What is the oldest currently extant country? And don't give me formal documented founding dates, miss me with that Judaeo-Protestantic lawyershit. I'm looking for objective cultural continuity.Iran claims descent from Persia (founded in 550 BC)Armenia claims descent from Urartu (founded in 860 BC)China claims descent from Shang (founded in 1,600 BC)
>>18022970B yoyr metric none of them exist. Yes, China can claim descent, but they’re an entirely different country with an entirely different culture (and no, fireworks and dragons aren’t ancient Chinese culture).
Mycenaean Greece is as old as the Shang dynasty.
>>18022970>>18022991Herodotus says Persia changed it's name to that from something else around 1200 BC. As for China, while they claim continuity I agree that there is no real evidence of continuity. Xia and Shang both resemble something heavily foreign.
Must be China since Egypt got overruled by Arabs. India has a long ass continuity but it only became a thing last century, so it's more accurate to say India is a federation of long running countries.>>18022996And weren't Mycenaeans taken over by Asian invaders so hard they forgot how to read and write?
>>18023008>And weren't Mycenaeans taken over by Asian invaders so hard they forgot how to read and write?The Sea Peoples weren't Asian. If you look at the Levantine and Egyptian histories, they say the invaders came from the north and by ocean. Whoever knocked out the Myceneans were also the ones that knocked out western Asia, although the situation may be more complicated as the Mycenaeans may have joined up with the invaders as some of their groups are thought to makeup the Sea Peoples.
>>18023008Yeah, about as much continuity between Mycenaean and Archaic Greece as between Rome and various barbarian states that destroyed it.
Northern Macedonia was literally founded by Alexander the Great, Philip II in 359 BC
>>18023014That's a lot of continuity actually. You're talking linguistic and historical traditions. Even religious.
>>18023018>claiming it was founded by Philip II>still using the cucknameOn how many levels of cuckoldry is this post?
>>18023023And the barbarians who destroyed Rome weren't Christians and didn't use its script?
>>18023029Goths were Christians before Rome ever even divided. Arianism had already spread across Germania. Latin ends up being adopted across all of western and northern Europe. The British counted it as an official language by the 5th century AD.
>>18022996Even if you don't count the myceneans, the argument for a very old greek statehood in some way or another is still valid.
>>18022999There's zero need to reply on fantasies by Herofraudus when we now have archaeological and even written data from Mesopotamia itself. In 1,200 BC there wasn't even a hint of Persia and its location was occupied by a completely different country, Elam.
>>18023035That's more akin to the Arab conquests. The barbarians were heavily influenced but were not a direct continuation of Rome.
>>18023045This is the point...
>>18023036Everyone has to agree with that because the Greek histories very often borrow from the pre-Bronze Age Collapse period. There does seem to be continuity there even if modern writers disregard it all as some sort of convoluted, consistent misreporting of myth. But that's an extra level of Europhobia we're talking about. Those same people who disregard Greek histories because they mention Gods will turn around and regard Akkadian histories as real even though they start off with ridiculous things like "I, master of the four corners of the universe, master of the world, chosen of Enki, prodigious in all ways" or some other such thing and they think nothing of it.
>>18023045Goths shared:>religion>adopted Latin>adopted Latin script>adopted Latin histories>adopted Latin sciencesArabs didn't do any of those things and they relied on Egyptians and Persians to write down the bits about science. Arabs have nothing to do with Rome culturally, other than defacing it and lashing out against it.
>>18023051You clearly have an agenda. No period writings are accepted as a fact without archaeological evidence to back them up. In Greece's case, archaeology shows that the continuity was severed during the Dark Ages.
>>18022970If you allow for the changes in culture due to passage of time, then Egypt.If you don't allow that and require these people to have the same, mostly unchanged or minimally modified culture, then it's either industrial England or uncontacted tribes in the jungles and remote islands.The industrial revolution completely upended all culture present in any civilised nation on Earth and England simply happens to be the origin point of this evolution for humanity. Or massacre of old cultures, from your point of view.
>>18023058You are projecting. Obviously you despise the idea of continuity, but not for any valid reason you can vocalize. We both know why you won't explain your real beef with the notion. >No period writings are accepted as a fact without archaeological evidence to back them upAnd yet we don't make this assumption for middle or near eastern studies whatsoever. The entire OT has claims that are unproven throughout each of its books, and yet there are many willing to argue that it's all true. The battle of Carchemish is an addition in a late medieval Bible, some will swear it is real despite no evidence and the obvious editorializing of those passages. There is no evidence for the Battle of Qadesh, but Egyptologists still accept it based on the literary report alone. Same rings true for nearly all of Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian histories. Requesting material evidence for Greece but not for the rest of the Egypto-Mesopotamian world unveils a sinister bias. Which writing of the Greeks would you discount?
