Simple questions are
sometimes harder...
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| Mythical ancient city by Imagen |
... than you'd expect. We've seen this multiple times in our SRS explorations. Simple question can lead to fascinating side-excursions into topics that you didn't expect.
Today's Challenge is like that. It's a very straight-forward question that might not have the simplest answer. It's up to you to figure this out!
1. What is the oldest city in the Americas?
Easy, right?
When you find the answer BE SURE to tell us what you did to find it AND why you believe this is the oldest city in the Americas.
There's an interesting reason I'm posing the Challenge in this way. I hope you'll also find out why I'm bothering to ask what seems to be so simple, and so obvious.
Keep searching!
There were several "cities" on the Supe River in Peru that existed around 4000BC which are considered some of the earliest cities. Caral (3500-2000BC). That's the short answer.
ReplyDeleteThe question is very general, and can have a bunch of other answers depending on details.
What factors did you consider? (And how did you learn about the cities on the Supe River?)
DeleteIn order to find my first possible city. I searched for foundation.
ReplyDeleteWith [oldest founded city in the Americas]
The Sacred City of Caral-Supe, UNESCO says, is the oldest centre of civilization in the Americas.
Mexico City is the oldest founded (1325) according to another link.
And Quran says: the oldest continuously inhabited city within the continent of North America would have to be the city of Cholula in Puebla, Mexico
l Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) site about Cholula
Deletehttps://lugares.inah.gob.mx/en/zonas-arqueologicas/zonas/opinion/1776-cholula.html
With [first record of city in the Americas]
DeleteHow stuff works link shows cities in America AKA The United States
https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/oldest-city-in-america.htm
Santo Domingo. Another kind of oldest
https://www.almosthistorypodcast.com/the-oldest-european-city-in-the-americas/
Yes... annoying that "America" means just "US" to HowStuffWorks.com
DeleteI was watching the Good Doctor season 7, episode 4.
DeleteIn that episode, one of the doctors said: " I used AI to find all the relevant cases in different languages." Maybe one or two words are not exactly those.
My question is: Can we really do that with AI. I know it was TV but I was thinking maybe for our previous Unintended Consequences Challenge and many more that would be very helpful. Specially because we don't know in which language something helpful could be written
This is totally out of topic. However is something new, interesting and with many connections: Catsup, games, France and Mexico that today is celebrating
DeleteI'm sure Dr Russell and someone else would like it too. History
https://youtube.com/shorts/aDd2R6UMZ8Y?si=BQk31r7vJATH_-78
I put into Bing (to access Bing Chat) "what's the oldest city in the Americas including pre-Columbian cities" and up came Caral (that I'd never heard about). So I then checked it - and Wikipedia also says it's the oldest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral as does https://popular-archaeology.com/article/caral-americas-oldest-city/ and lots of other sites.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to verify this from academic / official sources so I went to You.com and used their research mode to ask: Is Caral the oldest city in the Americas. This gave a link to Unesco - https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269/ and the Smithsonian - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-city-in-the-new-world-66643778/. Unesco states that the Sacred City of Caral-Supe is the oldest centre of civilization in the Americas and the Smithsonian article title is "First City in the New World?"
So I'm happy with this unless you are saying that not all settlements are actually cities and are defining city more narrowly- and so the Smithsonian mag's question mark becomes valid. In this case I'll go with Santo Domingo. Founded in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher’s brother, Santo Domingo is located on the island of Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Republic). It holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas.
There's an interesting site on Wikipedia that suggests there were earlier cities than Caral - although reading the links I think it's questionable to say they actually are cities. I found this site from Copilot - because of Ramon Gonzalez's answer for the oldest continuously inhabited city. When I first asked for this, it gave me St Augustine which I was sure was wrong. I then asked about Cholula and also for any other pre-Columbian cities that are still inhabited. (I thought about Mexico City but that's much more recent).
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_Americas_by_year_of_foundation - gives Wyam but this seems to be more a meeting place than an actual city. However Tlapacoya may be, and Aspero is part of the Caral complex that pre-dates Caral itself according to the Wikipedia list.
I started off by wondering what is a city? I posed the following questions to Gemini and Perplexity, "In anthropology, is there a difference between a settlement and a city?" and "In archaeology, is there a difference between a settlement and a city?" In the end, it didn't really matter as I kept hitting Caral with some suggesting other city sites in the area as well being the oldest.
ReplyDelete