olympia inhabited about 4.000 b.C., but at its beginning it has the name Altis.
15th century BC is also a date supposed for the creation of the Rig Veda, which names the city of Kashi, or Varanasi or Banaras. It is still known as Kashi, but we'll skip it because we didn't do proper research.
A very old city too is mine, Cádiz, which is a bit outside the circle you marked. Thought to be established in 1104 BC by the Phoenicians, it was called Gadira, and was a very strategic zone thanks to being right in the separation between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean! It was with the Greek, when it was Gadir, where mythologically speaking Hercules separated the pillars. It is from where Hannibal parted to attack Rome. Then during the Romans it took the name Gades, and it was the only other city apart from Rome in which you were automatically given Roman citizenship. This was one of the most important places where Garum was made. Then during the Arab occupation it was named Qādis and thought to be a place that guarded the Mediterranean. And when it was taken back by Spain, around the 1200's, it became Cádiz, finally, and it had the second golden age (after the Romans). This is from where Columbus parted to the Americas, this is the place that became the connection between Europe and "the new world", this is where thousands of slaves were freed as it was illegal here, so any ship with them was almost dismantled. And then during the 19th century, Cádiz was the only Spanish city that resisted Napoleon's invasion, and in 1812 the first constitution of Spain (Which thanks to Napoleon it consisted almost only of Cádiz) was written and voted here, by men AND WOMEN. So yeah, Cádiz, a very important city that everybody has forgotten.
him only focussing on basically mesopotamia, because of the out of africa theory is ridiculous. as if 9000 years ago there were no people or settlements in india, east and se asia.
~3:40 "Which means the further from this point, the newer the civilization" ...well that logic doesn't make sense, in part for the reason explained just after this point in the video - that "civilization" developed well after the first humans evolved - but also in part because humans didn't migrate in a straight line. We've lived in Australia for substantially longer than Europe, for example, even though Europe is much closer to East Africa (some people did migrate into Europe sooner, but they all either left or died out long before the first permanent Europeans moved into the area). Also, among the earliest civilizations in Eurasia were the Indus Valley civilization and the Yangtze Civilizations, which originated at close to the same time as Mesopotamia and Egyptian civilization, so the reasoning for excluding South and East Asia doesn't hold up to scrutiny (though there's the much better reason that we don't know what their early cities were called because we don't have any writing that we can read from those civilizations... but even with that considered, this video includes a bunch of cities from well after East and South Asia had writing we can read, so there's no real excuse).
@@zerotwoisreal Have you never heard of Aboriginal Australians? Australia was only discovered by Europeans in 1606, but there have been people living there since about 70-50,000 years ago. And there were people in Europe long before the Ancient Greeks; the current European population has roots going back to around 40,000 years ago.
A point about Susa and Shush. They're the same name. Susa derives from the Greek 'Sousa', an attempt by ancient Greeks to spell the city with their own script. The modern city was built next to the ancient one and retained the name, we simply call it by the more phonetically correct "Shush" now because we've skipped over the Greek translation, but retain the old Greek name for the ancient city. Both the ancient and current city are called 'شوش' in Farsi, which is pronounced like "Shush". It's quite literally just a difference in how we transliterate one city name. It would be like claiming Beijing has changed its name from Peking, when no, we just changed how we transliterate Chinese script with the Latin script. I'm not sure why you say they're not the same in the video.
Because he lives in London and the English language and English transliterations shape his brain. I was about to add something about the British mindset.
@@eljanrimsa5843 I am also English, so, probably not, he just overlooked it and didn't connect "Susa" to "Shush" somehow. What that shows about his level of research is a bit worrying.
Yeah. The city was made even before agriculture was developed. Isn't it kind of crazy. And the fact that thousands(used as metaphor not literal...duh) of empires from the assyrians to babylonians to persians to greeks to romans to muslims to british to palestine occupied the city, yet it's name has not changed. If earth were ever to become a unified state, jericho should be it's capital since it was the first city built on earth.
Eh... if your list includes cities founded in 3rd century BC, there's no reason why you need to exclude East Asia and South Asia from your list. The ancient city of Luoyang was founded by Duke Ji Dan of Zhou before his death in 1035 BC, and was called Luoyi at its founding, where yi means city. The yang part in Luoyang simply denotes that the city is situated North of the River Luo. There are many more cities equally or even more ancient in East and South Asia that still has the same name till today.
@@zerotwoisreal My country of Taiwan didn't have real cities until the 17th century, so I never expected for it to get on this list. However, South and East Asia also have very long recorded histories, and they've also have some of the largest cities in the world.
The reason why you ruled out east-asia kind of contradicts the reason you gave for africa. Humans were still hunger-gatherers when they crossed between siberia and alaska, places they probably reached later than they did india or china
For all three of them the reason was that civilization kicked off in these areas later than in the fertile crescent. Yes humans began in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the oldest city there is only from 400 B.C (around which time both Axum, Ethiopia and Benin City, Nigeria were founded)
@@ramseykeilani9569 There's also evidence for old civilisation in asia, which was more essential here. Rice had already been fully domesticated at around 8000BC. Which is close enough to the ~10000BC we think mesopotamian agriculture started. There for sure are places that have kept their names from 2000-1000BC like some others that did get mentioned are.
@@ngiorgos unfortunately china has only about 4000 years of verifiable history, and the names in the ancient scriptures rarely ever match the more recent names. it wasn't until Zhou dynasty that we start to see some familiar names, which is around 1100 BC.
There are some pretty old cities in Turkey as well. Some names were first got hellenized and then turkified, but some still have their roots and some names are in use even if they're not an official name for a city. Antakya (Antioch), Edirne (Adrianople), Kapadokya (Cappadocia - not the name of the city but used for the historical and natural sites there), Ankara (capital city, was founded by the Hittites, but the name is in Greek), Galata (a district in Istanbul, takes its name from the Galatians) and Kadıköy (Chalcedon) etc. Turkey also has the first temple building ever built (11k years old, in Göbeklitepe) which makes it one of the first countries you should have checked.
Jaffa (Arabic: Yaffa, Hebrew: Yaffo) was founded, at the latest, in 1800 BCE, making it almost 4000 years old, and bearing the same name (in fact it is mentioned in the Hebrew bible). Officially Jaffa is a part of Tel-Aviv since 1948, and in the old parts of the city one can still see its ancient ruins.
