Tell es-Sultan is an archaeological mound site in the West Bank, with a history going back to the Natufian Culture, to at least 10,000 BC. But this mound is something special because what its hiding is in fact the ancient city of Jericho.
Before excavations began, you would be forgiven for thinking it was just a natural hill at first glance, but the hill itself is made up of many layers of collapsed architecture, mainly mudbrick, and over the years, excavations have uncovered the long and complex history of this very ancient city.
In the 1860s, Charles Warren identified the site as Ancient Jericho, but it wouldn’t be until the work of British archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon decades later, when we would learn just how old this site really was.
To understand the phases of occupation, Kenyon and her colleagues recorded the stratigraphic sequences through the mound. Years and years were spend digging and meticulously recording, and by the 1950s this was one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites.
In the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, Jericho was certainly a settlement, but one discovery surprised everyone. During her excavations in the 1950s, Kenyon discovered an ancient stone structure from these very remote times, and it was unlike anything else seen before. This discovery was the Tower of Jericho.
Watch this video to learn more about this 11,000-year-old stone structure, as old as, or even older than some parts of Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe.