Did the first civilization arise in Mesopotamia, or elsewhere?
Countless civilizations have risen and fallen over the millennia. But which one is the oldest on record?
But evidence uncovered in the past few decades indicates that the Sumerians have a few contenders, including ancient Egypt, for the title of"oldest civilization."The definition of what makes a civilization is vague, but generally a culture has to achieve several hallmarks, notably urbanism — that is, cities — irrigation and writing; and the Sumerians had all three. After about 2000 B.C.
A story very like that of the Hebrew Bible's Noah, who built an ark stocked with animals to preserve his family during a great flood caused by divine wrath, is related in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Archaeologists think it was originally a Sumerian story from about 2150 B.C. — centuries before the Hebrew version was written.
Decades of war and unrest in Iraq have meant that archaeologists haven't been able to access many Mesopotamian sites, but Egyptologists have kept digging, Jones told Live Science. The result is that archaeologists in Egypt have now discovered writings just as early as the earliest writings from Sumer, which suggests the oldest phase of the ancient Egyptian civilization emerged at roughly the same time as the earliest phase of the Sumerian civilization: about 4000 B.C.
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