1:42 there's also Sparta, which stopped being inhabited because it was attacked by pirates, so the people moved a few kilometers North to a mountain and founded two cities:Monembasia and Mystras. In the modern era, King Otto ordered the rebuilding of the city but now it is called Sparti, adapting to Koine and later modern Greek phonological rules (numerous word final As changing to Is). In Greece there are also Athens and Thebes who have become Athina and Thiba (from Athenai and Thebai) and then there's also the port of Pireaus which is nowadays more commonly referred to as Pireas (from Piraieus). Probably the closest ones are Thessaloniki (which was known in the Ancient world as Thessalonike) and the Greek islands, like Chios, Lesbos or Syros, most of them having main towns by the same name. These names are truly ancient and can be found by the same exact name in ancient Greek texts as they are today. All of these changed naturally according to modern Greek's new declension rules, so the change wasn't forced/happened in one day but rather as a slow process.
@@mariosportsmaster7662 Yeah, it's still not that old compared to the likes of Athens, Argos, or Damascus. Genoa might be legitimately ancient, but it's unlikely to have had that name before Roman times.
I heard some people claim that Aleppo is as old (or even older) than Damascus. Its name is also, I believe, the same one since its foundation. I believe it was (and still is in Arabic) Halab. The greeks do not right H as a letter, but as a rough breathing sign, hence Alab -> Aleppo.
It's TMSQ, as the final s in Damascus is the greek nominal suffix (ie, not part of the original name) Also, the city of Uruk is not related to Iraq's name...
@@adrianblake8876 Dear Mr. KNOW IT ALL: "Located in the southern region of Sumer (modern day Warka, Iraq), Uruk was known in the Aramaic language as Erech which, it is believed, gave rise to the modern name for the country of Iraq"
The issue is that most Asian cities regularly changed names, I assume because Asian cultures didn't put as much importance in the longevity of names. One great example is the Chinese city of Luoyang which has been inhabited since 1600 BC in some estimates but has been known under the names of Heojing, Fenghao, Chang'an, Jingzhao and Daxing at different points in it's existence.
@@ShubhamMishrabro I said "most", that means there are exceptions to what I said, but they are not as old as the oldest ones on the list. Your example is from around 800 BC. As for Chinese, many are extremely old but as I said most have changed names often including the one I mentioned Luoyang.
Damascus being founded in 3rd century BC is wrong. Damascus is first mentioned by name in 15th century BC in Egyptian sources, and it's continuous occupation goes back way further. Also: "Damascus" is neither the original nor the current name of the city. "Damascus" is the Latinized version commonly used in the English language. Both the English language and the Latin language are younger than the city.
Mombasa in Kenya 🇰🇪🇰🇪, is one of the oldest continuously inhabitated cities in Kenya- it came from a Older Swahili word of Mvita origin meaning Island of War- due to various conflicts they had during history
When you went straight for the fertile crescent, I was stunned to hear Damascus and beirul but not Baghdad...I thought I heard in another video that it went all the way back to Sumeria or Assyria.
The city my family come from Exeter was originally a British Iron Age hill fort and was the capital of the Dumnonii tribe, when the Romans marched in around 50 AD the Dumnonii king submitted without a fight and become a client king, during Roman rule Exeter was known as Isca Dumnoniorum, and a Roman fort and legion was stationed there. It fell to the Saxons around 660 AD and was named Escanceaster were its modern name comes from.
From what we know about human migration, looking into India, makes more sense than looking to Europe for the eldest settlements. Though the middle east still takes the cake from what i know xD
The Jericho is called Yeriho in Hebrew & Ariha the difference in pronunciation has to do with the Canaanite shift that non-Hebrew Levantine adopted . As for etymology of Damascus with it's endonym Dimashq, it's ether Araamiac for Irrigated land or Old Levntine proto Arabic for Build quickly
Sidon is well over 4000 years old (probably 5000) and likely older than Beirut. Tyre is almost as old but Sidon is traditionally older. The question is what they were called when founded.
There is also Tyre(Suur) from around 2750 BC and Sidon(Sayda) which is even older. Both are in Lebanon and both claimed themselves to be the capital of Phoenicia. Suur just means "rock" and Sidon probably means "fishing place"
According to the Greeks there was a Place called Pyrene located where the Danube starts, in the Land of the Celts. There are many theories about where it was. In Germany it is believed to be either the Heuneburg or the village Pfohren. If it is Pfohren, it would be the oldest place, mentioned in an ancient text. I tend more towards the Heuneburg-Theory though.
Mugdisho is a good example because it has had the same name for a minimum of 2300 years and has been one of the largest cities in the ancient world historically
You're very wrong about the "Americas', Caral and Bandurria Peru, also having pyramids, are around 5000 yo, and are actually older than Cheops in Egypt, and these are only 'some' of the ancient places here in the 'Americas' discovered so far. Mexico also has civilizations that are just as ancient.
A quick search reads: "Jericho's name in Hebrew, Yeriẖo, is generally thought to derive from the Canaanite word reaẖ ("fragrant"), but other theories hold that it originates in the Canaanite word for "moon" (Yareaẖ) or the name of the lunar deity Yarikh for whom the city was an early centre of worship.[18] Jericho's Arabic name, ʼArīḥā, means "fragrant" and also has its roots in Canaanite Reaẖ.[19][20][21]" Wikipedia So it's very well possible Ariha and Yeriho are just the same name in different related languages (like Athens/Athina, Rome/Roma,....). In this instance the "change", if there is change, depends on the dominant language. Arabic speakers must have noted similarities in the name of Jericho and probably even centuries (millennia?) before the Arab muslim conquest in the 7th century AD, Jericho was naturally known as something slightly different but familiar to the Arabs in the peninsula. I think you unintentionally disregarded your own third ground rule of natural change in quite a few instances in this video; perhaps the familiar hellenized forms of names stuck in your mind more than you intended?
Well just to mention other continously inhabited place, the city of Cádiz, in southern Spain, founded by phoenician settlers some time around the 9th century BC. It has maintained the same name since it was first called Gadir.
The ancient Egytptians would not have called Giza "Tipersis" as that's the coptic name for the place. And coptic didn't come about untill the Roman period. Also, usually when the names of Egyptian things end with -is, that's a huge red flag that that name isn't originally Egyptian, but a Hellenised form. Like how Osiris was actually written wsjr (prounounced someting like "Wesir") in ancient egyptian, Memphis was written as mn-nfr (prounounced someting like "Men-nefr"). As far as I can tell, the name for the general area of what is now Giza was Khert-Neter in ancient times. This in reference to the Giza pyramid complex.
