5 most important places in history

You are deluded. More people died trying to take Stalingrad in six months than Jerusalem in four thousand years

Name a specific city that more have died for.

Vatican City swapped for Paris/London?

...

I genuinely don't know what to put there instead of it. Most of cities in Asia and Africa had only regional importance and cities in New World were around for only 300 years max. And Moscow seems on the same level of importance as Paris.

It's really impossible to know for a lot of reasons.

Is importance about how many people died trying to take it? I'd say it's more than that. Russians and a few wannabe world rulers have tried to take Stalingrad but it has no cultural clout beyond that. Meanwhile over 2 billion people view Jerusalem as a Holy land.

>>the central event of Christianity is not important

>>being important for a few years when Jesus was strolling about makes it the top 5 cities in all of history

Jerusalem is central in three of the worlds most influential religions, and a hub around which much of the conflict between them has turned. Crusades ruing a bell?

Events that happened in Jerusalem shaped all of Western history, and some of the history elsewhere.

So go ahead, make your own list, i'm wondering how it will look

Constantinople, probably. There were only about two, maybe three Crusades that were both directed at Jerusalem and noteworthy bloodbaths. The rest were focused on other goals and not all of them were that hard fought.

>Peking
>capital of the strongest country on Earth until 18th century

>Rome
>capital of SPQR and home of Pope

>Mecca
>center of Arabic civilization and holy place to all of Muslims which make up 1/3rd of Earths population

>London
>center of civilization, that at a certain time, controlled 1/3rd of landmass on this planet

>Paris
>center of West, the civilization that created modern world, for almost a milenium

How is Jerusalem more important than any of those?

>Peking
Time to stop smoking crack user

People cared enough about Jerusalem to try and conquer it for about 200 years.

Nothing in the scope of history. It has been a worthless dump for most of human history(including after both Christianity and Islam)

This is the true list

Peking
Rome
Mecca
Vatican City
London

>Muh cities

You want to be talking about coastlines and river valleys if you're going to rank places as historically important.

Josephus reports that over a million people were killed during the Roman siege in 70. Are those numbers inflated? Sure but we don't know by how much. It's ultimately unknowable.

>Most important places
>Everybody lists cities.

OK, fair enough, a lot of shit goes on in cities, a lot oof shit that goes on elsewhere is inspired by what goes on in cities.

What are the 5 most important places in history, NO CITIES edition?

Field of Agincourt?
Nevada nuclear test sight?
Cape Canaveral?
Squash Court at University of Chicago’s Hyde Park Campus? (IN a city, but not the city.)
The open ocean just outside the ship channel at Actium?

Whataya think?

>Paris
>center of the west
hahahahhahhahhahhahhahahhaaah
t. frog

I believe Rome and Vatican City can be the same thing, since Papal state and stuff. Vatican City itself exist for barely 150 years.

>area between several empires
>fought over since the time of ancient Egyptians
>useless lump
Geographically Palestine is very relevant.

Don;t your reasons for excluding Jerusalem exclude Makka even more?

>Vatican City itself exist for barely 150 years.
Okay disregard that, but point still stands

were it not for Jerusalem Mecca would never have become important.

>mecca
>center of Arabic civilization

what are you smoking? Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo have it well beaten and Mecca would be scrapping with Medina for fifth place

Mecca isn't actually all that important, and is much like Jerusalem where it's just spiritually and conceptually important. Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Kufa, Merv, and Cordoba were all much more important in Islamic history.

Yeah ancient Egyptians were surely fighting just to conquer Jerusalem. Levant is no doubt one of top 5 most important regions on the planet, but Jerusalem itself isn't.

>paris
>center of the West

Here's your (You), Claude.

>Mecca
>morso than Jerusalem
At least Jerusalem is pretty and you can grow olives there, As well as located in a strategic geographic location. Mecca really is useless desert to any non-Muslim.
>but muh cube
>but muh well
>but muh meteorite
No.

>Levant is no doubt one of top 5 most important regions on the planet
Doubtful. It just happens to be sandwiched between several other much more important regions on the planet.

Each nation had its own capital, thats why its impossible to find any actual center, but Paris was always seen as THE city.

>London
>2 centuries of relevance makes you the most relevant
Replace it with Baghdad or Constantinople or something.

>Peking
Bait. Was only ever relevant to China, not the world at large.

>Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo
>Arab
A no. Those are Arabized places but I wouldn't call them Arab. Arab = Arabian Peninsula.

>Was only ever relevant to China, not the world at large.
>1 billion people are not part of the world

>As well as located in a strategic geographic location.
It's really not, which is why it so often fell to decay. It doesn't have the resources or location to be much worth strategically. All the empires that happened to rule over it and did not fetishize it for religious reasons preferred other cities in the region for administrative or military purposes.

Geographically fhe Levant is even more important than those empires which surround it because they need it to expand to the civilized world plus trade access.

Rome used it as a buffer against the Persians which is in itself important.

Why are they all cities? What do you mean by "places?"

Was Peking more important than China?

Cairo was founded in 958. It was literally built by the Arabs.

Actual Arab tribes of the Arabian peninsula are different from the Imperial Arab identity that formed the basis of the Islamic world, and the latter formed mostly in these major cities.

China was hardly ever relevant until 20th century, I don't care how many people it had.

by whom? London was more important politically, Vienna more important culturally.

>Peking
>capital of the strongest country on Earth until 18th century

Beijing was only capital to the Qing and maybe one other shitty Chinese dynasty. China's had like half a dozen capitals.

It was relevant to the people who lived there. And when you are relevant to 1/7th of the world population, then you are fucking relevant.

>still being eurocentric

Nothing you said is an argument for why it should be more important than the Nile or the Tigris/Euphrates. The Levant is simply relevant, and only because of its proximity to these more important places in human history as well as its spiritual role in several religious myths.

