There seems to be quite a few places in which civilisation arose from independently. They do have time differences between them, so you could argue the 'first' was strictly the oldest, but if one civilisation was not affected by the other, nor was the start influenced by one another, and many of the civilisations of the respective areas are sourced by their respective cradle, it is a little unfair to say only one of them is responsible for civilisation as a whole. China, India, Egypt, the Levant, the Americas, they all had civilisations arise independently (or at least fairly separately, Egypt and the Levant are more related than the others would be.) Mesopotamia was the oldest of the bunch, it was also home to the first people to write and things, so we ended up with more documented stuff and more informative stuff, and I imagine that the progression of study has led to us finding more and more about other places, and being able to confirm times and significance of them. Very rarely was one civilisation started in any of these areas, too. It was usually a good few cities. Of course, some cities are older than others. Sumer was considered the first and thus the oldest. However, what makes that the case is based on evidence discovered. Say we discovered forms of writing in other places in the world, it might suddenly shift to recognising that place as the oldest civilisation. Combine that with, at times, reductionist education in schools and documentaries, and there is bound to be a good bit of confusion. Jericho is not granted this distinction of a 'civilisation', due to seemingly lacking more complicated financial, communicative, social systems, and the like.