The statement at 3:30 is very wrong. Humans coming from Africa has NOTHING to do with the first civilizations beginning close to Africa. 1) Humans had settled nearly all of Afro-Eurasia + Australia tens of thousands of years ago, and had reached the southern tip of South America ~ 10,000 years before civilization began in the Fertile Crescent. 2) Complex civilizations sprung up in China and India just a few centuries after they did in the Fertile Crescent, and those events had far more to do with local climactic trends than when people got there tens of thousands of years before. This is like saying the first Five Guys restaurant was built in Virginia because Jamestown was the first successful English colony.
Hello, I think you missed Byblos or Jbeil. Not sure how old the name is but the city is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.
You forgot to mention Byblos which has been considered the oldest city in the world in antiquity, and still has a legitimate claim to it. Its papyrus production may have given its name to the Greek word for book, and thus to the English word "bible". That highlights one of the problems of what you are attempting to do: The really old cities like Damascus, Jericho or Byblos are older than the languages we use today, older than the writing systems we use today, indeed older than writing itself. We have good written sources and an established tradition how to transliterate/transcribe the names for some cities up to the 2nd millennium BCE. Before that we usually don't know the name, and just continue using the younger names because we don't know better.
Málaga in Spain was founded by the Phoenicians in the VIII CENTURY BC and it hasn't changed the name since. Most historians think it comes from the root m-l-k meaning to rule ;)
So, I'm a Shaman, therefore I commune with spirits. I live in Canada, so I just wanted to correct that they're ancient cities that did exist on this land. HOWEVER, the cycle of life routinely hits America with "plagues" that actively stopped humanity from developing a foothold that could have fought off the pilgrimage. Granted, since we know the pilgrims had it rough, any smart Native didn't settle in rough areas that didn't have any kind of proper protection, unlike the port cities of the eastern world, so they had a lot more natural dangers to worry about. Bright side was, earthquakes were rare? I appreciate this video though, my past life was in India 10 000 years ago and the only thing good about this era is technology where I can watch things like this. People really take tech for granted...
I wondered about the assumption of the middle east being oldest, but it appears to be valid. Zhengzhou in China dates back 3,600 years. Samarkand, later a major centre on the Silk Road, is thought by some theories to have been established between 8th and 7th centuries BC.
Well, in India Hastinapur and Ayodhya are still called Hastinapur and Ayodhya. These cities were mentioned in Hindu epics Ramayan and Mahabharata, which were composed sometime around 5000 years ago. So....
True. I think there is a prevalent ignorance about Indian history. Ignoring east and south asia is evidence of this. This rectification is long due. I am sure there are many names in India itself that come to mind. My vote is Kandahar (Gandhara) By the way, aren't you the one from Quora?
I think the oldest name of a continuously inhabited city on the North American mainland is most likely St. Augustine (San Agostin), south of Jacksonville, Florida. But in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico in older, having been founded by Columbus.
My city have the oldest name in my country call Phnom Penh meaning the grandma don penh call other people to build the mountain and put the Buddhist idle on the mountain, and also the place where put many royal tombs who never been known in history, the place have been populated for thousands of year not long to 1st but 13st.
So sad you mentioned the fall of the wall of Jericho. That happened whereever withing the last 4'000 years. Jericho was burned down and don't exist about 100 years. So it losts the winnerplace as the oldest always inhabited city.
you pissed off a lot of egyptians with that kink in the southern border of the map at 7:04 the border dispute in question would be a good idea for a future video about how the place names came to be
Do you live somewhere with an old name?
No, sorry
i need a poo
I live in Damascus ❤🥰
Yes, I live in a german city called Magdeburg which exists since at least 805 AD. Magd means Maid and Burg means Castle. Otto I. lived here.
Great video!
I was born in aleppo
There is a debate in syria about which city is older aleppo or damascus
The story people used to say is about how aleppo was founded by profet abraham 12 k years ago where he milked his cows and therefore was called (halab) which means ( the verb milks)
Fun story
Hello Patrik, I'm from Syria. Although we have several theories on the name of Damascus, the one I think is the most credible is the theory that says the name comes from the Aramiac phrase "Dar Masqa" which means "the well watered home" because of the river Barada and it's tributaries.
wow Aramaic words sound so much like Arabic
@@nziom yes they are sister languages
@firenz shah In Arabic it's Dimashq.
@@Skwisgaar_Skwigelf where are you Living now
@@EE-wx1ow in a small town in Syria
“T-M-Ś-Q” might actually be pronounced similarly as (or rhymes with) “Damascus”. As in the dashes are supposed to be vowels.
But for that final S
@@marmac83 Roman word endings I'd assume. Besides some languages omit that last part, like French. We just call it Damas. In Arabic, it's just Dimashq, which is even more similar (although Syrian Arabic replaces the q sound with a glottal stop). Tmshq, dmshq.
Yeah in Russian it’s Damask so It could’ve been Tamasq originally and in time t shifted to d and the -us ending was added my Latin.
In Arabic its spelled with the root letters D M Ś Q
@@lukurd5923 English, always making simple things complicated (thanks to Latin)
A well in Hebrew is "be'er" and wells are "be'e'rot" which is similar to Beirut. The name Jerricho is pronounced in Hebrew as "ye'ri'kho". The Arabic name "arikha" is basically the same. It's just a little difference in pronunciation. And the Hebrew word for moon is "ya're'akh" which is similar.
Be’er means well in standard Arabic and beer in Lebanese Arabic
The etymology on this one is pretty clear. In the Galilee there was a tendency for glottal stops to weaken so "be'erо̄t" was likely pronounced as "bērо̄t" by the time the Arabs got there, who, unable to pronounce "e" or "o", changed it to "bairūt" (in English spelled "Beirut")
Ancient Phoenicians were closer the Israelites right?
@@anniesaysmith8095 I think all the languages in the area, the land of Canaan, were almost identical.
@@gilbregman4646 no they weren't identical but similar and they are close to othet semetic language like Arabic and Akkadian
Varanasi, India has been continually inhabited for the last 4,500 years with the same name (along with Kashi). Kabul, Afghanistan is also one of the most ancient cities on the planet, it was called Kubha during the Vedic age - 5,000 years ago and still carries a derived form of the same name. It is high time Indian history was given equal importance as much as middle eastern and European histories.
