I visited Iraqi Kurdistan in October 2018. The ancient Citadel of Erbil has possibly been occupied for 7,000 years, since the fifth millennium BCE, making Erbil one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in the world, although that’s somewhat contrived. In 2007, all but one of the 840 families living on the citadel were evicted prior to the start of a restoration project — a single family has been allowed to remain to ensure that there would be no interruption in the seven millenniums of unbroken inhabitation of the mound.