Ur of the Chaldees which, we are told, Abram left over 4000 years go:
“Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.” – Genesis 11:31
ruins of Ur in modern Iraq , 2006/ M.Lubinski from Iraq,USA ((
CC BY-SA 2.0
So we even get it all wrong in the near past?
She found that at some points in its history, Ur might have occupied roughly 500 hectares — which is more than 80% larger than medieval London. At that size, it would have been one of the largest Mesopotamian cities of its time.
“A spy plane’s declassified snapshots reveal an ancient city’s size” at Nature
We are told that this estimate is eight times the previous estimate of Ur’s size. It implies, among other things, a culture sophisticated enough to handle large crowds of people.
So when Abram’s family headed out into the wilderness, they were not leaving a village but an actual city.
A declassified spyplane pic accidentally discovers this fact? So why be dogmatic about the far past? Wait till we have mapped the whole planet before splintering more lecterns.