List of oldest companies: Before 1300 | Hacker News Reader

List of oldest companies: Before 1300

en.wikipedia.org

416 pointsaleyan198 comments

I've had the amazing opportunity to stay at Hoshi Inn (4th oldest on the list)! I keep the card on my desk (https://i.imgur.com/AyWUGhg.png :-)

The courtyard garden the inn is built around is absolutely stunning, and the hot springs were the best out of all the ryokans we stayed at in Japan. The best part though is the hotel is actively managed and operated by the family - these wonderful people will meet you at the door.

There is concern about the future of the hotel, as the son who was assumed to take on ownership of the inn passed away suddenly, leaving the responsibility to the adult daughter. She's seems exceptionally capable (not to mention is incredibly pleasant), but she is unmarried/childless and seems unsure of her desire to marry or assume ownership of the inn. Clearly it would not be the same if the business continued on operated by someone outside the family.

I highly recommend watching this short film about the situation: https://vimeo.com/114879061

edit: replaced "bloodline" with "family" as I've been told Japanese culture resolves bloodline continuity issues via adult adoption.

It is traditional in Japan to adopt people into family firms.

eg see http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-adoption-ra...

Well that's an interesting solution! Japanese culture is not without its faults, but it is just so damn fascinating. Sigh... I need to go back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption_in_ancient_Rome

interesting similarity between Japan and ancient Rome, there.

It's a rather common arrangement in many cultures where things are organized around families (which is most of them, at some development stage).

The oldest name on this list that stood out to me is Weihenstephan brewery, founded in 1040 in Bavaria, Germany. They have some of the finest lagers I have ever tried. If you enjoy crisp, refreshing lager beers, I highly recommend their beers. My favorite one is probably the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, followed by the Hefeweissbier Dunkel.

Note: I am not affiliated in any way with the company, I just highly enjoy their beers.

Beer nazi here... Hefeweizen/weissbier is not a lager. Lagers are cold bottom-fermented beers. Hefeweizen is warm top-fermented beer.

There's nothing nazi, nor anything really to apologise for, in that. A weissbier, especially a dark variant, is really quite different from crisp lagers. Crisp is not really a word I'd use to describe weissbier at all.

That said, they do make excellent weissbier, and if that style is unfamiliar to you, you're in for a treat.

My mistake. I've always incorrectly grouped them with lagers in my mind, but it does indeed look like they are top-fermented beers.

I'm actually surprised, there are quite a few beer variants that I assumed were lagers that are actually ales, including Berliner weisse, kölsch, and gose [0].

[0] https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/style/

Kölsch is actually a weird one. It's true that Kölsch is an ale and Kölsch yeast is a top-fermenting ale yeast, however the style also calls for lagering the beer at cooler temperatures at the end of fermentation, which is the same process that all true lagers undergo. This is why Kölsch has a clean lager-like taste, and is often mistaken or debated as a lager.

See also: California Common / Steam Beer, which is sort of the opposite case (lager yeast fermented at ale temps)

Also the reason as to why so many new microbreweries tend to brew ales rather than lagers. Ales are much more temperamental and can be fermented at around room temperature thereby making homebrewing much more accessible.

Wouldn't that make ales less temperamental?

They're probably most known for their lagers/pilsener, maybe he meant he also likes their wheat beers?

They're definitely best known for their weissbier - especially historically. Lager/pilsner is only 150 years old.

Didn't know that. Here in US, Ive mostly seen lager on tap.

Well, might be geographical/context sensitive, then. They could well be better known for lagers in the US, which being overall better known for weissbier.

>Beer nazi

You may want to reconsider this phrasing.

Brew nazi?

Nah, brits will think you're talking tea.

When I write this minikites is downvoted for no good reason.

As much as I support freedom of speech I also think it's unwise to normalize nazism.

Reminding people not to normalize nazism isn't something one should be downvoted for in my book.

Just as an alternative point of view, they're debasing and ridiculing the term, whereas you're helping to inflate its importance by trying to keep it a taboo.

As an aside, here's an interview with the Jewish actor who played the Soup Nazi: http://uproxx.com/tv/soup-nazi-interview-seinfeld-apartment/

Well, I give you an upvote for that.

Good answer but I don't agree.

