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<< Our Photo Pages >> Jericho - Ancient Village or Settlement in Israel

Submitted by AlexHunger on Sunday, 30 November 2008  Page Views: 18883

Multi-periodSite Name: Jericho Alternative Name: Tell as-Sultan
Country: Israel Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Jericho  Nearest Village: Tell as-Sultan
Latitude: 31.850436N  Longitude: 35.436129E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
3 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
2 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
3 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
no data

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Kuba visited on 30th Jun 2022 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 5

SolarMegalith visited on 6th Apr 2011 - their rating: Cond: 2 Amb: 3 Access: 4



Average ratings for this site from all visit loggers: Condition: 2.5 Ambience: 3.5 Access: 4.5

Jericho
Jericho submitted by AlexHunger : One of many 7,500 BCE statue from Jericho. Plaster/Clay over Skull Similar skulls were also found Ain Ghazal. Photos Courtesy Klaus Schumann (Vote or comment on this photo)
Ancient Village or Settlement in Palestine.
Construction of the Jericho site apparently began before the invention of agriculture, with the construction of stone structures beginning earlier than 9000 BCE, which is known as the Natufian culture.

There is speculation these were of a spiritual nature, rather than dwellings or fortifications. However archaeologists claim that Jericho is the "oldest city in the world," though there is now competition from the Urfa Culture in southern Turkey. Neverheless, such monumental construction reflects social organization and central authority as well as agricultural surpluses. though there are doubts that the fortification completely date to the 8000 BCE. The wall was built of large Cyclopean stones which supported a mudbrick wall above it. Discovered and excavated by Kathleen Kenyon in her Trench I, the Neolithic tower was built and destroyed in Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, which Kenyon dated to 8000-7000 BCE. The 8m diameter tower stands 8m tall and was connected on the inside of a 4m thick wall. This southern portion of the wall was, however excavated by Lorenzo Nigro and Nicolo Marchetti conducted as well as Dr. Bryant Wood in 1997. The Pre-Pottery dead were buried under the floors or in the rubble fill of abandoned buildings and there was shrine of sorts. There were also unique Clay/Plaster covered skulls which are now in the Amman Museum.
Archeologists found a later mudbrick wall which most likely fell down in about 1400 BCE, before old Testament time as described in Joshua. Other local early cities were destroyed around the same time, leading one to speculate about earthquakes not horns.





Note: Perhaps ancient Jericho saw the first cultivated crops - figs found in 11400 year old house site. See comment.
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Jericho
Jericho submitted by SolarMegalith : Here I did my best to describe visible features from various phases of Bronze Age - Early Bronze Age double city-wall, Middle Bronze Age stone wall, Middle Bronze Age tower and cyclopean wall from 1650-1550 BC (photo taken on April 2011). (Vote or comment on this photo)

Jericho
Jericho submitted by durhamnature : Drawing from "Realm of the Great Goddess" via archive.org Site in Palestine (Vote or comment on this photo)

Jericho
Jericho submitted by SolarMegalith : Pre-pottery Neolithic tower dated for 8500-7500 BC (photo taken on April 2011). (Vote or comment on this photo)

Jericho
Jericho submitted by SolarMegalith : Remains of a Middle Bronze Age tower in the foreground (photo taken on April 2011). (Vote or comment on this photo)

Jericho
Jericho submitted by SolarMegalith : Roman wine press from 2nd-3rd century AC, probably remains of a villa (photo taken on April 2011). (Vote or comment on this photo)

Jericho
Jericho submitted by SolarMegalith : Middle Bronze Age cyclopean wall (photo taken on April 2011).

Jericho
Jericho submitted by durhamnature : Plan of the town, from "Realm of the Great Goddess" via archive.org Site in Palestine

Jericho
Jericho submitted by durhamnature : Old painting from "Holy Land...." via archive.org Site in Palestine

Jericho
Jericho submitted by durhamnature : Image of the site of Jericho in Palestine from "History of Egypt" via archive.org Site in Israel

Jericho
Jericho submitted by durhamnature : Site plan from the early excavations, from "Archaeology of the Holy Land" via archive.org Site in Israel

Jericho
Jericho submitted by SolarMegalith : Remains of Bronze Age buildings (photo taken on Apri 2011).

Jericho
Jericho submitted by AlexHunger : One of many 7,500 BCE statues from Jericho. Plaster/Clay over Skull Similar skulls were also found in Ain Ghazal. Photos Courtesy Klaus Schumann

