Rising from the fertile soil of the Jordan Valley, near the banks of the River Jordan and north of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Sea, Jericho stands as one of humanity’s most remarkable achievements. Known as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, its origins stretch back to around 10,000 BCE, when nomadic hunter-gatherers began to settle in the lush oasis nourished by the perennial spring of Ein es-Sultan. This settlement marked a profound turning point in human history, coinciding with the Neolithic revolution—the birth of agriculture, permanent dwellings, and the earliest attempts at urban life. Jericho, called Tell es-Sultan by archaeologists, became more than just a village; it became a cradle of civilization, a place where people first tested the possibility of creating societies rooted not in wandering but in staying. To speak of Jericho is to speak of the dawn of human culture itself, a city older than the pyramids, older than Stonehenge, and yet still alive today in the heart of Palestine.

Archaeological discoveries over the last century have revealed layer upon layer of Jericho’s extraordinary past. Excavations led by Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s exposed some of the city’s deepest secrets: mudbrick houses dating to 9000 BCE, circular huts where families gathered around fire pits, and granaries where surplus grain was stored, protecting the community from famine. Most striking was the great stone tower, built around 8000 BCE, standing over 8 meters high and constructed with remarkable precision. This structure, one of the oldest known monuments in human history, has puzzled scholars for decades. Some suggest it served as a defensive fortification, others as a watchtower, and still others as a ritual marker aligned with the movements of the sun and mountains. Alongside the tower were defensive walls—mᴀssive stone constructions that represent humanity’s earliest experiments in city planning, defense, and social organization. Jericho was not only a place to live but a fortress of survival, a sanctuary of innovation, and a testament to the communal will of early humans.

The physical remains of Jericho read like an epic carved into the earth. More than 20 layers of habitation have been uncovered, each representing a chapter in its long story of resilience. Over millennia, people rebuilt again and again upon the same mound, shaping a tell that rose from the valley floor like a chronicle of endurance. Archaeologists found tools of flint, plastered human skulls used in ancestor worship, and pottery shards decorated with patterns that reveal the blossoming of symbolic thought. The city thrived as a center of trade, benefiting from its strategic location along ancient routes that connected Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant. By the Bronze Age, Jericho was fortified with even greater walls, thick enough to repel invaders and secure its place as a jewel of the Near East. And yet, Jericho was never immune to the cycles of destruction and renewal. Earthquakes, floods, and conquests repeatedly brought it down, but its people always returned, layering new life atop the ruins of the old, refusing to let the city fade into silence.

Jericho is also woven into the fabric of mythology and scripture. It appears in the Hebrew Bible as the “City of Palms,” famed for its lush oasis. The Book of Joshua recounts its dramatic fall when the walls of Jericho supposedly collapsed after Israelite priests circled them for seven days, blowing their trumpets until the earth itself gave way. While historians debate the literal truth of these events, the story itself illustrates Jericho’s symbolic weight—it was seen not only as a city of stone but as a city of destiny, a place where divine will and human history intertwined. Later, in the New Testament, Jericho is remembered as the city where Jesus healed the blind beggar and where Zacchaeus climbed the sycamore tree to see him pᴀss. These stories echo through centuries of faith, layering Jericho’s physical ruins with spiritual resonance, making it not just an archaeological site but a living text of memory and belief.

In the modern age, Jericho remains both fragile and eternal. Today, the site of ancient Tell es-Sultan looks like a mound of eroded earth, its once-towering walls now little more than scars in the soil. Yet within those ruins lies the DNA of civilization itself. Farmers still cultivate the land around Jericho, just as their ancestors did ten thousand years ago, growing dates, citrus, and vegetables in the same fertile soil. The nearby modern city of Jericho continues to thrive, making it a rare place where the continuity of human settlement stretches unbroken across twelve millennia. Tourists and pilgrims alike come to walk its ruins, to stand where time itself seems to bend, and to feel the strange sensation of touching a city that has outlived empires, kingdoms, and even entire civilizations. Jericho is a paradox: a city that appears ᴅᴇᴀᴅ to the eye but is more alive than any skyscraper, its heartbeat measured not in centuries but in tens of thousands of years.

Reflecting on Jericho stirs emotions that are both humbling and profound. Here is a city that witnessed the first steps of humanity into agriculture, architecture, and ritual—a place where humans dared to defy nature by building permanence in a world of impermanence. And yet, here too is the reminder that nothing we build is immune to decay. The walls of Jericho, once mighty, now lie in fragments; the tower, once imposing, now crumbles under the weight of time. But this is the paradox of Jericho’s beauty: though its stones fall, its story endures. It reminds us that survival is not about the eternal strength of walls but about the eternal will to rebuild. Humanity has always been fragile, yet through that fragility comes resilience. Jericho is not simply an ancient city—it is a mirror of ourselves, a reflection of the human journey, and a symbol of our unyielding desire to endure, to belong, and to remember.

As we look at Jericho today in 2024 CE, compared with its imagined glory in 10,000 BCE, we are struck by the vastness of time and the constancy of human life. Civilizations rise, empires fall, monuments crumble, and yet people remain, sowing seeds, telling stories, and building anew. Jericho is not only a city of the past; it is a city of the present and a city of the future, carrying within its ruins the eternal lesson that humanity’s greatness lies not in conquest but in continuity. To stand before Jericho is to stand before a living chronicle of our species—a place where memory is etched into the earth, and where time, though relentless, becomes a witness rather than a destroyer.