Beyond Eternal: Identifying The World's Oldest City

Rome calls itself the "Eternal City," but plenty of cities from antiquity have been around a lot longer—and are still around. Archeologists are engaged in a robust debate over what is actually the world's oldest continuously inhabited city. Candidates include Varnasi, India; Plovdiv, Bulgaria; Erbil, Iraq; and sentimental favorite, Jericho, Israel, whose walls may date back 11,000 years.

"Beyond the easy task of immediately discounting every city in North America and Australasia, identifying the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city is an uncertain business. There is a mess of claim and counterclaim, myth and legend, architectural digs and disputed evidence."

Part of the challenge lies in choosing continuously inhabited cities. Out of the running are places like Catal Huyuk, which is considered the first city but was abandoned long ago. Byblos, Lebanon, has solid documentation for its 7,000-year run of habitation.

Ironically, and tragically, the best contender for world's oldest city is also one of the world’s most threatened cities: Aleppo, Syria, which is in the heart of that ancient country’s civil war.