Taking offense at "beer Nazi" could lead someone to infer that you believe the term Nazi must only be used in a dignified context. Who is normalizing what is in the eye of the beholder, as people have been belittling Nazis since the 1930s.

Ok. Let me argue a bit further:

Whatever we've done lately obviously hasn't worked. Seinfeld has been sent again and again and yet we see nazis marching proudly in Charlotteville and elsewhere.

The world should not forget what nazism caused, what communism caused, what nationalism caused, what racism caused etc.

I'd be tempted to say: learn kids to hate those things but I'm not a fan of big words.

But I certainly think more focus on history lessons would be a good thing.

Or maybe we need something similar to this, only for thoughts: https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of...

A bit of an orthogonal argument: the problem isn't Nazis per se, it's what Nazis believed. Treating the idea of Nazis as too serious to make fun of and treating the idea of making fun of Nazis as a noble goal both have the fallacy that the thing we're saying "Never again" to is people with swastikas and straight-arm salutes. Now, yes, there were a few of those people at Charlottesville. But there are a lot more people who have the same ideology as Nazis - that ethnic minorities are the cause of the ethnic majority's economic anxiety, that a special police force to put ethnic minorities in concentration camps is totally fine as long as there are valid laws supporting that, that local opposition to this police force is illegitimate and treasonous, that the sexually "deviant" are ruining the integrity of our culture, that we have more of a duty to the well-being of our own race than to the survival of other races, etc. - without having any of the visible trappings of Nazis. The more that we say that the thing we object to (either by avoidance or reappropriation) is "Nazis," the more we make room for people with the same beliefs to prosper under different names.

(Side argument: putting the focus on "Nazis" also seems to invent distance between the man on the street in 1930s Germany, who just wanted a good life for his family, a prosperous economy for his country, and success for his nation's troops, and us in our own countries today, because that man lived in Nazi Germany and voted for the Nazi Party. It explains away the fact that an entire country like any other Western country suddenly went along with the Nazi agenda because that country was, somehow, full of Nazis, who are, somehow, different from us.)

I have seen lots of people make the argument that "Nazi" is a bad descriptor for anti-Muslim beliefs/policies that closely resemble historic Nazi anti-Jewish policies, because they're anti-Muslim and not anti-Jewish. (Usually this comes with some sort of argument about "Judeo-Christian values," or about how Islam is different, or something - and when I point out that the same sorts of attitudes were prevalent at the time against Jews and Judaism, they seem to think it's an answer that those people were wrong and they're right.) I think that's a sign that we've failed badly to teach "Never again" in a meaningful way, in a way that realizes that the problem is not to make sure it's never 1930s Germany again - of course it never will be. It will be somewhere else, someplace else, and some other people.

I have the impression that there's also a cultural aspect. People from different parts of the world have noticeably different responses to such jokes. Lots of them are on HN and, not realizing who's who or what the gap is between them, each tends to think the other obviously wrong and/or an asshole.

Agree. Also I want to point out I'm not offended by this in any way.

I'm just arguing that downvoting someone for pointing this out is counterproductive.

Lots of breweries. Belgian Abbeys; Grimbergen, Affligem... Can anyone opine on how similar today's beers might taste to how they did "back in the day?" I'm sure some of the beers are based on the original recipes, and with the Reinheitsgebot, it's fairly plausible that all of the ingredients in the German beers in particular are very similar. But I'm not sure how the process might have changed over the years, or how the ingredients might taste different now than they did a century ago.

The modern Trappist Belgium styles ("dubbel, tripel" etc.) were pretty much conceived by Westmalle in the 1920s-1930s. (https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/a-brief-h...). Duvel is the template for the Belgium Golden Strong variety of beer -- that also was developed around the 1920s-1930s. (http://allaboutbeer.com/article/belgian-strong-golden-ale-2/)

So, no, the beers back then did not taste similar to today's beer. I would say that lambics might be the closest reflection to a style that is close to "back in the day". (http://lostbeers.com/lambic-the-real-story/) Even then, the link between today's lambic and the past only goes to the 1700s at best, and it's not clear how representative it is (at least what I can see from skimming the linked blog with Google Translate's help -- https://lambik1801.wordpress.com/).

