This is a selected list of the oldest

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of ...

s on Earth for which there is knowledge about their existence in past times.

Determination of age

Generally, the age is estimated based primarily upon the age of any mountains it dissects; the age of the

sea The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...

ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wor ...

to which it eventually outflows can be irrelevant; for example, several rivers of the east side of the

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. The ...

are thought to be older than the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

into which they flow. If a river fully dissects a mountain range, then this generally indicates that the river existed at least at the time that the mountain range rose.

List of some of the world's oldest rivers

References

{{reflist *Age Rivers by age

Determination of age

List of some of the world's oldest rivers

See also

References