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The 9,000-year-old metropolis, uncovered during
a survey before the construction of a new highway, is one of the
biggest ever found, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on
Tuesday.
The team estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people lived there, which
would parallel a city by modern standards. It covered dozens of
acres near what is today the town of Motza, some five km (three
miles) west of Jerusalem.
Before the discovery, it was widely believed the entire area had
been uninhabited in that period, during which people were
shifting away from hunting for survival to a more sedentary
lifestyle that included farming.
"This is most probably the largest excavation of this time
period in the Middle East, which will allow the research to
advance leaps and bounds ahead of where we are today, just by
the amount of material that we are able to save and preserve
from this site," Lauren Davis, an archaeologist with Israel's
antiquities authority, told Reuters.
The excavation exposed large buildings, alleyways and burial
places, evidence of a relatively advanced level of planning, the
antiquities authority said in a statement.
The team also found storage sheds that contained large
quantities of legumes, particularly lentils, whose seeds were
remarkably preserved throughout the millennia.
"This finding is evidence of an intensive practice of
agriculture," according to the statement. "Animal bones found on
the site show that the settlement's residents became
increasingly specialized in sheep-keeping, while the use of
hunting for survival gradually decreased."
Also found were flint tools, including thousands of arrowheads,
axes for chopping down trees, sickle blades and knives.
(Reporting by Ilan Rosenberg and Ari Rabinovitch, editing by
Larry King)
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