Oldest cities/towns in province/state?

[BEER]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

Ho boy...oldest continuously inhabited settlement, or places that existed centuries ago that were abandoned/wiped out? Because Arizona has a fuck-ton of the latter, courtesy of the HoHoKam and Anasazzi.

The mound building cultures, especially near present day Baton Rouge, Louisiana had structures that pre dated the pyramids of Egypt and Stonhenge. Watson Brake is estimated to be as old as 6,500 years.

[pj3000]

For Pennsylvania, I guess it could be the Meadowcroft Rockshelter southwest of Pittsburgh. Archaeologists date its human habitation origins back over 19,000 years.

It is possibly the oldest continually human-inhabited area in the New World.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by pj3000

For Pennsylvania, I guess it could be the Meadowcroft Rockshelter southwest of Pittsburgh. Archaeologists date its human habitation origins back over 19,000 years.

It is possibly the oldest continually human-inhabited area in the New World.

That somehow doesn't make sense to me, if the peopling of the Americas happened over 100,000 years ago, I believe, and people migrated/entered the Americas from the north and west and eventually ended up east and south...

People have been in what is now California, for example, for at least 100,000 years.

[softee]

^ People only came to the Americas about 13,000 years ago.

[sopas ej]

I guess it would depend on one's interpretation of this:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017...ay-scientists/

Either way, I somehow think people settled along the west coast of the North American continent before settling towards the eastern part of North America, so I would think ancient settlements on the west coast of the North American continent would be much older than the ancient settlements of what is now Pennsylvania.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

That somehow doesn't make sense to me, if the peopling of the Americas happened over 100,000 years ago, I believe, and people migrated/entered the Americas from the north and west and eventually ended up east and south...

People have been in what is now California, for example, for at least 100,000 years.

No one is claiming that is where humans first came to the Americas. Archaeologists propose that it may be the oldest continually inhabited settlement. That they know of, I guess.

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/1...ft-rockshelter

https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/e...ft-rockshelter

[SpawnOfVulcan]

Well, for Alabama:

Mobile: 1702; founded by the French as Fort Louis de la Louisiane

It's hard to say where the longest continuously inhabitated community is in the state. The most verifiable is around Tuscaloosa which includes the Moundville site which was inhabitated from 1000 AD to about 1450 AD, and people have lived around Tuscaloosa proper at least since Hernando De Soto came through in the mid 1500s.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I guess it would depend on one's interpretation of this:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017...ay-scientists/

Either way, I somehow think people settled along the west coast of the North American continent before settling towards the eastern part of North America, so I would think ancient settlements on the west coast of the North American continent would be much older than the ancient settlements of what is now Pennsylvania.

That was probably an ancient human population that went extinct. Modern humans didn't leave Africa until about 50,000 years ago.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Illinois:


source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoria...0Confederation.



i honestly had no idea that illinois had a european settlement as early as the late 17th century.

you learn something new everyday.

theres a church with a congregation founded in 1699 less tjan 10 minutes from downtown st. louis...current structure is 1700s...the “illinois country” man! cahokia, illinois (the city not the Mississippian UNESCO site neaby) was founded in 1696. i think there was a lot more activity down here than peoria area. tons of extant french colonial structures down here on the il side...

wikipedia.com

[subterranean]

Oregon City.

"Oregon City is the county seat of Clackamas County, Oregon, United States, located on the Willamette River near the southern limits of the Portland metropolitan area. Established in 1829 by the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1844 it became the first U.S. city west of the Rocky Mountains to be incorporated." -Wikipedia

Willamette Falls are located there, the largest waterfall in the Northwestern United States by volume, and the seventeenth widest in the world

[Centropolis]

fort des chartres...

[IMG]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...-bastion-1.jpg[/img]

[JManc]

One could argue present day Miami is older than it really is though not sure if continuously inhabited. I remember in the 90's a developer doing some excavation work found the Miami Circle which is though to be as old as Stonehenge.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by JManc

One could argue present day Miami is older than it really is though not sure if continuously inhabited. I remember in the 90's a developer doing some excavation work found the Miami Circle which is though to be as old as Stonehenge.

I believe NYC area Jews got there right around the same time as those Miami Circle inhabitants.

[BnaBreaker]

Tennessee's oldest town is Jonesborough which was established in 1779. It's still a small town today, but if you're in the area it is definitely worth a quick visit because they've done a phenomenal job preserving their downtown area.

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.2939...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.2936...7i13312!8i6656

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

That was probably an ancient human population that went extinct. Modern humans didn't leave Africa until about 50,000 years ago.

This... is making me confused.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

That was probably an ancient human population that went extinct. Modern humans didn't leave Africa until about 50,000 years ago.

This is technically probably not true. There's evidence that modern-human-like populations interbred with Neandertals, suggesting there were earlier migrations of modern humans from Africa than 50,000 years ago. However, it appears that these groups more or less entirely died out, with all non-Africans descended from the later migration out of Africa.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Acajack

This... is making me confused.

The point I was making is that "human" is a broad term that refers to a bunch of extinct subspecies. Humans in North America 130,000 years ago would have needed to overlap with the humans that left Africa 50,000 years ago, in order for their to be an outside of Africa genetic link. That does not seem very likely. If a human population existed for 80,000 years in North America before homo sapiens sapiens left Africa, there should be a lot of archeological evidence of them left behind.

[Xelebes]

The oldest settlement that is known in Alberta is the Cluny Walled City from the 13th century. It became abandoned, but it is the first bit of evidence we have that we can confirm that agriculture was being practiced in Alberta as early as then.

For continuously populated settlements, the candidates are:

Fort Vermillion: 1788
Fort Chipewyan: 1788

Both places established by the North West Company, who settled the Mackenzie basin before settling ithe Saskatchewan basin as the Hudson Bay Company did.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by JManc

One could argue present day Miami is older than it really is though not sure if continuously inhabited. I remember in the 90's a developer doing some excavation work found the Miami Circle which is though to be as old as Stonehenge.

Miami was built on a native american settlement and is over 2000 years old with the Tequesta village first being founded around 600-500 BC but there were long periods of being totally abandoned for a couple hundred years from the 1500s-1800s. The Spanish built a mission at the mouth of the Miami River in 1566 but didnt stay long preferring Cuba as a base of operations in the Caribbean. The Spanish pretty much totally wiped out the native Tequesta and force-ably moved survivors to Havana. It was eventually settled by farmers but abandoned again due to the Seminole Wars in the mid 1800's. Its not uncommon for downtown construction, especially north of the Miami River to get stalled due to archaeological finds and having to stop and catalog stuff (or quietly rebury it so no one finds out and they don't have to stop building). The Marriott Marquis downtown was built over a big ancient tomb holding hundreds of remains.
Or just build around the archaeological site like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@25.7710...7i16384!8i8192

St.Louis has been a settlement going back to around ~900AD if you count Native Americans as well. St.Louis was the capitol of one of the largest and most advanced native cultures north of Mexico.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Sigtuna, founded in 980 A.D. by King Erik Segersäll.

Europe north of the Baltic is always younger than I imagine it should be.