About a mile west of modern Jericho lie Tell es-Sultan and the Tells of Abu al-Alayiq, where the earliest human settlement was founded 10,000–11,000 years ago. Its houses were built of mud brick and ringed by a ditch cut into the rock, 28 feet wide and eight feet deep. Pottery, bronze objects, baskets, textiles and wooden household tools found there trace a full life before writing existed.
Sitting at the lowest inhabited point on earth, Jericho remained Palestine’s eastern gate on the Jerusalem–Amman road. In 1226 the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi wrote of its many palms, sugar cane and bananas, and of the sugar drawn from the Jordan Valley. Palms, bananas, citrus and olives remain, alongside pottery, mat-weaving and textile crafts.
In September 2023 UNESCO inscribed Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan on the World Heritage List, fixing in the record a story that began before history.
Source: “Jericho” — Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho
Cover photo: Fullo88 at Italian Wikipedia — Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
