JERICHO!!!
I loved this place. Ok so there's not much left of it but what IS there is really awesome. You see that tower there, the second picture down? Well its not really a tower its more like a cylindrical mound of rocks in a ditch.. yeah, THAT is very likely the OLDEST man made structure on earth! Its a tower from the Neolithic Era (see this here school be teachin me 'dem big fancy words;) its hollow on the inside and is down in a ditch because of all the cities that have been built up on top of the old cities over time. So any guesses as to how old it is? hmm so certainly before Christ so its more than 2000 years old, alsooooo when were the Pyramids built... like uhhh 3000 BCE ish? Roughly? Well guess what, its older than the Pyramids, by a long shot! This little tower you see here in this picture was built in approximately 8500 BCE!! WHAT! THATS CRAZYNESS! I cannot comprehend that, that is about 10,000 years old! Before this trip I had no idea that people had been around that long! Thanks to handy dandy carbon dating techniques (that aren't impervious to error but are certainly the most widely accepted form of dating among archaeologists) we've found evidences of non-nomadic civilization here in Jericho that surpasses in oldness anything we've ever imagined! Ok so perhaps only a nerd like me could get so worked up over a pile of rocks but THINK ABOUT THAT! People, like you and I made a social agreement in order to have security. They organized a city and they built this tower to protect themselves from whatever threat they thought was out there. That tower has watched every single page of history turn; from Abraham the Patriarch to Abraham the President that tower has stood, quietly taking note of all the secrets we history nerds wish could be understood. If only walls could talk...
More on my trip to Turkey coming up! (its still compiling ;) tee hee )
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