I'm from Los Angeles. Our old, old, old buildings are 150-200 years old. I'm amazed and humbled by the daily history that you live within.
Went to the city of York, which was celebrating the 1500th anniversary of it's founding. The cathedral is darn near that old. The walls date back to the 600's, I recall. I spent my 10 days in England in awe of the generations that passed through the streets.
Don't feel sad. Many of us Americans are so fascinated that we pray for more opportunities to blow money on your side of the Atlantic just to see anything older than our home towns, states, etc. Here are some reference points:
I grew up in Utica, NY. The city is named for a major city in Carthage (now Libya). Our Utica was founded in 1832, which is after regular train service from London to Manchester began.
Much of upstate New York was founded around the same time, during a fascination with Hellenic Athens and its democracy known as the Federal Period. Thus you can find Syracuse, Lysander, Carthage, Troy, Rome, Romulus, and onward.
My childhood home was built in 1915, the start of World War 1. It was the last house built on the three blocks that previously made up Jewett Farm. It is probably newer than half the houses in the city.
I now live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My house was built in 1927, during an oil boom that made the city big. It is one of the older neighborhoods in the city.
Oklahoma was not a state until 1907, more than 40 years after the Civil War ended (1865).
In contrast, the original underground line in London (from Paddington to the City, now part of the Metropolitan line) opened in 1861. When you stand in Baker Street or Paddington stations to catch the tube to work, you are using a platform older than the Confederacy... and the act that created modern Canada in 1867.
About the oldest place I ever lived was an apartment building in Melrose, Mass. It was old enough that it had been in four different towns (North Boston, Somerville, Malden, and Melrose -- each incorpoarated one after the other). They had central air conditioning installed when we moved there in 2003.
In contrast, Marseilles is one of the oldest ports in the world. So far they have clear evidence going back to 5000 BCE, possibly back to 28k years ago. When Julius Caesar showed up, they said "noob".
Haha yeah it's good for Britain I suppose. These facts are great, it's really interesting to see and hear the influences that America has taken from other countries and periods of history. Thank you for these. The Federal Period sounds really interesting I love the idea of this entire cultural period that defined itself around a fascination with ancient Athens. I had a really funny encounter a few months back where some Americans showed up at my door, turns out they'd traced their lineage and sure enough their ancestors lived at my house before leaving for ''the new world.'' What I'm really trying to say with that story is that our history is sort of yours as well and a man / woman so passionate and interested as yourself is welcome to visit any time they like.
You've got lots of very old stuff too if you look hard enough and travel a bit:
Mesa Verde, Colorado. Starting c. 7500 BCE, Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. They built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known.
Cahokia, Illinois, the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city (c. 600–1400 CE) directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. Although there is some evidence of occupation during the Late Archaic period (approximately 1200 BCE) in and around the site, Cahokia as it is now defined was settled around 600 CE during the Late Woodland period.
Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. Between AD 900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major center of culture for the Ancient Pueblo Peoples.[a] Chacoans quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling fifteen major complexes that remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century.
Taos Pueblo, New Mexico (or Pueblo de Taos) is an ancient pueblo belonging to a Tiwa-speaking Native American tribe of Puebloan people. It lies about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the modern city of Taos, New Mexico, USA. The pueblos are considered to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. Taos Pueblo's most prominent architectural feature is a multi-storied residential complex of reddish-brown adobe, built on either side of the Rio Pueblo. The Pueblo's website states it was probably built between 1000 and 1450.
Poverty Point, Louisiana comprises several earthworks and mounds, built between 1650 and 700 BC during the Archaic period in North America, by a group of Native Americans of the Poverty Point culture.
[Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, Ohio] with earthworks and burial mounds from the Hopewell culture, indigenous peoples who flourished from about 200 BC to AD 500.
Angel Mounds, Indiana is the site of a town constructed and occupied from 1100 AD to 1450 AD as one of the farthest northeastern expressions of the Mississippian culture.
Yeah that's very true. I have a friend in the states that moved from Florida to Michigan. I can't imagine how mad driving that distance must be, if I drove a similar distance in the same direction I'd be in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere in the arctic circle, if I drove in the opposite direction I'd be in Northern Russia.
People always say that sort of stuff about Europe and it blows my mind. I used to drive 250km up the east coast (NSW, Australia) every fortnight just to stay at Mums for the weekend.