>>18022970It's really hard to answer this because MOST countries can "claim descent" from an ancient country. But there's been so many regime changes, border changes, ethnicity changes, systems of government changes, culture changes; that's it's really hard to differentiate what is an entirely new nation or what is simply a nation that was always there, but in a different form.But for the question, as you word it: I think the answer is China. China was pretty much around as long as the entirety of human civilization and the ancient Chinese cultures still bear enough resemblance to the modern Chinese, that I think you could effectively say that it's the "same nation". Persia changing into Iran is different; they were many different nations as different groups conquered the land. I think when the Muslim conquest happened, it changed who they are to the point that you cannot see that they're an ancient nation that still exists. They're a different nation built on top of several ancient ones.
>>18023074England had the same shit as Egypt done to them. Foreign invaders came and the languages changed from Celtic to Germanic. All the pre-Anglo-Saxon heritage just went up in flames.
>>18023084If we're counting Zhou culture, you may be right. But that's also discounting Catholics as a transmitter of Roman culture.
Hungary
>>18023089No, anon. I'm talking about pre-industrial England to industrial (i.e. modern world) England.Industrial revolution makes a fuckhuge difference any place it appears in and changes the life of all people in the nation much more drastically than any 1% chair switcheroo like Nubian pharaohs or Saxon kings.Hence why I'm saying that England is the oldest industrial-modern culture and every other modern culture on Earth is either:>Slightly younger as they transformed everything after learning it from England.>Completely disconnected from the rest of the world and thus possibly owning a culture that predates the industrialisation of England... but all those t-shirts and plastic buckets in documentaries about the Amazon or hunter-gatherers in Africa make me skeptical of this.
>>18023074I think the Muslim conquest of the Middle East effectively breaks the contingency of Egypt being "one nation". Once these nations converted to Islam, the entire culture and government changed hands to the point that it simply wasn't the same country, in any respect.I suppose that begs the question how much cultural/ethnic/religious change is allowable before it turns into a different country.I consider the Greek and Roman colonization of Egypt as a contingency of Kemet (what ancient Egyptians called Egypt). It was still the same culture complete with a Pharaoh (though by the end only technically).But the Muslim conquest, all vestiges of Egyptian culture were swept away and replaced. Same with Iran.
>>18023094lol
Komi Republic is the heir to Hyperborea
>>18023145I'd agree with that, and it's painful to. Egypt and Persia were so kino. Too kino for this post-modern gay world.
>>18023153By the time Egypt was kill, it had been Greece 2.0 for many centuries.
>>18023165That's kino though. Library of Alexandria? Cmon son.
>>18023165Yeah, but still Ptolemaic Egypt was essentially the same culture. Though a modernization of it. The Pharaoh and high priest caste structure was the same. They still spoke and wrote in Egyptian though Greek became increasingly popular. And by the Roman dominion, it continued to change, but I think you could still say it was a direct successor of ancient Egypt.But the Muslims obliterated the culture and rebuilt it entirely in their image. No vestiges of ancient Egypt left except the Coptics.
>>18023174Ptolemy was essentially the first case of egyptomanian larp
>>18022970There’s the sentinelese. Their country/society may be upwards of 50k years old. Of course they’re stoneage Hunter gatherers on a small island, but they’ve definitely been there a long time.
>>18023186I think you win the thread. I didn't even consider them. I said China.But those ooga boogas have been there forever. And it's incontestably the same culture that it always has been.Though not a civilization of any sort. Basically, a bunch of people living as chimps that discovered tool use.
>>18023186Do they even count a civilization if they are like 50-100 tops? They are varely a tribe, in fact i seen tribes with higher numbers.
>>18023186>>18023195>>18023204Baseless assumptions. For all we know, they only arrived on that island 400 years ago.
>>18023204Qualitatively they are not a civilization, so we have to rule them out.
>>18022991>fireworks and dragons aren’t ancient Chinese cultureAre Chinese characters?
