Jericho Founded

Jericho, in the Jordan Valley near a perennial spring, is among the oldest known settlements in the world and often cited as one of the oldest continuously inhabited places. Its beginnings around 8500 BCE, though approximate and tied to radiocarbon dating rather than any recorded founding, mark an early stage in the shift from mobile hunting and gathering to life in permanent villages. Calling it a "city" is something of a stretch by later standards, but its size and its structures make it a landmark in human settlement.

The background lies in the end of the last Ice Age, when the climate of the Near East became warmer and wetter. Groups known as the Natufians had already begun gathering wild cereals and living in semi-permanent camps across the Levant. Near Jericho, the spring of Ein es-Sultan offered a dependable water source in an otherwise arid landscape, and archaeologists have found evidence of earlier Natufian activity at the site before the larger Neolithic settlement emerged.

The settlement is known mainly through excavations at Tell es-Sultan, led by John Garstang in the 1930s, Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s, and others since. They uncovered the remains of round mudbrick houses from the period called the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. Most striking was a massive stone wall and a solid stone tower, about eight meters high with an internal staircase, dated to roughly the same era. Estimates of the population vary widely, from a few hundred to perhaps a couple of thousand people. Residents probably relied on wild plants, early cultivation, and hunting, and the debate over how much farming had developed by this point is still open.

The purpose of the wall and tower is also uncertain. Some scholars argue they were defenses against raiders or a sign of competition over the valuable spring. Others suggest they protected against flooding and mudflow from the nearby hills, or that the tower had a ritual or symbolic role. The effort needed to build them points to organized communal labor, which is why Jericho features in discussions of early social organization and leadership.

Later periods brought further changes, including the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B culture, which was marked by rectangular houses and plastered human skulls that may reflect ancestor veneration. Jericho was occupied, abandoned, and resettled many times through the Bronze Age and beyond, and it later became tied to biblical tradition and to the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds. Today the modern town of Jericho lies in the West Bank, and Tell es-Sultan was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023. The site remains a key reference point for understanding how settled community life began.