The world's oldest country ranks, China ranks third, so which country is the first to rank?
As we all know, China is a big country with a history of 5,000 years and is one of the "four ancient civilizations". But did you know that before the Anyang Yin Ruins were discovered, the countries of the world only recognized that China's history was only until the "Eastern Zhou" period, which is also clearly recorded in some history books.
And the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770 BC - 256 BC), which is only nearly 3,000 years old from now, so where did the "five thousand years of China" come from?
Yin Ruins (ruins of the capital of the late Shang Dynasty of China)
It was not until the beginning of the 20th century, after the excavation of the Yin Ruins (the ruins of the capital city of the late Shang Dynasty in China), that it proved that the Shang Dynasty really existed, and the history was recognized internationally. The excavation of Yin Ruins can be said to have almost completely changed the face of the history of the three generations of "Xia Shang Zhou" in the traditional historical view, and officially established the scientific status of Yin Shang society as a history of faith.
At the same time, it also plays a basic role in the early Shang culture and Xia culture. To a large extent, it filled the gap between the Chinese Shang culture represented by Erligang in Zhengzhou and the late Shang culture represented by Yin Xu, thus improving the chronological framework of the Shang Dynasty.
Facts have proved that our country is a country with a long history of 5,000 years. However, in the world ranking, China can only rank third, and the first country has a longer history, 5500 years. And it is — Iraq!
Perhaps in the eyes of many people, Iraq is just a small country in Asia with only 438,300 square kilometers, how can it have such a long history?
In fact, Iraq is indeed a country with a long history! Let me briefly describe the historical process of Iraq and you will know!
We know that the Tigris and Euphrates river basins were one of the cradles of the world's ancient civilizations, and as early as about the late 4th millennium BC, the Sumerians established the earliest city-states. The Sumerians invented the "cuneiform script" is the oldest script in the world to date, and was once widely adopted by the countries of West Asia.
In the early 19th century BC, the Amorite leader Sumuabu established the First Ancient Babylonian Dynasty! The code created by the sixth king, Hammurabi (c. 1792-175 BC), is the first relatively complete code of ancient slave societies that has been discovered so far. Around the 9th century BC, the Assyrians established the Assyrian Empire and the Chaldean Kingdom of Neo-Babylon established by the Chaldeans at the end of the 7th century BC, creating a splendid culture that had a great influence on ancient Greek culture.
Map of Iraq
By the 5th century AD, Iraq had entered a feudal society.
The Arabs occupied Iraq in the 1630s, when Iraq was once a province of the Arab Empire. It was not until the Abbasid period from 750 to 1258 AD, when the capital of the Arab Empire was moved to Baghdad, that Iraq became the center of the empire and played a very important role in the formation of Arab Islamic culture.
After the rise of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, Iraq was occupied in 1639 AD, when the Iraqi people carried out many uprisings to get rid of Turkish rule, which brought a heavy blow to the rule of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. It was also in the struggle against the rule of the Turks that the national consciousness of the Iraqi people began to gradually take shape.
It is worth mentioning that since Iraq was the center of the Arab Empire from the 8th to the thirteenth centuries AD, and the vast majority of Its inhabitants were Arabs, Iraq was also part of the Arab world, and the national consciousness of the Iraqi people was fully expressed in Arab nationalism. In particular, driven by the Turkish bourgeois revolution of 1908-1909, the national consciousness of the Iraqi people was further developed.
From the perspective of modern history, the Iraqi people have been subjected to imperialist aggression and plunder and feudal oppression, and finally under the hard struggle of the Iraqi people, and finally after the revolution of July 14, 1958, they completely got rid of the rule of imperialism and feudalism and established a nationally independent country - the Republic of Iraq!
Reference: An Overview of Iraqi History