I totally agree. I know so many intelligent people who know about ancient life in the Fertile Crescent (Egypt and Mesopotamia), Yellow and Yangtze civilizations, even the comparatively younger Olmecs of early Mesoamerica, but would stare at you blankly if you asked them about the Indus Valley Civilization. This glaring and unforgivable oversight in historical education must be corrected.
@@spacemanspiff3052 absolutely!
In the West, most people know their history very well and are trying to practice ancient Indian stuff like yoga. In India, most people only want to become like the West, while ignoring their rich history.
@@Think_Inc not true, no one In india wants to become western infact quite opposite is true and also what is western and not western needs to be fixed first.... What you see is globalisation effect and western people are equally influenced as they have influenced
@@manj73 Luoyang and Changan of China are also about the same age as Varanasi or Kashi.
But Mesopotamian civilization is older.
Again none of those existed after 1400 or so. Damascus included.
Uruk is the oldest city giving its name to Iraq but that city is nothing more than sand dunes now. Same is the case Ur is the 2nd oldest even that is now a sand dune. 3rd is Babylon which became Baghdad.
So here it is
5:25 You mean The Third Millennium, not Third Century.
Yea I was confused
I think Jericho and Ariha maybe the same name. Ariha in Arabic is written with ح wich is usually written as H in Latin letters. The corresponding letters in hebrew is written nowadays as CH in Latin letters. So the old Hebrew name may have been pronounced like Yeriho (j=y in Latin). That is my theory.
Your theory is correct. "Jericho" is the English corruption of ירחו (y'recho, yereho, and plenty of other romanizations but identical to Arabic يرحو). Over the years, the "y" must have weakened (which is common across languages) and with Arabs unable to pronounce "o", you end up with Ariha
thought the same. But without the knowledge base. Just looked at it and thought: this looks like it could be the same name with just adjustments for writing systems / language.
You have lots of variants of names, which are just natural derivations of each other or from a common root. Look at York, whose oldest recorded name is the Roman Eboracum, which is probably derived from Celtic Eborako. When the Romans left Britain, it became the capital of the Kingdom of Ebrauc, and the Welsh still call the town Efrog, while in Gaelic, it's Eabhraig. The Saxons conquered the town, and in their language and pronunciation, it turned into Eoforwic. When the Vikings conquered Northumbria, it became Jorvik. And after the end of the Viking rule in Britain, it morphed into York. It is still the same name, just formed through a series of languages and tongues from (probably) Eborako into York.
You sure it was ح instead of خ ?
@@Xaiff Nowadays jews can't produce the ح sound. They use the Hebrew equivalent of ح in writing, but they pronounce it as خ.
Cholula, Mexico, still called Cholula, 500 - 200 BCE, with the village starting 1000 yrs before, 1500 - 1200 BCE, older than London, still the same name.
Does it exists sources validation that?
@@PennyAfNorberg Over the great antiquity of Cholula, yes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholula_(Mesoamerican_site)
About the antiquity of the name, there are more doubts.
@@pedroarjona6996 Written sources with the name?
@@PennyAfNorberg As I mentioned, the antiquity of the city and his continuous habitation to these day are a known matter, but the antiquity of the Nahualt name is not. We don't know if the city was renamed when Nahualt became the dominant language of the region, or if the Nahualt people only adapted the local name to their language like the Spanish did.
I think you should have Looked into India too. Like the City of Varanasi is one of oldest Continuously inhabited City, it's True that It's name was standardized but old names Like Benares and Kashi are still prevalent and used too
True
Yet he ruled India out for some reason.
True. Another one of the oldest inhabited cities is Madurai. And its name too have not been changed ever since its creation.
@@shyamsundar00 super bro
Ya Pataliputra (now Patna) is also one of the most oldest continuously inhabited place in the world .. You can refer to Wikipedia our history books
T-M-S-Q is possibly just the written version of Demascus as some of the earliest writing systems only wrote the consonants and left the vowels to be sort of assumed.
Hebrew still does. Old language?
@@KootFloris Cool I guess Hebrew is pretty old but also languages can develop in different directions. For instance the Alphabet A wasn't used for a vowel until the Greeks inherited the symbols and included vowels.
Apparently some languages stuck with consonants only but use extra dashes here and there to show vowel sound which I think Hebrew might be one of.
Then there's Japanese with something like 3+ symbol sets? The one closest to an Alphabet called Katakana has a different symbol for every combination of consonant and the 5 main vowels. A few look alike but most are unique symbols.
@@kailomonkey Cool to know!
@@KootFloris Yar I love stuff like that. I'll find a good video I watched last month about Egyptian development and link it. ua-cam.com/video/d_oFUrgC9rA/v-deo.html
Maybe this one too. It's hard digging through my watch-history should have favourited them. ua-cam.com/video/Mmz42awTRsA/v-deo.html
Actually Mesopotamia does have a very ancient city that retains it's original name (though it has evolved a bit). ERBIL has been inhabited since the 5th millennium BCE and enters recorded history in about 2050 BCE with the name "Urbilum". That "um" at the end is just the Akkadian nominative suffix btw. So it was also called Urbilim, Urbilam or just Urbil. A bit later it's known to the Assyrians as the city of Urbilu, Arbela, or Arba-ilu. All of these are clearly direct ancestors to the modern name Erbil.
This comment is sure to get buried but Name Explain, please see this!
I thought Shush was just a natural evolution or different transliteration/variant of the name Sousa?
You are correct. Susa was even named after the God 'InSHUSHinak'.
Susa would also be pronounced as 'Shush' in Persian / Farsi (شوش), "Soosa" is simply an evolution of the Greek word 'Sousa', an attempt by Greeks to spell "Shush" in their own alphabet.
In fact, the ancient city and modern city have exactly the same name in Farsi.
The modern city is "شوش" ("Shush")
The ancient city we call Susa is "شوش" ("Shush).
As much as I like this channel, he makes far too many obvious mistakes in etymology.
@@calum5975 Susa appears in the Bible as well as "Shushan" and the original name predating Hebrew, Farsi, or Greek was likely "Shushin"
Yes. Old Persian cuneiform even refers to the city as Çūšā, not Susa! It is a very clear and direct etymology, as is the case with Spadanam -> Isfahan and Tiraziš -> Shiraz.
