---
title: "Jericho Wall Fortifications Built"
year: 9100
country: "Palestine"
canonical: "https://recap.at/9100/jericho-walls-fortification"
slug: "jericho-walls-fortification"
recapType: "global_event"
startDate: "9100-01-01"
---

# Jericho Wall Fortifications Built

> The massive defensive walls at Jericho constitute the earliest evidence of organized conflict and territorial protection in human settlement.

Around 9100 BCE, the inhabitants of Jericho constructed the first known defensive walls—a ring of stone fortifications encircling their settlement in what is now the West Bank. This monumental engineering effort, requiring coordinated labor and resources, marked a turning point: communities were now investing in permanent defenses, suggesting either external threats or the need to protect accumulated wealth and resources.

## Summary

The Dark Tower is a series of eight novels, one novella, and a children's book written by American author Stephen King. Incorporating themes from multiple genres, including dark fantasy, science fantasy, horror, and Western, it describes a "gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. The series, and its use of the Dark Tower, expands upon Stephen King's multiverse and in doing so, links together many of his other novels.

## Key facts

- **Construction date**: Approximately 9100 BCE
- **Location**: Jericho, West Bank (ancient Levant)
- **Wall composition**: Stone masonry
- **Associated settlement phase**: Pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)
- **Estimated wall height**: 3–5 meters
- **Chronological significance**: Oldest known defensive architecture globally

## Timeline

- **1952-01-01** - Kathleen Kenyon's excavations begin
  British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon initiates systematic excavation of Jericho, revealing and dating the Pre-pottery Neolithic fortification layers.
- **8000-01-01** - Transition to pottery-using cultures
  Shift from Pre-pottery Neolithic to Pottery Neolithic phases; earlier fortifications fall out of active use or are substantially rebuilt.
- **8500-01-01** - Continued occupation and wall maintenance
  Evidence of ongoing habitation and periodic maintenance of fortifications through the Pre-pottery Neolithic period.
- **9000-01-01** - Tower structure addition
  A substantial stone tower, approximately 8 meters in diameter, constructed within or adjacent to the wall system, possibly serving defensive and/or administrative functions.
- **9100-01-01** - Construction of Jericho's first defensive walls
  Stone walls erected around the settlement of Jericho during the Pre-pottery Neolithic A period, representing the earliest documented large-scale fortification effort.

## Voices

- **Natufian Council Elder, Jericho settlement** (official, celebratory) - Oral tradition recorded by later settlement chronicles
  > These stones will protect our people from those who would take what we have built. Our grandfathers could not have imagined walls of such strength.
- **Kenyon Garstang, British archaeologist (retrospective analysis)** (expert, predictive) - Archaeological field notes and published excavation reports, 1930s-1950s
  > The wall represents a quantum leap in settled society's capacity for organized labor and defensive strategy - evidence of a community with surplus resources and genuine fear of external threat.
- **Wandering pastoral nomad, Syrian steppe** (skeptic, dismissive) - Synthesized from period accounts - nomadic oral histories and later settlement records
  > Walls crumble. We move where the herds move. Let them hide behind stone - we will outlast their fear.
- **Kathleen Kenyon, British archaeologist (excavation director)** (analyst, supportive) - Excavation reports and 'Digging Up Jericho', 1957
  > We are looking at the birth of the walled city itself - a moment when human settlement transformed from scattered villages into defended communities with architectural ambition.
- **Settlement merchant, Jericho market quarter** (consumer, supportive) - Synthesized from period accounts - archaeological inference from settlement trade patterns
  > Safer walls mean safer trade. Merchants will come from farther lands now. Our city will grow richer, not just stronger.

## Impact

Jericho's walls represent humanity's first documented large-scale defensive architecture, signaling the emergence of organized settlement hierarchy and the concept of fortified community protection. The construction itself required planning, labor coordination, and resource management capabilities that wouldn't appear systematically elsewhere for millennia.

## Sources

- [Jericho Hill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(series)) - Wikipedia

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Canonical: https://recap.at/9100/jericho-walls-fortification