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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 4.7km NE 38° The Gilgal associated peacefully with Joshua Stone Circle
 12.3km S 170° Qumran* Ancient Village or Settlement
 16.3km ESE 109° Tulaylat al-Ghassul Ancient Village or Settlement
 19.0km WSW 256° Shuafat road Chalcolithic period site* Ancient Village or Settlement
 20.3km WSW 249° 2000 year old stone fragment in Jerusalem* Marker Stone
 20.6km WSW 247° Temple Mount* Ancient Temple
 20.7km WSW 246° City of David* Ancient Village or Settlement
 20.8km WSW 245° Hezekiah's Tunnel* Ancient Mine, Quarry or other Industry
 23.5km E 95° Rawdah* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 23.6km WSW 242° Talpiot Tomb Rock Cut Tomb
 26.0km WSW 255° Tel Motza* Ancient Village or Settlement
 26.4km WSW 237° Rachel's Tomb Ancient Temple
 26.8km NNW 329° Tel Shiloh Ancient Village or Settlement
 27.6km SW 222° Herodion* Ancient Palace
 28.2km WSW 258° Motza Neolithic City* Ancient Village or Settlement
 28.4km NW 314° The Gilgal associated with Elijah and Elisha Stone Circle
 29.9km NNE 24° Damiyah dolmen field* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 30.0km ESE 116° Dolmens at Wadi Jadid* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 33.1km SE 131° el-Mareighat* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 33.1km SE 131° South of Khajar Mansub Menhirs & Dolmens* Chambered Tomb
 33.2km SE 131° Khajar Mansub* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 34.5km E 96° Hesbon* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 35.3km NNE 12° Argaman-Gilgal sanctuary Ancient Temple
 36.2km SSE 150° Mukawir* Hillfort
 36.5km ESE 113° Adeihmeh* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
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Ancient Figs May Be First Cultivated Crops by bat400 on Sunday, 30 November 2008
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Submitted by coldrum

The discovery of figs in an 11,400-year-old house near the ancient city of Jericho may be evidence that cultivated crops came centuries before the first farmers planted cereal grains.

Archeologists in Israel discovered the figs in an excavated house in a village called Gilgal 1. The fruits were mutant figs -- growing on a rare kind of tree that isn't pollinated by insects and won't reproduce unless someone takes a cutting and plants it.

According to Harvard anthropologist Ofer Bar-Yosef, generations of people must have lived around wild fig trees until people figured out how to grow these mutants.

"It's generally women who do the gathering in hunting-and-gathering societies," Bar-Yosef says. "And you know years of experience would tell them exactly how the plants behaved...." Writing in the journal Science, Bar-Yosef and colleagues in Israel say these figs may now be the first cultivated crops. But he suspects the transition to domesticated crops -- whether barley, oats or figs -- was a slow process.

"The facts that the figs were already domesticated means that humans were enjoying this practice of cutting branches and sticking them into the ground to be the new trees," Bar-Yosef says. "You don't get plants like figs domesticated if you don't start planting it systematically again and again."

At NPR.org.
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Unrecognized: The World’s Oldest Monument by coldrum on Friday, 25 May 2007
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Jerusalem, Asharq Al-Awsat- Approximately two kilometers away from Jericho’s city center lies Tel es-Sultan (Sultan’s Hill), the oval-shaped mound that the oasis of Jericho, the oldest city in the world, is famous for. The world’s earliest settlement was located at Tel es-Sultan, which stands in the form of several layers of habitation that make up today’s mound.

And yet despite its importance and its ability to attract the world’s greatest researchers, it is not included on the World Heritage List, which is precisely what the Palestinian Authority’s Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage is striving to accomplish presently.

Director of the Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, Hamdan Taha, has announced that the department has started the procedures to register Tel es-Sultan, the town of Bethlehem and the ancient al Mahd Church (Church of Nativity) on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Church of Nativity is considered to be one of the most famous churches in Christian tradition, as it is built on the area where, it is believed, that Jesus was born.

The department has sent documents to the relevant parties who are also backing the process; which are both the Arab and Islamic communities, in addition to the European Union group that is part of the World Heritage Committee.

Perhaps Tel es-Sultan is less famous than the Church of Nativity in the eyes of the world. The story of Tel es-Sultan began with the pioneering work of British archeologist, Dame Kathleen Kenyon of the Institute of Archeology in London, who arrived at the site in 1951. She stunned the world with her discovery of the earliest human habitation dating back to 9000 BCE.

Although Kenyon’s work was the most substantial, she was by no means the first to arrive at the small hill that lies in the town known today as ancient Jericho. Many had preceded her as part of a large-scale excavation campaign launched in Jericho and other Palestinian cities launched over four centuries ago by foreign dispatches sent to trace the geographical biblical route and the places referred to in the holy book. However these research missions did not provide explanations to their discoveries that was required by the archaeologists despite the fact that they discovered a multitude of sites.

A German-Austrian group started excavating in Tel es-Sultan in 1911, but they did not achieve any tangible results. However, the excavations between 1930 and 1936 undertaken by the British School of Archeology unearthed important discoveries, which were announced by then-Director of the school and the head of the excavation mission, John Garstang. The excavations found trenches and archeological layers that dated back to 6000 BCE, in addition to finding intricately made tombs dating back to the Middle Bronze Age, known in Palestine as the Hyksos era.

Garstang, who was the first manager of the Palestinian antiquities department, was appointed to his post in 1920. Like many others, he was one who supported the Torah and a biblical approach towards the excavations in Palestine. He encouraged those adopting the Zionist approach to work, granting them the necessary capabilities – his work not any different from the British Mandate’s political goal that supported the Zionist plans for a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine, as was stated in the Balfour Declaration.

When Kenyon arrived to resume what her fellow national predecessors had began, she had hopes that Tel es-Sultan would not disappoint her, and she was right. The significance lies in the fact that her approach was different, especially to the one adopted by Garstang. She knew from the start that the rigid and arbitrary manner of linking all the discoveries to the Old Testament was erroneous. As such, it can be said that Kenyon had a profound impact on a generation of archeologists and was considered to be their mentor. They, in turn, were fully devoted to their work and followed her

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