This might be sort of a fuzzy question with a fuzzy answer, but I’m curious. What are the oldest cities that have been, and still are, continuously inhabited? I’m not talking about some old dead city that’s been excavated, or one that was bombed out, forgotten, then eventually reinhabited. What cities have had a constant, dynamic population for a millenium? Two millenia? Dare I say it, three?
I would guess that London, Paris, and Prague have been around for more than a thousand years.
Two thousand? Rome, Alexandria, Bagdhad.
Three thousand? Athens? Jerusalem?
What about, say, Kyoto, Beijing, Cairo, Mexico City, Istanbul, or New Delhi?
Oldest village (not provably continuously inhabited): Dolne Vestonice, Czech Rep., ~30,000 years. (Accurate and cros-check-able radiocarbon dating to 28,000 BC(E).)
Jericho is known to have been inhabited relatively continuously (with a few periods when it was a deserted ruin) since something like 8000 BC(E).
I believe it’s inappropriate to conclude from the Wiki article and its references that Byblos is definitely older than Damascus, only that proof of age runs further back for the first than the second.