More recently, during preparations for the construction of a highway near Jerusalem, a large-scale settlement with ideally organized streets, quarters and squares, built more than 10 thousand years ago, was discovered. This unique find caused a stir in the scientific world. And for good reason! According to the researchers, the ancient amazing city will force many historians to reconsider their claims about the Neolithic era and about the Israeli land in particular, because it was still believed that this territory was uninhabited in the Stone Age, and there was no such economic and cultural development in those days. …
The quite ordinary preparation of the territory for the construction of the highway ended with a sensational discovery, which will definitely make all history textbooks rewrite. So lucky were the Israeli archaeologists who conducted a study of the area before laying the western highway to Jerusalem. They were lucky to find a gigantic, by historical standards, Neolithic settlement, which is at least 10 and a half thousand years old.
According to the scientific leaders of the ongoing excavations, Hamoudi Khaliel and Kobi Vardi, this truly unique find "changed the idea of scientists about the Neolithic era", because many researchers believe that at that time the Israeli land was uninhabited.
Informative: The Neolithic is a special period in the history of mankind, which became the final stage of the Stone Age. This is the era of transition from the manufacture and use of stone, wood, horn or bone tools to create them from metal alloys. Also, people moved from an appropriating economy to a producing one, developing such industries as agriculture and cattle breeding.
It still remains a mystery what the name of this city was and why people left it, but the excavated area of 40 hectares gives the right to assert that this settlement is not only much older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Ancient Egypt, but also the largest of those that have been discovered presently. Having carried out a layer-by-layer study of the soil, archaeologists managed to find out that at the beginning of its existence it was a small village, where people still enjoyed the benefits of nature and did not grow anything. However, over its 1500-year history, they were able to move to a completely different level of development, turning into a real metropolis, which is comparable to the present Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
It has been reliably determined that at the peak of its prosperity, the city numbered from 2 to 3 thousand inhabitants who were engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding, because not only the corresponding tools of labor were found, but also barns filled with oats, lentils, nuts and other seeds, some of them not even identified. From the remains of animals found, the researchers concluded that the inhabitants bred cows, sheep, pigs, and also found evidence that this society was the first to domesticate goats in the Middle East.
The organization of the city's territory deserves special attention, because here you will not see spontaneous buildings and any shacks. Photographs taken after some of the soil was removed suggests that the city was being built according to an agreed plan. It clearly shows the streets, alleys and squares where public buildings and temple buildings are located.
The houses themselves were made of clay bricks, which disintegrated long ago, but the foundations of processed stone blocks are well preserved. Since the remains of a special solution were found, with which the dwellings were plastered, scientists concluded that there was a highly developed society that adhered to urban planning norms, in contrast to the ancient city of Chatalhoyuk, which was found in Turkey and has practically the same time frame of existence (9 thousand years).
Interesting: Until that time, the city of Çatalhöyük was considered the oldest in the world. And now, comparing the findings, one can clearly see the huge differences in the development of the most ancient communities and their way of life. On the territory of Chatalkhoyuk (especially in the center), real slums were found without streets and any urban plans. This proves that the inhabitants of the shacks had to resort to stairs to get out of their dwellings and city structures, because they were very tightly located to each other. On the outskirts of the settlement, life was even more problematic due to the close proximity of outbuildings for the maintenance of domesticated animals.
The latest findings of archaeologists show that not only production, but also barter relations flourished in the Israeli metropolis, moreover, with very distant regions. Fresh artifacts from the foothills of Jerusalem, it is said that the obsidian (volcanic stone) blade came directly from Anatolia (one of the regions of Turkey); a simple but beautiful thin-walled bowl made of serpentine stone could only have been delivered from northern Syria, and large alabaster beads were definitely made in ancient Egypt.
Interesting finds were found on female remains. This piercing is in the form of a mother-of-pearl bead, mined in the Red Sea, and on the hand there is a bracelet made of stone, in which there are thin paired holes for connecting its individual elements. Also, various figurines, figurines and vessels were found, both brought from other territories, and made by the inhabitants of the city themselves.
At the moment, a large number of flint tools have been discovered, including arrowheads, axes for both felling wood and meat, various variations of knives and sickles for harvesting.
More recently, millstones of solid basalt rock were found, which were used to grind not only cereals or legumes, but also meat. As the analysis of the rock showed, this device was definitely brought from afar, because there is no such rock on the chalk hills of Jerusalem, and the nearest deposit is located in the Golan Heights.
And this is just the beginning, excavations are going on only on a 10-cm cultural layer, which means that the world will be surprised more than once. The team of archaeologists themselves assume that an unprecedented discovery has been made - and all the rare, mysterious objects that it contains will allow research to move one step forward compared to what is known today, because now a lot of new things are being revealed, but this is already enough to start rewriting history.
At all times, mankind has striven to create universal tools for both labor and defense. The most famous and demanded were axes, which were distinguished by their special strength and impressive impact force, therefore they have become the most popular weapon for millennia.