What Is the Oldest Country in the World? 301 Is a Legend

Guinness World Records lists San Marino as the oldest existing republic, “founded on 3 September 301.” UNESCO, which added the town and Mount Titano to its World Heritage List in 2008, does not give 301 at all. Its listing says the historic centre “dates back to the foundation of the republic as a city-state in the 13th century.”

The two dates sit about nine centuries apart. The 301 comes from the legend of a stonemason named Marinus, while the 13th century is when San Marino’s government starts to appear in the records. Several of the best-known answers to this question have a gap like that, between the date people repeat and the date the records support.

What is the oldest country in the world?

The usual answers are Egypt, united under one king around 3100 BC; Iran, where the civilization of Elam dates from about 3200 BC; Japan, whose monarchy is officially dated to 660 BC; and San Marino, the oldest surviving republic, founded in AD 301 by tradition. Only Japan’s monarchy and San Marino’s republic still continue, and both of their founding dates come from legend.

Each answer wins under its own rule, and each has a catch:

If oldest means	Usual answer	Date given	The catch
Earliest unified state	Egypt	c. 3100 BC	Conquered by Persia in 525 BC, a Roman province from 30 BC
Earliest civilization on its land	Iran	c. 3200 BC	The date belongs to Elam, whose independence ends around 539 BC
Oldest continuous monarchy	Japan	660 BC	Comes from a chronicle finished in AD 720; the first verifiable emperors reigned in the 5th or 6th century AD
Oldest surviving republic	San Marino	AD 301	Comes from a saint’s legend; UNESCO dates the republic to the 13th century

San Marino’s 301 comes from a saint’s legend

The US State Department’s background note on San Marino gives the founding story “according to tradition.” Marinus the Dalmatian, a Christian stonemason, fled the anti-Christian emperor Diocletian, hid on the peak of Mount Titano and founded a small Christian community there.

Even the legend’s date varies. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia tells it “according to the legend” but has Marinus, “a stonecutter,” reaching the mountain “about A.D. 350.”

The documented republic is younger. The office of its two Captains Regent, still elected every six months as joint heads of state, goes back at least to 1243, when the earliest known pair held it under the title of consuls. UNESCO’s advisory evaluation dates “a first document testifying its independence” to 1296.

San Marino’s own government has been pushed aside twice. Cesare Borgia held it in 1503, “but only for a few months,” in the encyclopedia’s words. On 17 October 1739, Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, the papal legate at Ravenna, occupied it and imposed a new constitution, and on 5 February 1740 the pope recognized San Marino’s rights and restored its independence.

Neither occupation lasted a year. In 1944, during the Second World War, German and then Allied troops entered the country, but the Allies stayed about two months and set up no military government. UNESCO still credits San Marino with “a unique, uninterrupted continuity as the capital of an independent republic since the 13th century.”

Japan’s 660 BC was probably fitted to a calendar cycle

The genealogy of emperors published by Japan’s Imperial Household Agency begins with Jimmu, dated from 660 BC, and counts the current emperor as the 126th. That date comes from the Nihon Shoki, a chronicle finished in AD 720, nearly 1,400 years after the accession it records, and no evidence that he existed has been found.

The chronicles’ early reigns run long. In the Kojiki, compiled in 712, Jimmu dies at 137, and James Murdoch’s 1910 A History of Japan says a reader stops being “bewildered by the mirage of centenarian reigns” only with the fifth century AD.

The usual explanation for 660 BC is credited to Naka Michiyo, a Meiji-era historian, who set it out in 1897. Chinese chronology grouped years into cycles of 60. Twenty-one cycles, or 1,260 years, made a great cycle.

The fifty-eighth year of each cycle, Murdoch wrote, “was supposed by the Chinese to be the year in which some revolution was liable to take place.”

The year 601, the ninth of Empress Suiko’s reign, was such a year, and 660 BC falls exactly 1,260 years before it. Murdoch thought this “the most plausible account” of how the chronicle’s authors chose their starting date.

Where the verifiable line begins is debated, but the candidates fall in the fifth and sixth centuries AD: Yuryaku, 21st on the official list, who died in 479, and Kinmei, the 29th, who reigned from 539 to 571. A 2016 New York Times explainer by Russell Goldman, reprinted by The Seattle Times, called the imperial house “the oldest continuous monarchy in the world,” though “evidence of the first 25 emperors is shrouded in myth.”

Japan still marks Jimmu’s legendary accession every February 11, as National Foundation Day. Japan’s declaration of war of December 8, 1941, which never mentions Pearl Harbor, was issued in the name of an emperor “seated on the Throne of a line unbroken for ages eternal.”

Egypt’s and Iran’s dates are real, but those ancient kingdoms fell

Egypt’s date has archaeology behind it. Upper and Lower Egypt were united around 3100 BC, give or take 150 years, under Narmer, whom most Egyptologists identify with Menes, the first king of a united Egypt in the history written by Manetho, an Egyptian priest of the third century BC. Some argue instead for Narmer’s successor, Hor-Aha. The Narmer Palette shows Narmer wearing the crowns of both lands.

Continuity is where Egypt’s claim fails. It fell to the Persian king Cambyses II in 525 BC, was independent again from 404 to 343 BC, fell to Persia a second time, and was handed to Alexander the Great in 332 BC. In 30 BC it became a province of Rome, an empire whose own end is still argued over.

Iran’s usual date, about 3200 BC, belongs to Elam, in the south-west of the country, where the Proto-Elamite period begins at Susa and leaves texts in a script that is still undeciphered. Elam’s independent history ends around 539 BC, when the Persian Achaemenid period begins.

Several listed dates come from founding legends

Ranked lists of the oldest countries apply a different test to each country, so, as with the first video game, the answer changes with the test. Several of their dates come from founding stories rather than records: Harshita Singh’s list of the eleven oldest countries gives Vietnam 2879 BC, Armenia 2492 BC and China 2070 BC.

Vietnam’s date is the start of the legendary Hong Bang period, as the Dai Viet su ky toan thu, a 15th-century chronicle, reckons it. Armenia’s goes back to 11 August 2492 BC, one of the dates scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries calculated for the mythical battle in which Hayk, the legendary founder of the Armenian nation, killed Bel.

China’s is the start date for the Xia dynasty proposed by a chronology project the Chinese government commissioned in 1996. There are no contemporary records of the Xia, and some scholars, especially in the West, consider it legendary or unproven, while most Chinese archaeologists consider it historical.

Every founding date in this argument that is exact to the day comes from legend, San Marino’s 3 September 301 and Japan’s 11 February 660 BC among them. The founding dates with evidence behind them are rounder: Egypt’s unification sits at around 3100 BC, give or take 150 years. Strictly FYI.