Jericho raises the world's oldest known wall
A spring-fed settlement builds a tower before anyone had built a city
Quick facts
- Earliest settlement
- About 9000 BCE
- Walled town
- By about 8000 BCE, 40,000 square metres
- Wall
- 3.6 m high, 1.8 m wide at the base
- Tower
- 8.5 m high, 9 m wide at the base, 22 internal steps
What happened
Jericho's earliest settlements, drawn by natural springs that could sustain a large population in an otherwise dry landscape, date back to about 9000 BCE. By 8000 BCE the site had grown to about 40,000 square metres, encircled by a stone wall 3.6 metres high and 1.8 metres wide at its base, which World History Encyclopedia calls the oldest known protective wall in the world. Inside that wall stood a stone tower 8.5 metres high and 9 metres wide at its base, built solid enough to contain an internal staircase of 22 steps. Continuing excavation has since turned up stone towers elsewhere that are even older, at a site called Tell Qaramel.
Why it matters
This is monumental construction from a community that had not yet invented pottery, built centuries before writing, wheels, or true cities existed anywhere. It shows that people were capable of large-scale cooperative building projects the moment they settled in one place permanently, not only after farming had matured into full agricultural societies.
How we know
World History Encyclopedia dates Jericho's earliest settlement to about 9000 BCE, its walled town to about 8000 BCE, and gives the specific measurements of both the wall and the internal tower with its staircase, while noting that even older stone towers have since been found at another site.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Early Jericho (World History Encyclopedia) (2023) · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Isotopic and proteomic evidence for communal stability at Pre-Pottery Neolithic Jericho (via PubMed Central) (2023) · Peer-reviewed (author-declared)pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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