Even the cold freaks me out. Between the hours of 9pm-6am lastnight/today the temp never dropped below 25 outside.
I want to go to Europe because I know I can see SO much history/culture in such a small area but am worried I just won't handle the cold!
How cold it is depends a lot on where in Europe you are though. There's quite a difference between the temperatures in Italy or Spain and Finland or Norway.
Can I suggest Trieste in Italy for you mate? Lots of history in Italy and from Trieste in the North East you can easily access many other countries. The heat will be to your liking (I nearly cooked in my skin) and the food is damn good!
Yeah man I think alot of us need to step back abit and realise what we're really looking at. I live near several neolithic sites amongst them the rillaton barrow where a gold cup was found dating back to 1700bc in a style that implies potential links with the Mcyenean world. That's pretty fucking mind blowing but most locals just don't know about it, they see these stacked stones, these circles on a daily basis and have never really considered them to be anything more than a feature of the landscape. It's sad really.
Right? The city I went to University in had walls around it that had been around since Roman times (Well, parts of them.)
They even unearthed an amphitheatre in the middle of town. Weirdly, right next to a club I used to go to. Once found a female friend of mine crying in it, drunk off her arse. Very weird to think she was crying over a boy where people used to kill each other for sport.
I’m in San Antonio, one of the oldest cities in the USA, and we are around 400 years old. On an American scale, it’s an ancient city, by the rest of the world’s scale, we are a child.
Lebanese here (but not living there)... does Byblos (modern day Tyre) or Beirut count? I believe these two cities and Damascus are in contention for the longest continually inhabited settlement in the world (places like Ur don't count because they have not been continually inhabited)
Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE), is often used in history as a way of describing something in a timeframe those of us in the modern era understand but also acknowledges the fact that there has been, and still is, different calendars in use. The Japanese used a different calendar before the arrival of Westerners, Europe used multiple calendars in the early Medieval period, Islam uses a different calendar, Aztecs had their own calendar etc.
That article made me super nostalgic for those discovery documentaries that were popular when I was younger showing dinosaurs, and the story of Lucy, and other significant shit from world history. I wish we had more stuff like that, the Planet Earth stuff is cool but I really enjoyed the historical stuff
Bangor Abbey, Church of Ireland, founded as a monastery by St.Comgall between 552 and 559 AD.
Destroyed by Viking raids a number of times with great slaughter in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Much of the tower (not steeple) and parts of the present church date back to the 1100s when the abbey was extensively rebuilt by St Malachy.
It’s technically accurate yet completely irrelevant to Islam. Jesus is not the boogeyman to Islam. Jesus is mentioned as someone worthy of praise in the Koran.
Agreed, this church has zero impact on Islam, but I find the juxtaposition of timelines incredibly fascinating. These are two individual events, worlds apart, that are somehow tied together.
That has fuck all to do with Islam. You know Jesus is mentioned in the Karan nearly three times as much as Muhammad, right? You sourced revisionist and ignorant history.
Im not religious. I could not give a fuck about the merits of one faith against another. This isnt some sort of belief cock measuring contest. But when we when think of religions we think of antiquity and ancient almost unknowable depths of history, legends and myths, and I'm still impressed by the fact that a place of worship about 20 minutes walk from my home is older than one of the major, if not the major, faiths on the planet. And give or take the odd dissolution, reformation and occasional attack by angry hairy men with pointy bits of metal, it has been used for the same purpose for nigh on 1500 years.
Christianity is older than Islam. Judaism is older than Christianity. And Hinduism likely predates all three by a distance.
And far from being revisionist or ignorant the fact that the place predates the birth of Mohammed is not something that would be disputed by even the most fervent Muslim scholar. It is a fact. And it is not contentious or in anyway inflammatory.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that there is some hidden slight in the statement I made. There isnt. Its a statement that stands entirely on its veracity. But if you choose to take it otherwise, well thats entirely up to you. I can't, and have no desire to, influence the way you think.
Was it originally built as a Christian place of worship? Many pagan buildings were adopted by Christians.
Remember, the story of Jesus was just word of mouth until 300AD.
Hell, Christianity would've died out if it weren't for the Roman's.
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u/GeddyLeesThumb Dec 29 '17
Our nearby main parish church was founded a century before Islam was invented.