There are also plenty of technical differences between brewing now and brewing then that would make for a different taste. It was probably a bit sweeter (less attenuation), possibly spiced different before the 1600s, possibly smoky until coal drying came into the norm, probably dark until pale malt was developed in the 19th century, probably had more room for sour notes (before pure yeast cultures were developed in the late 19th-early 20th century), etc.

Beers today taste nothing like they did back then. Microbiology aside (today's beer is made with pure-bred yeast, back then it was a wild mix of microbes), pale malt was not produced until the 17th or 18th centre, and the pale lager beers we nowadays associate with traditional German beer were developed as late as the 19th century.

It also would have been warm, flat, made with fire-dried malt (so smoky)[1], and possibly made with bittering agents other than hops, like gruit[2].

[1]https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-beer-tasted-like-s...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit

I did a beer tour of Belgium and apparently all of their beers are very modern (at most ~100 years old), and the dates refer to either the first brewery in the area, or the abbey itself.

Not specific to Belgian/German beers, but I found this interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vo36v/durin...

Doesn't make a sense to include Grimbergen and Affligem there, these are both owned by the same multinational (Heineken) and neither is still being brewed on site in the abbey.

Everything swerner wrote, with a minor interjection: part of a brewery's identity is based on their water source (nuances in chemical composition have a certain influence on the brewing process), so a brewery that stood out due to their well or spring 500 years ago might still do so today. Or not at all, since the interaction between ground water and geology can change a lot in that timeframe.

Amazing beer, agreed. Another recommendation: My favorite Munich-style weiss beer is from Franziskaner (founded in 1363). It's in my top 3 beers of all time.

Franziskaner weissbier is also one of my favorites, right up there with Weihenstephaner hefeweissbier. Both are top 5 German beers in my book for sure. They are both extremely easy to find in California (SF Bay Area) as well, which is great!

I rate the the Schöfferhofer above the Franziskaner. But only just.

Funnily enough, my all-time favourite weissbier is the Kumulus from Airbrau, the only beer brewed in an airport terminal! It sounds like a gimmick, but it's actually really good.

For those here into German wheat / Hefeweizen beers: Schneider Weisse offer a range of excellent regular Hefeweizen beers as well as an annual special limited edition (named TAPX).

While the regular TAP7 (a Hefeweizen Dunkel) and TAP5 (a hoppy, fruity Hefeweizen reminiscent of an IPA) are fantastic already and stand out among wheat beers the TAPX edition is a very unique treat. The Tap X Cuvée Barrique for example is a creamy and dry wheat beer that tastes like wild berries, figs, and vanilla.

Quite hard to get hold of unfortunately, especially as for the past limited editions.

Fully agree, Schneider Weisse is excellent. Other great Bavarian Weißbier breweries are Hopf and Unertl, but they're probably even harder to get outside of Bavaria.

I’m unimpressed with the Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen beer.

That said, there is a company in Austin, TX - Live Oak - who makes an incredible Hefeweizen. Every time I go back to Austin, I hunt down this beer and enjoy it with a “Detroiter” pizza from the Via 313 food truck at a bar called Craft Pride.

Now that I live in San Diego, I have an incredible selection of local brew to choose from, but I have yet to find anything that tops that hef.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/383/1062/

Live Oak Hefe is my No. 1 here (right in front of 512 Pecan Porter), and one of the finest beer I've had period. If you haven't been to the Live Oak tasting room across from the airport, it has a variety of rarer German styles as well. German immigrants settled in this part of Texas, which means there's a lot of craft breweries that give someone who drinks marzens and weisens year-round (me) great alternatives to Weihenstephaner and Spaten.

Via 313 is good, but man, nothing on the Neapolitan that Pieous makes. To bring us back onto the topic, water-barley-yeast-hops and water-flour-yeast-salt recipes say that there's longevity in simplicity. Makes one want to give up making technology, or focus on distilling it down to the essential.

Hofbräu Hefe is the best commonly available hefe in the states imho.

Bonus ancient beer knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bappir

Yeah, I marvelled a bit when I first saw that they were licensed in 1040. Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier is excellent.

They seem pretty bizarre as modern breweries go. Originally operated as part of the abbey, they are now somewhat joined with TU München. Hard for me to even say if they are really the successors to a continuous organization from 1040.

The only Weihenstephan I knew before reading this was Weihenstephan Milk [0]. I'm guessing they are a different company though.