Yea, it should have been an eligible city especially considering Londinium->London was OK...
In Turkey, there are many ancient cities that have been inhabited constantly and kept the same or similar names. For example, the capital city Ankara was founded 2600 years ago, it was called Ancyra, ten Angora and now Ankara. Another city is İzmir, which has been known as Smyrna for thousands of years. In fact, the name İzmir is the Turkified version of Smyrna. The city of Kayseri has been inhabited for more than 5000 years, but the name significantly changed. However, since the Roman Conquest in the 1st century, the city is known as Caesarea in honor of Emperor Caesar Augustus. Also, the city of Edirne was founded as Adrianople. And again, the name was Turkified for better pronunciation.
Byblos in Lebanon has had the same name since its founding, and was founded before Beirut! Its early inhabitants also (arguably) invented the alphabet, neat city overall.
quick note, jericho was actually abandoned multiple times, the name stayed the same however,.
Yeah, in the Iron Age, it was abandoned for about 400 - 500 years. Then built again and destroyed during the Babylonian and Persian conquests. Afterwards, they built Jericho in a different location, about a 30 minute walk away.
Joshua 6 records the destruction of Jericho, the walls being derrumbated by divine power. Hiel rebuilt it, as recorded in 1 Kings 16:34, but lost two sons in the process, as Joshua prophesied.
Imagine living in one of these cities for the entirety of its existence
> excludes the Americas
> talks about Damascus
There's at least one city in Americas that's a couple centuries older than Damascus
2:42 change “chane” to change?
Looked in comments for this
Londinium is a Latin corruption of an older Celtic name.
What was it?
@@kucinglaper5330 Yes, and how long before the Roman period was the Celtic name known to exist?
@@kucinglaper5330 Lowonidonjon... but even that is likely a Celtic corruption of an earlier, non-Celtic word meaning "wide river"
@@marmac83 interesting, thanks
First；Do city names in Canada! There aren’t too many, so it would be easy to fit in one video
@b phillip I was thinking g the same thing
Sounds boring aye
Better do San Marino, it's even easier.
@b phillip just because it's a capital doesn't mean it's a city
You seem to imply there aren't ancient names in the Americas but some cities carry their native names to today. Cuzco is a very old city and worth at least an honorable mention.
It was build in AD times, most likely after London
As far as country names go, Belgium was already called Belgium (Belga) in 50 BCE when Caesar came through
the modern country took the name from the tribe that used to live there. Belgium itself is the manifestation of whining white men who wanted a kingdom for themselves on flimsy reasoning. There was no "Belgium" before 1830. It was either part of the United Dutch Republic, Holy Roman Empire, Spanish Netherlands, Gaul or Burgundy. Belgium is NOT an old country at all, as is its name.
oldest country name is (probably) israel.
The country of Belgium was named after the ancient tribe who lived there. But it as a name for Country it is not even 200 years old
@@SantomPh kinda like Palestine
@@SantomPh Ite ad inferi fellator podex
“Human civilization didn’t kick off in this part of the world until much later”. Gonna be real for a second, when I woke up today I didn’t imagined I would hear such historic misinformation coming from you name explain. My disappointment is immeasurable.
I would have included a "G" in the third ground rule.
What?
@@sion8 2:40
@@arthurfilipe7380
Okay.
Eastern Asia civilization tends to change names of cities alongd the change of dynasty or shift of powers.
That happens everywhere, not only in eastern Asia. For example in former eastern block, many cities were renamed after communistic leaders (mostly cities originaly named by some capitalists) and renamed again after 1989. :-)
@@Pidalin yeah like st.petersburg
Also in Greece ancient cities have the same name as today:
a) Thiva established 1.510 b.C.,
b) Sparti, about 950 b.C. and
c) Olympia inhabited about 4.000 b.C., but at its beginning it has the name Altis.
Sparta's likely older since it's mentioned in the Iliad. Pylos is also but hasn't been continuously inhabited.
15th century BC is also a date supposed for the creation of the Rig Veda, which names the city of Kashi, or Varanasi or Banaras. It is still known as Kashi, but we'll skip it because we didn't do proper research.
Yep, if we don't have enough source on that, we might as well skip it since it would be quite a mess to argue 😅
A very old city too is mine, Cádiz, which is a bit outside the circle you marked.
Thought to be established in 1104 BC by the Phoenicians, it was called Gadira, and was a very strategic zone thanks to being right in the separation between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean!
It was with the Greek, when it was Gadir, where mythologically speaking Hercules separated the pillars. It is from where Hannibal parted to attack Rome.
Then during the Romans it took the name Gades, and it was the only other city apart from Rome in which you were automatically given Roman citizenship. This was one of the most important places where Garum was made.
Then during the Arab occupation it was named Qādis and thought to be a place that guarded the Mediterranean.
And when it was taken back by Spain, around the 1200's, it became Cádiz, finally, and it had the second golden age (after the Romans).
This is from where Columbus parted to the Americas, this is the place that became the connection between Europe and "the new world", this is where thousands of slaves were freed as it was illegal here, so any ship with them was almost dismantled.
And then during the 19th century, Cádiz was the only Spanish city that resisted Napoleon's invasion, and in 1812 the first constitution of Spain (Which thanks to Napoleon it consisted almost only of Cádiz) was written and voted here, by men AND WOMEN.
So yeah, Cádiz, a very important city that everybody has forgotten.
him only focussing on basically mesopotamia, because of the out of africa theory is ridiculous. as if 9000 years ago there were no people or settlements in india, east and se asia.
~3:40 "Which means the further from this point, the newer the civilization" ...well that logic doesn't make sense, in part for the reason explained just after this point in the video - that "civilization" developed well after the first humans evolved - but also in part because humans didn't migrate in a straight line. We've lived in Australia for substantially longer than Europe, for example, even though Europe is much closer to East Africa (some people did migrate into Europe sooner, but they all either left or died out long before the first permanent Europeans moved into the area). Also, among the earliest civilizations in Eurasia were the Indus Valley civilization and the Yangtze Civilizations, which originated at close to the same time as Mesopotamia and Egyptian civilization, so the reasoning for excluding South and East Asia doesn't hold up to scrutiny (though there's the much better reason that we don't know what their early cities were called because we don't have any writing that we can read from those civilizations... but even with that considered, this video includes a bunch of cities from well after East and South Asia had writing we can read, so there's no real excuse).
what? australia was discovered in 1606, but people have been living in europe since the ancient greeks over 3000 years ago
@@zerotwoisreal Have you never heard of Aboriginal Australians? Australia was only discovered by Europeans in 1606, but there have been people living there since about 70-50,000 years ago. And there were people in Europe long before the Ancient Greeks; the current European population has roots going back to around 40,000 years ago.