More than London
That being said, London shouldnt be in the top 5 either

Didn't china's capital change constantly over the centuries?

>Vienna
>culturally important
t. Adolf

Imperial Arab identity is frozen in time. I see people in Syria, Egypt and Iraq are moving away from it instead of embracing it.

this seems like a plausible answer but it's unknowable.
>Josephus reports that over a million people were killed during the Roman siege in 70. Are those numbers inflated? Sure but we don't know by how much

Not just eurocentric. What impact did China have on America, Africa, Middle East or basically anything that isn't East Asia? They were a fairly isolated kingdom in perpetual civil war surrounded by steppe monkeys and horseniggers and their global relevance is restricted to the silk road.

>London was more important politically, Vienna more important culturally.

In the 19th century maybe
But from the 16th century to the fall of Napoleon, Paris that the most important city in Europe
Even the fucking Russians at the other side of the continent looked up to it

Which hardly changes anything about its long history in the Middle East and how its center of gravity was in the major cities mentioned earlier, not Mecca.

Actual list coming through

>Rome - Obvious
>Paris - Largest city in Europe for almost a millennia, centre of of art, literature, and science, and one of the most powerful and influential nations to ever exist
>London - Nexus of the industrial revolution, centre of world trade, business, and finance for over 2 centuries, centre of the largest empire to ever have existed
>Constantinople - City of the worlds' desire, largest city in the world for several centuries, geographically the most important city in the world, centre of all transcontinental trade for over a millennia
>Nanjing - Historical capital of China, largest city in the world for several centuries, heart of all trade, culture, and politics in East Asia

Honourable mentions:

>Babylon
>Moscow
>Cairo
>Guangzhou
>Jerusalem
>Athens
>Delhi
>New York

No, Mecca doesn't get a mention. Other than being a holy city, it is a geopolitical backwater, Muslim empires historically have centred around Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Constantinople.

But muh noodles...

The fuck are you doing here?

>imperial arab identity is frozen in time

well yeah considering the arabs lost the caliphate to the turks almost 700 years ago

The British empire made a much bigger mark on the planet ultimately.

Not an argument Zhang. I noticed the only people who make China look super important in history are Chinese themselves.

>what impact china have beyond it's own massive cultural sphere of influence.
Every country except Britain, Spain and Portugal is "irrelevant" by your criteria.

Ranking cities is a meme, they come and go and are sometimes built close to a much older city that was itself greatly important to human history. No one cared about London during the Bronze Age, and Babylon is long gone.

Better to rank historical regions defined by some persistent culture and geographical feature:

>Tigris-Euphrates and Nile
>Yangtze
>Indus-Ganges
>Northern Italy-Rhine-Southern England

And so on.

>Peking

Don't you mean Chang'an? Definitely more important than Beijing ever was for most of Imperial China's history. Also, I'd remove Mecca from your list, and add the following:

>Constantinople
>Baghdad
>Samarkand

>yfw I'm a white guy in the bible belt

Anyway, "super important in history" is a relative term. And the fact that you even use the phrase "super important" means it's time to stop debating with you. Carry on kid.

Well, if you are considering every nowadays country that you controlled at one point, then i think Paris would win.

t. ching

Josephus' reports are likely inflated, as were most recorded figures in pre-modern times. Second, even if a million died in the Jewish Revolt, it still makes the number of men who have died fighting for Jerusalem infinitely tiny when compared to many other conflicts in human history.

Is this a serious statement? Are you actually that ignorant of history?

Compared to fights over one single city?

Babylon (number one by far, powergap increases even more if we count the cities that were built on top of it like Ctesiphon and Baghdad)
Alexandria
Rome
Constantinople
London (least important on this list by far, put it here only because of personal biases, many other valid competitors exist)

>all these retards saying backwater shitholes like Jerusalem and Mecca are in the top 5 while omitting Babylon
Neck yourselves tbqh

I am not the guy you replied too. Of course its retarded to measure importance like that, i'm just messing around.

And in case you were replying to my post specifically.
>all of Europe
>half of Africa

France? Germany? The works of Hegel and Marx alone had a longer lasting impact on the world than anything that ever happened in China.

>everyone I disagree with is American
Why do people do this?

Building on that, you can figure out a couple of plains and plateaus that have been incredibly important in history:

>The Yangtze River Delta and North China Plain
>The Indo-Gangetic Plain
>The Great European Plain
>The Iranian Plateau
>The Mediterranean Basin

Lenin put Marx's ideas into practice with guns. Guns are powered by gunpowder. Gunpowder was invented in China.

Because Americans are the cancer of this board and everybody knows it

Chinks were the first to invent it byt they used it for fucking fireworks lol.

That might be true, but it's still an idiotic argument based on nothing.

I think Venice makes a fair shot for being an important factor in a lot of medieval history.

Guy who posted here

I'm confused. Where did I call that guy an American?

W

>Mecca

pic related

The recent thread which asked for nationality/ethnicity showed a lot of non-Americans go on here.

Bible belt is in America.

Not so fast. He could have meant the dutch bible belt, or Soviet bible belt. I think Sweden even has one.

It was definitely a locus of international trade, one of many 'world-cities' in history.

But also very involved from a geopolitical point of view, if one compares it to say, antwerp, hamburg or sevilla

But all of those were also very geopolitically important. The only difference is Venice was independent, while the others were capitals of larger territorial states.

I think there are different kinds of importance for cities, and the greatest tend to be those that combine more than one.

Thats the only reason why this board hasn't yet completely sunk down to shit and threads only about Hitler, Jesus, Muhammad and which USA president was best.

>peking
>meme created by the most autistic dynasty

no