[0] https://www.molkerei-weihenstephan.de

Seconding. Weihenstephaner is usually my beer of choice if it's on the menu.

Weihenstephaner's hefeweizen is my favorite beer of all times. It's quite difficult to find here in Seattle, but I guess that makes it more special :)

Doesn't seem that uncommon around Seattle: https://www.weihenstephaner.com/product-finder/

It looks outdated, or at least for the three bars that are close to my place :(

Good beer! And pretty decently priced (in my parts, at least). ~$3.50 for a pint, if you can find it at a liquor store.

Of course lager was only invented in the nineteenth century, so presumably they made very different beers before that.

it probably depends what you mean by lager. and calling weihenstephaner a lager is questionable.

Their main beer is a "Helles" :)

Weihenstephaner is mostly known for their Weißbier which is OK. Their Helles tastes like shit, though, at least compared to other Bavarian breweries.

Which is amazing as well, by the way.

their most famous in the US is a hefeweizen, though.

Helles is regional to Bavaria and also the dominant beer. Hefeweizen is secondary choice but strong in export to the world :)

I think it's hard to argue it's the same company in some cases. The breweries in particular used to be a brewery in said city (the city had right to have a brewery). Different owners, different locations, later different legal companies, periods of inactivity, etc.. The continuity is lost beyond "there was a brewery in this town 600 year ago".

The list is interesting entertainment but I am skeptical about how they determine oldest other than what a wikipedia page says in some cases.

It's not like we are talking about dates which have been certified by experts at auction houses for personal property.

I'll just throw in here that faking contracts and certificates has been a huge business in the last ~1200 years or so in Europe. Many cities who claimed to have been founded a thousand years ago (or whatever) had to cede those claims since the historical papers were faked (usually hundreds of years ago).

Wow, this web page looks like it hasn't been updated since 1439: http://www.luebeckaltstadthotel.de/

* Loads instantly

* Provides all relevant information at a glance

Needs more Javascript?

And doesn't work as they intended, the links behind the picture isn't actually click-able.

Yea, same here on Vivaldi. It probably looks correct in Netscape Navigator.

Sites like this are pretty cool to stumble upon though. They are a snapshot in time. It's not even /that/ old. It takes you back to a simpler era where pages loaded on dialup.

* Difficult to read

* Ugly as heck

When you are successful and have stood the test of time, who needs a website? In 100 years or so, there probably won't be such a thing as html in popular use any longer.

The web design company (http://www.online-media-werbeagentur.de/) seems out of business though :)

The copyright date is 2006. It's amazing that a site design like this would have been built as late as 2006. It looks more like something from 1996.

Oh, and I just noticed that if you change the language to German, there is a link to a photo gallery:

http://www.luebeckaltstadthotel.de/tischbein.htm

I don't know what kind of websites you were using in 2006, but most small companies in Europe were literally just getting online, and their owners' ideas of design were vastly different than what the designers would recommend.

Those kind of simple HTML websites were going for over 1500 Euros, which is insane, since Wordpress and Drupal existed and had way better themes and functionality.

People just weren't interested or seeing the possibilities of the Web, even in 2006 (and even today!), they just got a website because it was a "new fad" or someone said they can get more customers.

Tell you honestly, I prefer these kind of informative websites rather than nowadays Bootstrap blobs, where you need to full-page scroll several times trying to get some idea but all you get is 3 large icons in a row and sometimes a big green button if you're lucky.

That might explain why the web design company is now out of business.

They probably changed the room rate and copyright year periodically

You apparently haven't tried looking for a web design house to work with lately. Maybe not that dated, but often 10 to 15 years behind the present times.

Couldn't resist a look at the page source. Absolutely no javascript.

Oh, and:

  <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">

Nice :)

I love coming across old sites like that. So much nostalgia. :)

It contains all the information you need, loads immediately, etc. It's a perfect web page.

I do share your appreciation for simple, static pages that get the job done, but the layout on this site is totally messed up for me, totally unaware of dpi I assume.

It does actually have a fluid grid, so it is responsive down to about tablet width. It does not display correctly on phones however, which I suppose is a fatal flaw for a hotel site.

>>Wow, this web page looks like it hasn't been updated since 1439

Can't be, internet wasn't created until the 17th century.

On the other hand, all the relevant info is there. Maybe looking "old" is by design, being a very old hotel and all?