>>18022999Confucius Kong family continously held their hereditary title and fief for 2,200 years in every dynasty since it started.Kong family descend from the Shang dynasty.Chinese script comes from Shang dynasty
>>18023195Sure, it’s a matter of definition, but they do have language, culture, and the like. It’s just, as you said, ooga booga level, or there abouts. Their technology is limited to bows, fire use, very simple textiles, stone, shell, and bone tools, and some very basic structures for shelter. They’ve recently upgraded to some metal tools, but those are salvaged scrap from a shipwreck IIRC. They even have some primitive geometric artistic styles. They’re definitely a culture, tied to a single spot that they view as their own and defend, so it’s a country. Even if only so at the most bare minimum.>>18023204Depends on how you’re measuring it. They’re tiny, somewhere between 50, and 500 people, but they’re distinct and been there for a very long time.>>18023216Oh. They’ve been there a lot longer than that. Their language is an isolate. It’s not mutually intelligible by even neighboring island populations, and linguists haven’t been able to translate it even today. They also show signs of dwarfism similar to the Central African foragers (pygmies). The pygmies might count but they were defeated, interbred with, and subjugated by the Bantu, so I don’t think they’re a continuity. So they’ve been there a long time.
>>18023541>Their language is an isolate.Yeah buddy, you're full of shitThey're language is completely unknown
>>18023615That’s why it’s unknown. It isn’t part of the local languages, or anything else currently known. As you said. Meaning it’s been in isolation for a very long time, and either is a remnant of a local population that was supplanted a long time ago or a population that settled there from an origin point so ancient that there aren’t any traces of them remaining. Unlike the sneering pissbaby attitude you’re smearing the thread with.
>>18023780No, it's unknown because its speakers murder anyone who tries speaking to them in a matter of minutes
Probably Egypt. The only problem is that Arabization and Islamization massively changed language, religion, and elite culture. The modern Egyptian identity is a hybrid, still very recognizably Egyptian, but less continuous in form than Iran.
>>18023787They only do that because wypipo abducted their kids some decades ago and sent them back full of modern microbes.
>>18023787They launched successful anthropological expeditions that resulted in verbal communication as well as the original European admin who had access to locals from near by islands who were unable to translate the south sentinel islanders language. The language isn’t entirely unknown at all. The colonial admin even abducted a group of them back in the day. What we know is that the language is not similar enough to any of the other local languages to be intelligible.
>>18023816>The only recorded words are "Gaga" which means Coconut, and "laha" which means give
>>18023870Translated words. Those are the only translated words. The original abduction based contact wasn’t able to translate anything despite having local experts/translators from near by islands. One of the Indian anthropologists got a decent list of words though. We just don’t have translation for them. Unless you think the sentinelese are just going up and talking gibberish to the anthropologists for lulz. In which case, I admit that would be pretty fucking funny.
>>18023875Okay, where can I read the untranslated words that were transcribed?You aren't just making them up, are you?
>>18023882I suppose the researchers that documented them might have made them up, but I’m not making up that they transcribed it. It was a recent release, as of 2020. You can just go to Wikipedia and get the reference info if you want. ‘məəŋə məəŋɖa, əc ale, ʈ/ɖaŋ, ɖaik, kayə, tu aɖe, pila and iŋ.' Also the guy recorded ‘liya’ and ‘luwa’ which he thinks means near and far based on context of what they were doing at the time. It might have also meant ‘fuck’ and ‘off’ for all we know. This was from some of the last successful contacts. I don’t know if they’re holding more info, but the Indian authorities don’t seem to want to release too much because they think these people are imperiled by outside contact (probably are) and if anyone gives people the idea that they might be able to visit and NOT get murdered, it might encourage further attempts. So. Idk if that counts for you or not, but we do know more of their language than two words. Just none of the meaning behind it.
>>1802389213 wordsWowYeah I stand corrected, this language is totally known
>>18023145>>18023074>>18023084>>18022970>>18022996The culture and language of a country remaining intact is irrelevant.What matters is political continuity, that the king, or prime minster, or senate etc has remained in place as an office or institution, and if it changes, that that changes as a result of internal legislating or decrees rather then external pressureChina could qualify as long back as the head of the Chinese government had natural succession or voluntary transfer of power to a different system, not if it was usurped due to revolution or external conquest (though there is some wiggle room there, EX: the Aztec Empire to New Spain is arguable since the Huey Tlatoani still existed as an office for a time within the Spanish colonial goverment with members of the Mexica royal family still occupying it for a few decades after Cortes)
>>1802392813 words is enough to get an idea of the language origin. We can’t even translate those words because it’s so distinct. If it were remotely related to the languages spoken by other regional native populations, those original contact events would have allowed for communication. They did not. This is absolutely a language isolate. Nothing else to say about it.
probably some nowhere shithole like mongolia
>>18022999Herodotus also claims that's because they're descended from Perseus and that sounds a bit questionable if you ask me.
>>18022970The oldest currently existing "country" at the moment is literally the United States of America.
