Jericho
One of the oldest continuously occupied places on Earth, walled in the ninth millennium BCE.
- When
- Known to
- ± 200 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Tell es-Sultan beside a perennial spring in the Jordan valley is settled from around 9600 BCE, and by 8000 BCE its Pre-Pottery Neolithic inhabitants have built a stone wall over three metres high and a solid stone tower nearly nine metres tall with an internal staircase. Whether the wall is a defence, a flood barrier or something ceremonial is argued; the tower's purpose is unknown. Either way it is monumental construction by a village of a few hundred people.