I appreciate their animated gifs.

prices are in euros so it has been updated sometimes in the 21st century.

Equally interesting would a list of companies that lasted for 500, 750, or a 1000 years but then failed.

Imagine being the last person to run a 1000 year old company.

Well the oldest company on that list was bought and now only exists as a subsidiary. Imagine being the person behind that decision. To end a 1500 year old dynasty with the stroke of a pen.

I felt quite sad to read the fate of the top of that list

> Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd. (株式会社金剛組 Kabushiki Gaisha Kongō Gumi) is a Japanese construction company which was the world's oldest continuously ongoing independent company, operating for over 1,400 years until it was absorbed as a subsidiary of Takamatsu in 2006.

The future of Hoshi Inn (#4 on list) is uncertain as well, see my other comment for details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16187837

It wasn't absorbed just because, the company has collapsed.

One take away from this list is that no software firms have survived. I would recommend hotels or booze if you want a business to last.

Serve an eternal need and you'll have an eternal business

The list ends at 1700. There weren't many software companies around at the time.

(Oh, wait, is that the joke? Sorry.)

This was likely said in jest but also contains a solid kernel of truth.

On the other hand, the same forces that make for high turnover in the software industry also make it more fertile for new startups.

I had a fun run-in with this q couple of years ago. We had a field in company profile fkr the year of founding whose validator was '4 digits'.

I laughed, but this reminds me of an article that was posted here a while ago: http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programm...

It's very easy to get dates wrong.

The oldest restaurant in Europe is in Wroclaw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piwnica_Świdnicka

I once went there without knowing the fact, and it amazed me. It feels so different to sit between those old walls, trying to imagine how the place used to be before or during WWII, or in the 13th century...

I grew up in Waterloo, Belgium. There's a museum there where one half is dedicated to the Battle of Waterloo, and the other side is a museum of the town history. There's a photo of the road right outside the building taken during German occupation with swastika banners lining either side ... and then you look out the window and see the current scene, it's eerie.

Stiftskeller St. Peter is much older, according to this list: before 803.

Maybe the difference is that Stiftskeller offered rooms so it's not technically a restaurant?

Weihenstephan is still one of my fav breweries. Would be nice to see articles regarding how some of these companies managed to keep going for this long.

“Be in a timeless industry” seems to have heavy weighting :-)

Most are hospitality or alcohol production, it looks like.

"Be in a timeless industry” - then there should be at least one brothel in the list..

I have a hunch that brothels are rarely a family business.. so that might be a reason why there is none. :)

Timeless would probably include "timelessly legal" as a component.

The older tiers of this list seem to be heavily dominated by Japan, Germany, and Switzerland. Is that reflective of something other than the demographics of non-"New World" contributors to Wikipedia?

Japan's dominance is likely to be heavily influenced by the fact that families could adopt adults to continue running the business. This would have helped substantially to keep family run businesses running competently much longer than their equivalents in countries where that wasn't the tradition. That's probably not sufficient to explain 50 generation (!?) but could very well explain 20 or so.

Germany, Austria and the UK, mostly seem to be breweries and inns/pubs. I'd speculate that some of this is likely to be monastery or abbey run so, again, it's not as family dependent as most businesses would have been. Also, if you find a popular spot for serving beer in one of those countries, say near a major market, you'd be getting punters for generations.

Switzerland's a bit less obvious. Possibly it's to do with its stability and conservativism?

Surviving these millenia requires avoiding the situations where businesses are mass-confiscated or the population is destroyed by disaster. So:

- not being colonised (rules out New World, Africa, middle east, India)

- not going through Communism or one of the less business friendly dictatorships (rules out Eastern Europe, Russia, China etc)

World War II certainly counted as a disaster in both Germany and Japan's case, and both countries had more localized civil strife throughout the millennia as well.

That's not to disprove your point, I suppose, but perhaps to make the perseverance of those companies all the more fascinating.

Yes, but in both cases the Allies went in without looting intentions and some intent to maintain as much of the surviving society as could be de-Nazified. Very rare in history.

(This is not to say that looting didn't happen; the V2 rocket programme was explicitly looted, for example)

It's mostly about continuity of records and property rights. Most countries a) didn't have written records of ownership until relatively recently, b) had a collapse of government that led to the loss of records or c) had a revolution that involved mass confiscation or redistribution of property.

