What is the oldest known Civilzation ?

Question

And was there any Civilization before the last Ice Age ?

Answer 1

The Western tradition holds that the settlements along the Tigris & Euphrates rivers in ancient Mesopotamia and now located in Iraq is the location of the first 'western civilization.  Civilization (not culture) being the first time nomadic people settled down into stable structures with established trade and agriculture.

But there are indications that China or India had signs of 'civilization' which predate that found on the Tigris & Euphrates.

So if you read the debates between Chinese & Western archaeologists of who had the first 'civilization' then you could familiarize yourself with all the various definitions, arguments, and evidence.

Answer 2

The oldest organized civilizations were Sumer and Egypt, each dating back

to about 3,200 BCE.

Answer 3

There are no known civilizations that existed before the last Ice Age.

It's a bit hard to pin down the actual earliest civilization. Jericho is a candidate, older than 9,000 years, though it was a single city. What we think of commonly as a civilization didn't really appear until at least 5,000 years ago. The earliest of these seems to have been in the so-called Fertile Crescent, but the Chinese, Olmecs, and others don't necessarily have "hard" early dates.

The Sumerians were very early. That's about the best I can do for a straight answer, and I'm ignoring difficulties with the actual term "civilization."

Answer 4

It is really unknown at the moment. Jericho is known as the oldest settlement on Earth. People around the world developed into civilizations at the same time. But lots of books seem to note that the people in the Fertile Crescent seemed to have developed into empires like Mesopotamia and Assyria.