Nine Ancient Cities from Argos to Kufa in Order of Earliest Recorded Date

Argos is the earliest stop here: its page records evidence of settlement stretching back some 7,000 years to the late Neolithic, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Ancient writers including Homer also used the name Argives for the Greeks at Troy, and today about 21,000 people live in the municipal unit.

Mohenjo-daro was built around 2500 BC on a raised ridge beside the lower Indus in Sindh, Pakistan, and covered roughly 250 hectares. Its street grid ran close to the cardinal directions, a planned layout typical of major Indus Valley cities, and shifts in the river have both buried and eroded parts of the site.

Ancient Corinth flourished from around 900 BC on the Isthmus of Corinth and by 400 BC held an estimated 90,000 people. Rome destroyed it in 146 BC and Julius Caesar refounded it as a colony in 44 BC; the modern city of Corinth grew up after an 1858 earthquake destroyed the village on the old site.

Edessa is dated here to 813 BC, the traditional foundation by Caranus, founder of the Argead dynasty that produced Alexander the Great, so the date comes from ancient tradition rather than excavation. The city was called Vodena until 1923 and is known today for its waterfalls.

Sigeion was founded by colonists from Mytilene in the 8th or 7th century BC at the mouth of the Scamander in the Troad. Mytilene and Athens contested it in the late 7th century BC, and it was abandoned sometime between 168 BC and 23 AD; its name meant silent place.

Kepoi was a Milesian colony of the 6th century BC on the Taman Peninsula, three kilometers east of Phanagoria. Soviet excavations beginning in 1957 explored more than 400 burials, and the rest of the site has since been submerged by the Sea of Azov.

Stobi gets its place from a written record rather than a foundation: the historian Livy first mentioned it in 197 BC, in connection with a victory of Philip V of Macedon. It stood where the Crna River meets the Vardar, later became capital of the Roman province of Macedonia Salutaris, and lost its economy and infrastructure to invasions in the sixth century.

Shibam in Wadi Hadhramaut was founded around the 3rd century and became capital of the Kingdom of Hadhramaut in 300 AD. Its mudbrick high rise buildings, some reaching eleven stories, were built defensively, and it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.

Kufa closes the trail with the only exact founding year in the set: 638 CE, under the second Rashidun caliph Umar, on the Euphrates south of Baghdad. It became the final capital of Ali ibn Abi Talib and the founding capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Kufic script takes its name from it.