Japan, Germany and Switzerland have been efficient bureaucracies since time immemorial. They've had brief periods of trauma, but they haven't experienced an upheaval with the profound and lasting impact of something like the Russian revolution, the Great Leap Forward or the British Raj.

They are also cultures that highly value economic stability and family ownership, although I think this is a secondary factor. I have no doubt that there are huge numbers of family-owned businesses that would be on this list, but for the fact that no records exist to demonstrate their age.

It's affected by several factors.

Survivor bias, most prominently. "To be listed, a brand or company name must remain operating, either in whole or in part, since inception."

Surviving was helped by continuity of social structures: Japan and Switzerland have seen very little external upheaval, while Germany's contemporary territory, despite unable to claim the same, has also seen a strong adherence to local institutions throughout. These companies tend to be, disproportionately, small, local affairs, so a tight-knit group of people was able to sustain them throughout generations as borders were being redrawn on the macro level.

In places where warfare and demographic change led to the movement or fall of entire populations, the continuity of such institutions was put at risk.

As a related factor, survival of documentation and the quality and continuity of recordkeeping also plays into this list.

The US were founded in 1787, Columbus reached America in 1492, so how do you expect to find companies there older than that?

Right, obviously they're not going to be in the New World. The question is why those countries, of all the ones in the Old World? There's very little in France, the UK, Norway, Albania, India, Syria, and a heck of a lot of other places with thousands of years of history.

> France

Two total wars (WW1 and WW2, plus numerous other invasions and revolutions).

> the UK,

has 10 of the list, not sure how many you're expecting

> Norway,

Population only 5 million. Considerable famine in 1690s.

> Albania

Italian occupation in WW2.

> India

British occupation

> Syria

French then British occupation, then Ba'ath, with coups.

> and a heck of a lot of other places with thousands of years of history.

Mostly lots of invasions. Britain hasn't been invaded since 1066. Japan has had plenty of wars but no serious land occupation since the Mongols.

But by that logic, Germany makes zero sense.

Relative stability, and good written records are probably a reasonable part of the answer.

Switzerland and Japan, maybe. What is now Germany was not particularly stable during the Middle Ages. Or the Early Modern era. Or the 20th Century for that matter.

Yeah; it's a relatively large place though, so maybe some of the companies were in areas that didn't get quite so beat up in various wars?

Maybe. But then why would there be more in Germany than, say, the U.K.? Or Italy?

The UK has never seen pubs as being worthy of preservation until more recently. If you look at the list that's what survives centuries.

We'd do quite well if the list was 'stately homes'.

There were people in America before Columbus got there. I guess it's a safe bet though, that even if they had companies, they didn't survive.

More likely, they didn't think in the terms of companies to begin with.

It's really incredible to see something like this. I was disheartened to see that Kongō Gumi was acquired in 2006 after 1,400+ years in business. It's just hard to wrap your mind around. But to see hotels and wineries that have existed for over a millennia is really quite amazing.

I hate to rain on the parade, but many of the ancient Japanese inn entries are a bit dubious. They're mostly based on traveler's reports that there was an inn at X/a new hot spring was found at X in year Y being conflated with the fact that there's an inn at X now: they may well be the same, but it's hardly ironclad proof of continuous operation.

>>but it's hardly ironclad proof of continuous operation.

Beats the rest of the evidence, no? Also, we're not betting our lives in this...

There sure is alot of pub and accommodation entries, but then that is one area that technology and indeed, industrialization and the other progressive phases in society have not impacted as much as other industries.

On a positive and encourage note - not one single manufacturer of weapons listed at all.

Sorry to disappoint you:

1526 Beretta Italy Firearms

1578 Klett Germany Firearms

1674 Sabatti Italy Firearms

Ah, darn, I missed those somehow, oh well. Appreciate the correction - learn more from being wrong.

Likely because guns went through a lot of recent technology disruptions.

Nonetheless, Colt was founded in 1855 and is doing fine. Unless laser handguns become a thing I don't see them going down for the foreseeable future.

Hirter beer still sucks, even if it has been around since 1270.

Funny, i actually really like Hirter - specially their more traditional red beers

StoraEnso is marked as Finland, but that is due to a recent merger and the location of the HQ of the current company. The company Stora Kopparberg operated a mine in Falun, Sweden from which company shares exist from 1288.