@@SomasAcademy i was joking
@@zerotwoisreal Oh thank God
A point about Susa and Shush.
They're the same name. Susa derives from the Greek 'Sousa', an attempt by ancient Greeks to spell the city with their own script.
The modern city was built next to the ancient one and retained the name, we simply call it by the more phonetically correct "Shush" now because we've skipped over the Greek translation, but retain the old Greek name for the ancient city.
Both the ancient and current city are called 'شوش' in Farsi, which is pronounced like "Shush".
It's quite literally just a difference in how we transliterate one city name. It would be like claiming Beijing has changed its name from Peking, when no, we just changed how we transliterate Chinese script with the Latin script.
I'm not sure why you say they're not the same in the video.
Because he lives in London and the English language and English transliterations shape his brain. I was about to add something about the British mindset.
yeah i was sceptic at first when i heard him say that susa is called shush now. susa and shush sounds suspiciously the same.
@@eljanrimsa5843 I am also English, so, probably not, he just overlooked it and didn't connect "Susa" to "Shush" somehow. What that shows about his level of research is a bit worrying.
9:28 wait. If it was established in 9000 BC as in Before Christ, shouldn't it be 11000 yo?
Edit: wrote 1100 by mistake, my bad
11000* but yeah
11000
Yeah. The city was made even before agriculture was developed. Isn't it kind of crazy. And the fact that thousands(used as metaphor not literal...duh) of empires from the assyrians to babylonians to persians to greeks to romans to muslims to british to palestine occupied the city, yet it's name has not changed. If earth were ever to become a unified state, jericho should be it's capital since it was the first city built on earth.
Eh... if your list includes cities founded in 3rd century BC, there's no reason why you need to exclude East Asia and South Asia from your list. The ancient city of Luoyang was founded by Duke Ji Dan of Zhou before his death in 1035 BC, and was called Luoyi at its founding, where yi means city. The yang part in Luoyang simply denotes that the city is situated North of the River Luo. There are many more cities equally or even more ancient in East and South Asia that still has the same name till today.
Yeah but 9000b for Jericho and still used today is far too older than any.
He meant 3 millenium bce, not 300 bce
shut up your just salty your country wasnt mentioned
@@zerotwoisreal My country of Taiwan didn't have real cities until the 17th century, so I never expected for it to get on this list. However, South and East Asia also have very long recorded histories, and they've also have some of the largest cities in the world.
The reason why you ruled out east-asia kind of contradicts the reason you gave for africa. Humans were still hunger-gatherers when they crossed between siberia and alaska, places they probably reached later than they did india or china
For all three of them the reason was that civilization kicked off in these areas later than in the fertile crescent. Yes humans began in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the oldest city there is only from 400 B.C (around which time both Axum, Ethiopia and Benin City, Nigeria were founded)
@@ramseykeilani9569 There's also evidence for old civilisation in asia, which was more essential here. Rice had already been fully domesticated at around 8000BC. Which is close enough to the ~10000BC we think mesopotamian agriculture started. There for sure are places that have kept their names from 2000-1000BC like some others that did get mentioned are.
I agree that rulling out Asia seems rashed. I was fully expecting the oldest city name to be somewhere in China.
@@ngiorgos unfortunately china has only about 4000 years of verifiable history, and the names in the ancient scriptures rarely ever match the more recent names. it wasn't until Zhou dynasty that we start to see some familiar names, which is around 1100 BC.
@@Ben_Hard Mesopotamia is the oldesr civilizations
2:19 I like the "CHANE" instead of "CHANGE" so yeah Name Explain does make mistakes
That's not a mistake, it's just a natural change to the word "change". 🤷
it's not even rare for him to make mistakes.
This video is riddled with errors.
There are some pretty old cities in Turkey as well. Some names were first got hellenized and then turkified, but some still have their roots and some names are in use even if they're not an official name for a city. Antakya (Antioch), Edirne (Adrianople), Kapadokya (Cappadocia - not the name of the city but used for the historical and natural sites there), Ankara (capital city, was founded by the Hittites, but the name is in Greek), Galata (a district in Istanbul, takes its name from the Galatians) and Kadıköy (Chalcedon) etc.
Turkey also has the first temple building ever built (11k years old, in Göbeklitepe) which makes it one of the first countries you should have checked.
Tyre in Lebenon still exists and was called an an "urbs antiquus" or ancient city in the Aeneid.
Video didn't make sense by not including India, Iran, and China. This is a bit euro-centric to say the least.
dude he mostly talked about middle-eastern cities. If there is bias its for the Middle East.
@@jmvt3 still Iran does come in the Middle East only.
Anuradhapura of Sri Lanka was established in 544BC and is still inhabited.
Jaffa (Arabic: Yaffa, Hebrew: Yaffo) was founded, at the latest, in 1800 BCE, making it almost 4000 years old, and bearing the same name (in fact it is mentioned in the Hebrew bible).
Officially Jaffa is a part of Tel-Aviv since 1948, and in the old parts of the city one can still see its ancient ruins.
1:42 there's also Sparta, which stopped being inhabited because it was attacked by pirates, so the people moved a few kilometers North to a mountain and founded two cities:Monembasia and Mystras. In the modern era, King Otto ordered the rebuilding of the city but now it is called Sparti, adapting to Koine and later modern Greek phonological rules (numerous word final As changing to Is). In Greece there are also Athens and Thebes who have become Athina and Thiba (from Athenai and Thebai) and then there's also the port of Pireaus which is nowadays more commonly referred to as Pireas (from Piraieus). Probably the closest ones are Thessaloniki (which was known in the Ancient world as Thessalonike) and the Greek islands, like Chios, Lesbos or Syros, most of them having main towns by the same name. These names are truly ancient and can be found by the same exact name in ancient Greek texts as they are today. All of these changed naturally according to modern Greek's new declension rules, so the change wasn't forced/happened in one day but rather as a slow process.
How about Rome? Rome was founded in 753 BCE supposedly founded by Romulus of Romulus and Remus fame.
