For the next few days I will focus on China, for Sunday, January 22, is Lunar Chinese New Year, and a whole lot of things are tormenting that country today.  To begin, is China the oldest civilization?  The answer is no. Well, then, shouldn't Africa be where early versions of us first settled?  This answer is yes, for  Australopithecus goes back perhaps 7 million years . and the  first  Homo sapiens  developed at least 300,000 years ago  on that continent, and maybe even several hundred thousand years earlier. However, if you do a thorough search for the oldest serious human settlement, Africa does not dominate.  It  all depends on what is really a civilization, or country . Historians seem to be in agreement that a true civilization/country needs to have a managed economy with infrastructure and political alliances.  A mere city is not good enough, for these have in history tended to disappear, sometimes by drought or armed conflict.  What did not qualify? Athens, Rome and Chichen