The Indus Valley civilization was one of the world's first civilizations. It is also known as the Harappan civilization. The Harappan civilization existed from around 3300 to 1700 B.C.E. This meant it began around 5,320 years ago and ended about 3,720 years ago.
If counting from the following Shang dynasty which has been universally recognized by historians, China has only about 3,700 years of recorded history, which is still a big gap from 5,000 years.
The oldest recorded civilization in the world is the Mesopotamia civilization. Overall, the 4 oldest civilizations of the world are Mesopotamia Civilization, Egyptian Civilization, Indus Valley Civilization, and Chinese Civilization. This article will briefly throw light on the oldest civilizations of the world.
Scientists from IIT-Kharagpur and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have uncovered evidence that the Indus Valley Civilization is at least 8,000 years old, and not 5,500 years old, taking root well before the Egyptian (7000BC to 3000BC) and Mesopotamian (6500BC to 3100BC) civilizations.
Archaeologists Find A Mysterious 5,000-Year-Old Cathedral
What civilization lived 7000 years ago?
Neolithic culture and technology were established in the Near East by 7000 BC and there is increasing evidence through the millennium of its spread or introduction to Europe and the Far East.
Indus valley has a city more than the 6500 years older. Indus civilization is also remembered as the Harappan civilization which was earliest known as the urban culture.
A prehistoric people who lived in the region before the Sumerians have been termed the "Proto-Euphrateans" or "Ubaidians", and are theorized to have evolved from the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia.
According to the most recent archaeological evidence, Aboriginal peoples have been living on this land for at least 65,000 years, confirming what Aboriginal people have always known, that they are the world's oldest continuous living culture.
Egypt, with a history spanning over 5,000 years, is the cradle of one of the world's earliest and most influential civilizations, centered around the Nile River.
Both empires were broadly comparable in terms of size and population, and even largely coextensive in chronological terms (221 BCE to 220 CE for the Qin/Han empire, c. 200 BCE to 395 CE for the unified Roman empire). At the most basic level of resolution, the circumstances of their creation are not very different.
State formation in archaic Egypt occurred around 3200 BCE, but not until around 1800 BCE in archaic China. Bruce Trigger, a Canadian archeologist, has previously compared this first period which, though separated by a millennium in absolute chronology, makes sense in terms of relative chronology.
Lasting roughly 2.5 million years, the Stone Age ended around 5,000 years ago when humans in the Near East began working with metal and making tools and weapons from bronze. During the Stone Age, humans shared the planet with a number of now-extinct hominin relatives, including Neanderthals and Denisovans.
The fertile plains and water of the Indus River were the people's most significant natural resources. By 5000 BCE, people were living around the globe in small family groups, tribes, or larger communities.
These oracle bones go back to 1200-1700 BCE (Li, 2002), which would make Chinese civilization 'only' 3200-3700 years old. This number is still extremely impressive, although it is more than a millennium short of the '5000 years' claim.
The Sumerian civilization is indeed older than both the Greek and Egyptian civilizations, making it one of the earliest cradles of human culture and development. This assertion is supported by archaeological and historical evidence.
Out of all the populations you named, it must have been to Semites, as they were both Middle Eastern populations. Indeed, the Sumerians were assimilated by the Akkadians, a Semitic population.
The Sumerians developed one of the earliest civilizations on earth (3500-1750 B.C.), but the existence of such a people and civilization was not even suspected until the middle of the 19th century.
7000 BC: Jiahu culture begins in China. 7000 BC: First large-scale fish fermentation in southern Sweden. 7000 BC: Human settlement of Mehrgarh, one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia.
Neanderthals came first, more than 50,000 years ago, and left their characteristic Mousterian stone tools among the stalagmites. Next came modern humans in at least two waves; the first littered the cave floor with beads and stone blades stained with ochre, about 45,000 years ago.
The life expectancy of the Early Bronze Age and its contemporaries is around 35-40 years. People died at a very young age. Infant and child mortality was very high. The limited food resources and infectious diseases were also factors, too.”
Within the Near East, Neolithic culture and technology had become established throughout much of the Fertile Crescent by 8000 BC and was gradually spreading westward, though it is not believed to have reached Europe till about the end of this millennium.
An international team of archaeologists with the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence has discovered a Late Neolithic settlement near the Tamiš River in the northernmost part of Serbia. Map of the sites surveyed by the ROOTS team.
“Mesopotamia is the earliest urban literate civilization on the globe—and the Sumerians, who established the civilization, established the ground rules,” says Kenneth Harl, author, consultant and professor emeritus of history at Tulane University.
