Does the City of Jericho really date back to 9000 B.C?

Odysseus

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The Wall of Jericho was a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) defensive or flood protection wall suggested to date to approximately 8000 BC. If interpreted as an "urban fortification", the Wall of Jericho is the oldest city wall discovered by archaeologists anywhere in the world. It is built of undressed stones and is located at the archaeological mound known as Tell es-Sultan, in the city of Jericho on the West Bank - Wikipedia

It seems too unrealistic that Neolithic farmers would be building walls at this point in history , to protect them against who? , hunter gatherers?
 
How about other farmers or herders?
In pre pottery Yerich we could expect smaller wall with purpose of a fence. I think the big defence walls and "biblical Jews event, destroying the walls" has happened in Bronze Age, I guess.
 
the wall didn't go all around the city, but the city was built on a mudplain
one theory is the wall was to prevent flooding by mud
on the other hand, the grain stored inside the city was probably a valuable commodity
 
I remember reading about Kenyon's researches there when I was at university.

"Kathleen Kenyon resumed extensive excavations between 1952 and 1958 and found no late Bronze Age defensive wall or pottery. Her excavations found a series of seventeen early Bronze Age walls, some of which she thought may have been destroyed by earthquakes. The last of the walls was put together in a hurry, indicating that the settlement had been destroyed by nomadic invaders. Another wall was built by a more sophisticated culture in the Middle Bronze Age with a steep plastered escarpment leading up to mud bricks on top. After this there was a hiatus until later Iron Age material dating to around the seventh century BC. They did not find substantial evidence for renewed occupation in the Late Bronze Age at the time of Joshua and the biblical story of the Battle of Jericho, which in general agreed with the earlier statement by Watzinger that "in the time of Joshua, Jericho was a heap of ruins, on which stood perhaps a few isolated huts".[5]Perhaps the most important discovery was evidence that the earliest wall suggested by Kenyon to date to around 8000 BC based on Radiocarbon dating of material at 7825 BC from level IV, phase III of the site. This time period was thereafter called the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, a late phase of the Stone Age predating the invention of pottery, and the wall considered part of an early proto-city.[4] It surrounded and protected a Neolithic settlement which contained an organized community of between 2,000 and 3,000 people.[6]"

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The Neolithic wall was complemented by a stone tower built into it. The wall is thought to have been built in order to prevent floods and the tower used for ceremonial purposes[7] but the height of the wall (approximately 1.5 to 2 metres (4.9 to 6.6 ft) to 2 metres (6.6 ft)[8]thick and 3.7 to 5.2 metres (12 to 17 ft) high) as well as that of the tower suggests a defensive purpose as well. Furthermore, the construction of such a project implies some sort of social organization, division of labour, and classes. Surrounding the wall was a ditch 8.2 metres (27 ft) wide by 2.7 metres (9 ft) deep, cut through solid bedrock with a circumference around the town of as much as 600 metres (2,000 ft).[9] Kathleen Kenyon commented on the work involved in the construction of the ditch: "The labor involved in excavating this ditch out of solid rock must have been tremendous. As we have discovered nothing in the way of heavy flint picks, one can only suppose that it was carried out with stone mauls, perhaps helped by splitting with fire and water."[10]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Jericho

One could debate the purpose of the wall and tower, but the existence of a wall at that early date seems to be pretty well settled.




 

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