>>18023013"Sea Peoples" were just one of many "Invasions" by "Men of the West". Many such cases.
>>18023035Fun Fact: virtually every thing we know about the Gothic language comes from the Bible alone. They seem to have come ultimately from "Gotland" in Sweden.
>>18022970Sweden has somewhat always existed. In the written record you can watch them transition from a tribe known as the Sviar into the kingdom of Swedes and Geats and eventually into the modern kingdom of Sweden. Obviously they're no longer the same Swedish culture as that of the Iron Age... but they were never conquered, they never had their culture replaced or drastically changed by some invader, they're even the same polity when you think about it. They voluntarily adopted Christianity, the continued using runes well into the 20th century when they organically puttered out.
Switzerland
>>18023186Not a country.
>>18022970Egypt, or at least a Coptic idea of Egypt.>>18023089Nobody considers Britain or the Britons to be English so this argument doesn't make any sense.>>18024299If only political continuity mattered than the oldest recognisably modern state would be England as it more or less reached what we know today under Athelstan with sense of self, institutions and a political community, or even Edward the Elder if you wanted to push it.
>>18024687England began in 1660
>>18024703The England after the Glorious Revolution is still recognised and institutionally the same state. What changes is the structure of the state from reforms, they aren't creating a new state or cutting off some continuity. Otherwise Edgar, Cnut, Edward, William, Henry II and so on would have all ruled different states because they were reformers or came from outside the state.
>>18022970>China claims descent from Shang (founded in 1,600 BC)If we are gonna talk about cultural Identity, Chineseness was a product of the Zhou Dynasty. It was there when the concept of Zhongguo was invented, and more importantly the idea of the peoples of China proper sharing a common cultural (Hua), which was the forerunner of both Han cultural identity and the idea that multiple ethnicities can be Chinese if they adopt said cultural idea.
>>18024818The quote you are referring to is fake, Confucius never said barbarians can become Hua (Chinese).The actual quote is by Han Yu and it only says Hua can become barbarians, but doesn't say barbarians can become Hua.
>>180247071660 isn’t the glorious revolution it’s the restoration of the monarchy after a decade with no king.
>>18022970>Armenia claims descent from Urartu (founded in 860 BC)If they do, it's a LARP. Urartu / Hurri isn't any relation to Armenian.Armenians with sense can claim Tigranes and maybe Mithridates but not Urartu. That's just silly.
>>18024818>>18025326Wasn't Confucius a courtier of Song? That was the Yin family demoted from being in charge of Shang.Culturally, Zhou were a revolution from Shang royal ideology, but they were still the same people and preserved a lot of the lore. Like, we Americans descend from the English civilisation even if we don't have a king anymore.
>>18023145Well, Zoroastrianism is still extant and has been since before Iran was even unified, with Ahura Mazda worshippers predating even Iranian migration into the plateau.Hence I don't think it's fair to compare the absolute destruction of Egypt to Iran.That being said, the cult of Isis/Pagan Egyptian religion seems to have persisted, even with only a handful of members into the 1200s, so the shitslamic invasion wasn't really the nail in the coffin, but rather the greekification of Egypt, as well as romans adopting cuckstianity was
>>18026061>Tigranes and MithridatesBy that logic they can claim to be more truthfully descendants of Acheamenids; by faith and by blood. Georgia definitely can seeing as how the nation only unified post Acheamenid collapse by a Zoroastrian warlord noble.
>>18022970Rome, descended from Troy probably 2000 BC
>>18024538>They voluntarily adopted ChristianityThey were literally forced into it by Denmark-Norway
>>18023145 >>18023153 There are more Zoroastrian elements in Iranian Islam than there are Hellenistic elements in Euro Christcuckery, faggots.Sorush/Sraosha for example.You also had figures like Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi mix Zoroastrianism with Islam, and Mulla Sadra followed that up.The country has been called Iran since the Sassanian empire and even back then they were not your allies or "friends." Why do westernshits have this impression that if Iran were still Zoroastrian it would be allies with them?
>>18025326>The quote you are referring to is fake, Confucius never said barbarians can become Hua (Chinese).Confucius is irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things, Barbarians moved in and out of Chinese Civilization throughout history, even under Non-Han Dynasties.
>>18026061urartu isn't called hurri and genetically they're the same
>>18024315I can say something else.>>1802318650000 years.Lmao>>18023216Is correct. Could be quite recent. I would go ask them but I only know 13 words of their language and because they are aggressive I may have to give them the plague.
>>18027112>Barbarians moved in and out of Chinese Civilization throughout historyThat doesn't mean they're Chinese or Han as we think of it.