753 BCE is not that old, compared to the other ones (Damascus was not founded in the 3rd century BCE - more like 3rd millennium BCE).
@@Hypernefelos I mean one of the oldest cities to keep their original names, most of the others have changed somewhat.
@@mariosportsmaster7662 Yeah, it's still not that old compared to the likes of Athens, Argos, or Damascus. Genoa might be legitimately ancient, but it's unlikely to have had that name before Roman times.
Jerusalem, Jericho, Damascus, Beirut, etc.... where inhabited hundreds to thousands of years prior
I heard some people claim that Aleppo is as old (or even older) than Damascus. Its name is also, I believe, the same one since its foundation. I believe it was (and still is in Arabic) Halab. The greeks do not right H as a letter, but as a rough breathing sign, hence Alab -> Aleppo.
semitic languages didn't have vowels.. thus TMSQS for Damascus.
What about oldest COUNTRY name? Iraq, from Uruq?
It's TMSQ, as the final s in Damascus is the greek nominal suffix (ie, not part of the original name)
Also, the city of Uruk is not related to Iraq's name...
@@adrianblake8876 Dear Mr. KNOW IT ALL: "Located in the southern region of Sumer (modern day Warka, Iraq), Uruk was known in the Aramaic language as Erech which, it is believed, gave rise to the modern name for the country of Iraq"
@Вхламинго The greeks added vowels, mr. expert.
@Вхламинго so how come many greek nouns end in "-us"
@@ozzy5146 The consonants in Uruk are 'RK, while in Iraq they're 3RQ...
These are different consonants in semitic languages.
Dream: Thats what 5:16
I'm surprized there's not any contenders from China or India. I thought these settlements were as old as the fetrile crescent.
no the fertile crescent was way older lol
The issue is that most Asian cities regularly changed names, I assume because Asian cultures didn't put as much importance in the longevity of names. One great example is the Chinese city of Luoyang which has been inhabited since 1600 BC in some estimates but has been known under the names of Heojing, Fenghao, Chang'an, Jingzhao and Daxing at different points in it's existence.
@@ericlanglois9194 no some Indian cities still have same name. Like varanasi even Chinese see oldest cities in asia
@@ShubhamMishrabro I said "most", that means there are exceptions to what I said, but they are not as old as the oldest ones on the list. Your example is from around 800 BC. As for Chinese, many are extremely old but as I said most have changed names often including the one I mentioned Luoyang.
Great video!
Damascus being founded in 3rd century BC is wrong. Damascus is first mentioned by name in 15th century BC in Egyptian sources, and it's continuous occupation goes back way further.
Also: "Damascus" is neither the original nor the current name of the city. "Damascus" is the Latinized version commonly used in the English language. Both the English language and the Latin language are younger than the city.
It's evolved from Dimašq so is basically the same name. The ancient name would be written without vowels.
Mombasa in Kenya 🇰🇪🇰🇪, is one of the oldest continuously inhabitated cities in Kenya- it came from a Older Swahili word of Mvita origin meaning Island of War- due to various conflicts they had during history
From one mark to another: I appreciate the Y2J reference
When you went straight for the fertile crescent, I was stunned to hear Damascus and beirul but not Baghdad...I thought I heard in another video that it went all the way back to Sumeria or Assyria.
The city my family come from Exeter was originally a British Iron Age hill fort and was the capital of the Dumnonii tribe, when the Romans marched in around 50 AD the Dumnonii king submitted without a fight and become a client king, during Roman rule Exeter was known as Isca Dumnoniorum, and a Roman fort and legion was stationed there. It fell to the Saxons around 660 AD and was named Escanceaster were its modern name comes from.
From what we know about human migration, looking into India, makes more sense than looking to Europe for the eldest settlements. Though the middle east still takes the cake from what i know xD
Shush and Susa seem very similar too, a natural evolution like London's
Love that Patrick never fails to mention wrestling!
According to the Bible Jericho was abandoned after the walls fell so does it count?
The Jericho is called Yeriho in Hebrew & Ariha the difference in pronunciation has to do with the Canaanite shift that non-Hebrew Levantine adopted .
As for etymology of Damascus with it's endonym Dimashq, it's ether Araamiac for Irrigated land or Old Levntine proto Arabic for Build quickly
Best video yet!
Varanasi from India should had been also mentioned in the video
Varanasi isn't that old of a name tho, it was previously called Kashi. Only during Akbar's rule Varanasi was established as the formal name.
@@shambosaha9727 varanasi is literally mentioned in Greek, jain and Buddhist texts which goes at least to early first millennium BCE
Sidon is well over 4000 years old (probably 5000) and likely older than Beirut. Tyre is almost as old but Sidon is traditionally older. The question is what they were called when founded.
There is also Tyre(Suur) from around 2750 BC and Sidon(Sayda) which is even older. Both are in Lebanon and both claimed themselves to be the capital of Phoenicia. Suur just means "rock" and Sidon probably means "fishing place"
According to the Greeks there was a Place called Pyrene located where the Danube starts, in the Land of the Celts. There are many theories about where it was. In Germany it is believed to be either the Heuneburg or the village Pfohren. If it is Pfohren, it would be the oldest place, mentioned in an ancient text. I tend more towards the Heuneburg-Theory though.
Mugdisho is a good example because it has had the same name for a minimum of 2300 years and has been one of the largest cities in the ancient world historically
there are some places in australia that have retained indigenous australian names, so i wonder if any of those beat these
5:35 small correction, not 3rd century BC, 3rd millennium BC
The hominid Ardi lived in the Afar valley in Ethiopia 6 million years ago, and people still live there.
Can you please do a video on oldest country names?
You're very wrong about the "Americas', Caral and Bandurria Peru, also having pyramids, are around 5000 yo, and are actually older than Cheops in Egypt, and these are only 'some' of the ancient places here in the 'Americas' discovered so far. Mexico also has civilizations that are just as ancient.
A quick search reads:
"Jericho's name in Hebrew, Yeriẖo, is generally thought to derive from the Canaanite word reaẖ ("fragrant"), but other theories hold that it originates in the Canaanite word for "moon" (Yareaẖ) or the name of the lunar deity Yarikh for whom the city was an early centre of worship.[18]
Jericho's Arabic name, ʼArīḥā, means "fragrant" and also has its roots in Canaanite Reaẖ.[19][20][21]" Wikipedia
So it's very well possible Ariha and Yeriho are just the same name in different related languages (like Athens/Athina, Rome/Roma,....). In this instance the "change", if there is change, depends on the dominant language.