Missing this?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avedis_Zildjian_Company

Zildjian is on the list, it's just not from before 1300.

Interestingly, the list lower on the page that has companies from 1300 to 1399 is twice as long. Does anyone know if something significant happened in the world that leaves so many more companies from that century around?

Should not the church be on top of this list?

I was thinking there would be a very good case for the Vatican to occupy the number one spot.

Whether seen solely as the papal organisation , or as a kind of continuation of the (Western) Roman Empire, these guys have been in day to day business for at least close to two thousand years. And have the archives to prove it. Wanna check up on some royal correspondance from the year 500? They may well have the actual letters stashed away somewhere.

Also: I don't really think the for-profit filter disqualifies them here.

Another interesting tidbit to add here: one of the official titles of the pope, pontifex maximux (high priest), has its origins in the kingdom of Rome, well before the Republic was established (509 BC). Though written records don't exist of that time period, its inception is traditionally accounted to the second king of Rome, Numa (rulership ~715 – ~673 BC). This makes it one of the oldest titles, if not the oldest official title still in use.

2700 Years is nothing. At my synagogue in Southern California we have a couple dozen Kohens, a title in continuous use (with varying and evolving responsibilities to be sure) for at least 4000 years.

The continuity of the Vatican can be questioned on several fronts too.

How so? Regardless of crises, schisms, decampings for Avignon, low points, and more crises, the Pope residing in Rome today is in a very real sense the successor of the guys who set up shop in the first century CE.

This list looks like it includes for-profit only. Also, with the church, it's "company" status is relegated on a per-country basis, usually to gain non-profit taxation benefits. So it's a little murky there.

Churches are some of the wealthiest organizations out there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_organizatio...

And let's get serious, some "church" related activities are hardly not-for-profits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg

That list doesn't include states, which are pretty wealthy. And I'd say you should include states as much as churches in the comparison, because the Catholic Church, at least, is historically much more akin to a state or empire than to a business. (I think your argument could apply to the more recently formed churches.)

As for your video link, that's about televangelism, which is extremely recent. Even Tetzel wasn't really in it for his own personal profit.

Something I can't help but notice: all of the countries on the list are currently wealthy, advanced economies.

Cause or effect?

Both? Most likely it's because those countries have strong traditions of record keeping and have been fairly stable culturally.

Maybe it's a reflection of a sort of long term, virtuous loop. Stability brings wealth, wealth reinforces the need for stability. Shocks can occur (e.g. Japan and Germany most recently) but note how quickly they're right back where they were, at least on multi-generational timescale.

"Wealthy, advanced economies" is quite extensible concept. There are some small, not so wealthy countries on the list. No real correlation here.

And if you are wondering, why Nigeria is not on the list — well, isn't it obvious? I mean, even if the country was very successful during its history, but barely keeping on the float right now — probably the 1000 y.o. family business wouldn't be currently active as well.

All the countries on the list are OECD members, and Poland is the only one that was not a member prior to the end of the cold war.

Latvia and Slovakia entered after Poland, for instance. Won't check the rest.

And, anyways, does OECD membership really account for something? Who is not a OECD member nowdays? African countries? Well, I believe it isn't a surprise for you there aren't many known thousand-year-old businesses there (there hardly is a "thousand-year-old history" at all, same as South America), and this is not entirely related to a country doing well right now. I bet you don't consider Latvia currently doing better than Arab Emirates, for example.

Basically, most of these old businesses are either in Europe or Japan. I'm only surprised that China, SK and Russia are not on the list, but you can find explanations for that. And whats left are, basically, "countries w/o history".

So, no, I don't believe you could find a causal relationship here, unless you are basically making it up.

Map of oecd: http://lcdn.24point0.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image...

They didn't bother with lesser known countries, good record keeping, fewer wars, definition of company.

it's incredible to realize that there still exists (technically) a company that was a thousand years old in 1500s.

Fascinating. Is it Japanese culture to maintain the family business?

I believe that it is tradition for the founding family to adopt the next generation head of the business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adult_adoption#Econom...

That seems like cheating.

Roman political families regularly adopted heirs as well. Rome’s first emperor Augustus was the adopted heir of Julius Casaer.

