Geography is the last thing to be considered where thought/philosophy originated. It originated in 'doubt', 'wonder'. Egypt, Indus valley, Greece, or Babylonia, all can claim antiquity and being prior/ later do not minimize their importance.

And if the history of humanity is to be re-written, it will not be in the nationalist language of the last century.

The term philosophy is taken from the Greek word "φιληο" (phileo) meaning "to love" or "to befriend" and "σοφία" (sophia) meaning "wisdom." Thus, "philosophy" means "the love of wisdom". Socrates, a Greek philosopher, used the term philosophy as an equivalent to the search for wisdom. Also, the term wisdom is used as a general term for describing the intellectual probing of any idea.

The study of any discipline, such as Philosophy, should begin with its definition. Webster's dictionary defines philosophy as:

"the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics"

The definition highlights the nature of philosophical inquiry. Philosophers ask questions. These questions try to understand the metaphysical and physical world of man. Philosophy is considered to have developed as a form of rational inquiry in the cities of Ancient Greece.

The history of philosophy in the west begins with the Greeks, and particularly with a group of philosophers commonly called the pre-Socratics. This is not to deny the occurrence of other pre-philosophical rumblings in Egyptian and Babylonian cultures. Certainly great thinkers and writers existed in each of these cultures, and we have evidence that some of the earliest Greek philosophers may have had contact with at least some of the products of Egyptian and Babylonian thought. However, the early Greek thinkers added at least one element which differentiates their thoughts from all those who came before them. For the first time in history, we discover in their writings something more than dogmatic assertions about the ordering of the world -- we find reasoned arguments for various beliefs about the world.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Philosophy/Origins_of_Philosophy

The origin of philosophy is the questing human mind. Whether we do it well or poorly, it seems to be endemic to humanity to philosophize.

It seems a self-evident truth that love of wisdom and "the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics" must have existed long before the Pre-Socratics. How can anyone believe that all people before them were dogmatic and unreasonable? This reminds one of racist characterizations about temperament. Clearly, the past is a foreign country to Issam Sinjab. I think that it appears this way to him because of an accident of preservation with the texts showing the initial reasoning process surviving in the Greek but only the final conclusions in the authoritative text of other earlier traditions. The real problem here is that the privileging of Greek history continues while it is only slowly being placed in the historical context of Eastern Mediterranean history, especially when it comes to the history of philosophy. It is only in the second half of the twentieth century that the Greeks began to be placed in their historical context by the specialists such as Martin Litchfield West. I particularly agree with Bill Johnson that we should not define philosophy by means of a certain degree of proficiency or we cut it off at its roots in a sense.

Here is a good link on mythopoeic thought.

http://www.friesian.com/greek.htm

Although not initially formalized as a study, philosophy is as old as Homo sapiens. When humans began to think, reflecting on such questions as "Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? What is the purpose to life?", philosophy was born.

The old man with limited efficacy of his limbs advised the young people of his tribe/group thousands of years ago started the subject "Philosophy".

Do you agree?

Many thousands year . it started when human think about the universe

regards