Arabic speakers must have noted similarities in the name of Jericho and probably even centuries (millennia?) before the Arab muslim conquest in the 7th century AD, Jericho was naturally known as something slightly different but familiar to the Arabs in the peninsula.
I think you unintentionally disregarded your own third ground rule of natural change in quite a few instances in this video; perhaps the familiar hellenized forms of names stuck in your mind more than you intended?
Well just to mention other continously inhabited place, the city of Cádiz, in southern Spain, founded by phoenician settlers some time around the 9th century BC. It has maintained the same name since it was first called Gadir.
Making it the oldest city in western europe.
Málaga in Spain is also very ancient it was founded by the Phoenicians 749 BC but it was called Malaka
The ancient Egytptians would not have called Giza "Tipersis" as that's the coptic name for the place. And coptic didn't come about untill the Roman period. Also, usually when the names of Egyptian things end with -is, that's a huge red flag that that name isn't originally Egyptian, but a Hellenised form. Like how Osiris was actually written wsjr (prounounced someting like "Wesir") in ancient egyptian, Memphis was written as mn-nfr (prounounced someting like "Men-nefr").
As far as I can tell, the name for the general area of what is now Giza was Khert-Neter in ancient times. This in reference to the Giza pyramid complex.
The statement at 3:30 is very wrong. Humans coming from Africa has NOTHING to do with the first civilizations beginning close to Africa. 1) Humans had settled nearly all of Afro-Eurasia + Australia tens of thousands of years ago, and had reached the southern tip of South America ~ 10,000 years before civilization began in the Fertile Crescent. 2) Complex civilizations sprung up in China and India just a few centuries after they did in the Fertile Crescent, and those events had far more to do with local climactic trends than when people got there tens of thousands of years before. This is like saying the first Five Guys restaurant was built in Virginia because Jamestown was the first successful English colony.
What about cairo?
Hello, I think you missed Byblos or Jbeil. Not sure how old the name is but the city is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.
The city of Argos invented small pencils
/me-lah-nee/? 🤨 Did she specifically say to pronounce it like that? 🤔 Most people pronounce Melanie as /mel-a-nee/.
It's me, and i use mel-ah-nee but i dont mind, I'm too flattered to be sainted. :)
You forgot to mention Byblos which has been considered the oldest city in the world in antiquity, and still has a legitimate claim to it. Its papyrus production may have given its name to the Greek word for book, and thus to the English word "bible". That highlights one of the problems of what you are attempting to do: The really old cities like Damascus, Jericho or Byblos are older than the languages we use today, older than the writing systems we use today, indeed older than writing itself. We have good written sources and an established tradition how to transliterate/transcribe the names for some cities up to the 2nd millennium BCE. Before that we usually don't know the name, and just continue using the younger names because we don't know better.
Málaga in Spain was founded by the Phoenicians in the VIII CENTURY BC and it hasn't changed the name since. Most historians think it comes from the root m-l-k meaning to rule ;)
Jerusalem is also a close contender as one of the oldest cities, since it was founded ~3000 BCE.
So, I'm a Shaman, therefore I commune with spirits. I live in Canada, so I just wanted to correct that they're ancient cities that did exist on this land. HOWEVER, the cycle of life routinely hits America with "plagues" that actively stopped humanity from developing a foothold that could have fought off the pilgrimage.
Granted, since we know the pilgrims had it rough, any smart Native didn't settle in rough areas that didn't have any kind of proper protection, unlike the port cities of the eastern world, so they had a lot more natural dangers to worry about.
Bright side was, earthquakes were rare?
I appreciate this video though, my past life was in India 10 000 years ago and the only thing good about this era is technology where I can watch things like this.
People really take tech for granted...
Damascus was founded and called Damascus in the third millennium BC, not the Third Century.
IKR
We don't know whether Neolithic 'Jericho' was called Jericho.
We can agree that Rome, Lisbon and some cities in spain were founded almost at the same time after the greek cities
I found a typo!
Why did you exclude China????
I wondered about the assumption of the middle east being oldest, but it appears to be valid.
Zhengzhou in China dates back 3,600 years. Samarkand, later a major centre on the Silk Road, is thought by some theories to have been established between 8th and 7th centuries BC.
What about Jerusalem? It has been called Yerushalayim in Hebrew for millenia
At least 3,000 years-5,000 years which would make it one of the top 10
Well, in India Hastinapur and Ayodhya are still called Hastinapur and Ayodhya. These cities were mentioned in Hindu epics Ramayan and Mahabharata, which were composed sometime around 5000 years ago. So....
True. I think there is a prevalent ignorance about Indian history. Ignoring east and south asia is evidence of this. This rectification is long due. I am sure there are many names in India itself that come to mind. My vote is Kandahar (Gandhara)
By the way, aren't you the one from Quora?
Aleppo in Syria founded 4500 BC; name evolved Halab-->Halep-->Alep
My city’s name of Macon Georgia is 2 years shy of 200 years. Still a baby compared to most. I’m
I think the oldest name of a continuously inhabited city on the North American mainland is most likely St. Augustine (San Agostin), south of Jacksonville, Florida. But in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico in older, having been founded by Columbus.
My city have the oldest name in my country call Phnom Penh meaning the grandma don penh call other people to build the mountain and put the Buddhist idle on the mountain, and also the place where put many royal tombs who never been known in history, the place have been populated for thousands of year not long to 1st but 13st.
Thanks for the interesting video.
I think you have missed susa (shusha) in Iran
The change from Shush to Susa is obviously a natural change in pronunciation. No?
I'm not exactly sure why China was not even expored or was it? They are pretty ancient as well.
So sad you mentioned the fall of the wall of Jericho. That happened whereever withing the last 4'000 years. Jericho was burned down and don't exist about 100 years. So it losts the winnerplace as the oldest always inhabited city.
I'm certain Jerusalem would also fit in those old ranks quite nicely.
Please explain ANTANANARIVO, AMBOHIMANGA, and MADAGASCAR
makes my home town of Anchorage seem embyronic. founded in the early 20th century. our oldest historic building was built in 1934
you pissed off a lot of egyptians with that kink in the southern border of the map at 7:04 the border dispute in question would be a good idea for a future video about how the place names came to be
When I saw Jericho on the thumbnail I thought if Chris Jericho for some reason