And to further the argument, the fact that one decided to put his blood son as emperor (Marcus Aurelius) is often seen has one of the early cause of roman decline. https://www.realclearhistory.com/2017/03/16/commodus_and_the...

Seems pretty advanced, actually, compared to the incestuous relationships to keep the bloodlines in Europe...

Is it though if the family traditions and ideology are passed on through the adopted member?

Yea this would be extremely OP in ck2.

"...excluding associations and educational, government, or religious organizations."

And yet it lists "government owned institution" Monnaie de Paris, "government-owned" Royal Mint, et cetera...

Ignoring those rule-breakers, 7 of Europe's top 10 are alcohol-related, while Japan holds the top 5 with primarily Hotel and Construction companies.

Don't recognize most of them but the other day I learned Nokia was incorporated in 1871 and it is still around.

Nintendo is also pretty darn old. Founded in 1889 and has been making games since the start. Talk about reinventing yourself with the market, or in recent history, inventing the market.

I just noticed that Stella Artois is 650 years old!

and still doing good...Here's their superbowl ad: http://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/stella-ar...

If you squint your eyes just right you could consider the Latin Catholic Church to be one of these.

Well, religious institutions are expressly excluded, so, no, neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the (dominant) subset thereof known as the Latin Rite (either of which might be want is intended by “Latin Catholic Church”) would qualify.

I was very surprised to see a pub (Sean's) owned by Boy George on this list!

Bought it probably for its history. He always seemed a genuine good person behind the flashy persona.

It's probably worth mentioning that his drug use has led to some pretty abhorrent behavior. That said I'm a believer that people should be judged on the sum of all their actions not reduced to their worst moments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_George#Conviction

he only "owned it briefly in 1987" according to Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianyifang in 1416 is the first Chinese Restaurant

The history says that restaurant was established in 1850s when the owners hired a chef from the original Bianyifang, and that the name was common amongst several restaurants. Sounds like a separate business to me.

Surprise! The oldest company in Ireland is a pub.

Well, what did you expect, a potato farm? :D

Given that prostitution often claims to be the oldest game in town, it's surprising that there are no brothels in this list.

I suspect that's because pretty much every country/civilization in the past 2,000 years at some point or another has banned prostitution as a matter of law/force.

Things changed a bit since Babylon days, about 3,000 years ago.

Even if there were a continuous prostitution enterprise operating over a sufficient timeline (which is not entirely implausible) legal and social acceptance issues would make it unlikely to be a continuous fixed location (brothel) or even a continuous overt business organization.

Is "Enterprise rental" some sort of auto-text substitution error?

Well, it's not what I intended, so probably. Fixed.

As a history buff I would love to see a similar list of these companies filtered down to the ones that are still using the original building. It is so rare that you see centuries-old organizations/businesses/anything that still use the same buildings that they were created with

This list looks very suspicious when the largest company ever, the VOC founded 1602 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company founded is not listed there. Apparently only small family companies are listed, not the big ones.

The 2nd biggest company of those times, the Fugger copper mining company founded 1494, dissolved 1657 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugger is also not listed, neither the 3rd largest, the Welser banking and merchant companies. Welsersche Handelsgesellschaft 1490 and ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welser

I suppose that the company has to be functioning in the present too.

Yes, that's the purpose. Oldest still existing companies. But I didn't like that the biggest ones, bigger than today's Amazon or Google are not in it.

I suppose that the company has to be old too

The theme here appears to be food and shelter.

I'd also wager that some students in Japan were given an assignment to research an old company or business and then place it on the list.

So you see that in the edit history - like 30 users from Japan all adding new entries on the same day?

There are world religions younger than Kongō Gumi.

Wow Japan totally dominates the lists! I wonder how they do that.

Why is there no East India Company in this list?

It's not currently in operation and hasn't been since the 19C. Also it wasn't set up till the 17C so is a whippersnapper in comparison to this list.

I think the rule is that the company has to be functioning in the present too.

Great list of potential startup names too!

Universities aren't included?

If you listed universities, it seems like you'd have to list churches as well, and then they would dominate the list. They're not really "companies", more like organizations.

The page even says "excluding associations and educational, government, or religious organizations."

From the Wiki page, its all companies 'excluding associations and educational, government, or religious organizations'.

So many breweries!

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