It’s also illegal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp. In another city it’s illegal to eat fried chicken with anything but your hands.
Oklahoma?
(Teeters on the edge of this rabbit hole. Pulls back just in time)
Most of these wacky laws are usually special cases rather than the verbatim text of the law. At least the ones I've looked into.
I'm a Brit and didn't realise until recently that England is one of the world's oldest countries (927 AD).
How do you define country? Continuous occupation and law?
I remember talking to David M as a kid about the works he kept touched up and the stories that went with them.
https://www.magabala.com/products/yorro-yorro
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/australia-s-oldest-k...
//edit// Some of your links just show that some people lived on that bit of land. I think you need more to claim a country.
Bear in mind passports are only relatively recent objects.
Also worth pointing out the British tried that "I think you need something more" line with Terra Nullius .. and their own legal system ditched that as rubbish:
https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/unsettled/reco...
Not having anyone say you're a different country, aka sovereignty.
These countries:
https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high...
remained sovereign for tens of thousands of years.
Whereas, for example, the "United Kingdom" as a country (of four kingdoms) only dates back to 1801, prior to which there was a long history of contested sovereignty claims, there's some interesting paperwork declaring a King of Scotland as a the King of England, etc.
Do you have a definition of what makes a country yet?
This question of oldest country that you've laid claim to does rather rest on something that works about the globe so that we can compare.
The "definition" (as such) provided by 'relaxing' fails England as England has been claimed by a Scottish King to be his realm.
I'm with you though, I reject that definition.
You might as well say France only dates from 1945 if we follow your logic.
http://1704.deerfield.history.museum/popups/artifacts.do?sho...
to visit, absolutely. But you don't see the Americans insisting on getting their own ceremonial King as head of state in name only. They prefer to love that stuff at a visiting distance. This is also why "Downton Abbey" etc does so well in the USA.
As a British person who was involuntarily dragged around countless ruined Abbeys, castles, and monestaries for hours as a sprog by my parents, I can assure you that there exist plenty of British folk with an active disinterest in "old stuff", as you put it.
It is true that British people do make more of their identity about it, and they tend to ignore _really_ old stuff (i.e. most of the quirky stuff is Victorian, not _that_ old).
(disclaimer, am British)
It's just London especially has been around for so long that this sort of stuff just accumulates. The charity that exists purely to help look after just the Thames crossings in London that was doing this is itself almost 1000 years old for example. There is lots of old stuff - it's just part of life, not something that people go out of their way to give a shit about.