Researchers confirm: The Largest Pyramid in Mexico has been found
Researchers in Mexico have discovered an immense pyramid, even larger than Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun. It’s 75 meters in height and was explored by specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History. It is located in the acropolis of Tonina, Chiapas and is likely around 1,700 years old.
The director of the archaeological zone, Emiliano Gallaga, says that the work, done over the course of two years, verified that the northeastern portion of the site was, indeed, the largest pyramid in Mexico. It is comparable to pyramids found in Tikal and El Mirador of the Mayan civilization.
One unique feature is the seven platforms that serve as palaces, temples, housing, and what were essentially administrating offices. This unique structure functioned within the social, religious, and political-cultural structure.
“It’s a big surprise to see that the pyramid was done almost entirely by pre-Hispanic architects and therefore is more artificial than natural,” says Gallagas. “This is because it was believed that the entire structure was a natural hill, but recent evidence has revealed that the structure was almost entirely built by ancient inhabitants.” Archaeologists noted that the pyramid was much larger than they expected it to be. The structure has roads running through it as well.
The temple-pyramid complex was built in four stages, starting from the 3rd century BC through the 9th century AD, and was dedicated to the deity Quetzalcoatl. It has a base of 450 by 450 metres (1,480 by 1,480 ft) and a height of 66 m (217 ft).
According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is in fact the largest pyramid as well as the largest monument ever constructed anywhere in the world, with a total volume estimated at over 4.45 million cubic metres, even larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, which is about 2.5 million cubic metres.
However the Great Pyramid of Giza is higher at 138.8 metres (455 ft). The ceramics of Cholula were closely linked to those of Teotihuacan, and both sites appeared to decline simultaneously. The Postclassic Aztecs believed that Xelhua built the Great Pyramid of Cholula.
At its peak, Cholula had the second largest population in Mexico of an estimated 100,000 people living at this site. Although the prehispanic city of Cholula continued to be inhabited, the Great Pyramid was abandoned in the 8th century at a time when the city suffered a drastic drop in population.
Even after this drop-off in population, the Great Pyramid retained its religious importance. The site was once called Acholollan (in Nahuatl) meaning place of flight.
This meaning has led some to believe that this site was founded after its original inhabitants fled (from?) elsewhere. According to myth, the pyramid was built by a giant named Xelhua of adobe bricks, after he escaped a flood in the neighboring Valley of Mexico.
The pyramid consists of six superimposed structures, one for each ethnic group that dominated it. However, only three have been studied in any depth.
The pyramid itself is just a small part of the greater archaeological zone of Cholula, which is estimated at 154 hectares (0.59 sq mi).
The building of the pyramid began in the Preclassic Period and overtime was built over six times to its final dimensions of 450 metres on each side at the base and 66 metres tall. This base is four times the size of that of Pharaoh Khufu’s Great Pyramid of Gizaand is the largest pyramid base in the Americas.
The earliest construction phase features talud-tablero architecture that is characteristic of the region, and that became strongly associated with the great metropolis of Teotihuacan. Some of the pyramid constructions have had burials, with skeletons found in various positions, with many offerings, especially ceramics.
The last state of construction has stairs on the west side leading to a temple on top, which faced Iztaccíhuatl. During the colonial period, the pyramid was severely damaged on its north side in order to build the Camino Real to Puebla. The west was damaged later with the installation of a rail line.
5,000-Year-Old Rock Art Depicting “Celestial Bodies” Revealed in Siberia
Some 5,000 years ago, artists in Siberia drew some of the most sophisticated artwork the region has ever seen. The ancient artists were depicting humanoid figurines with strange halos and horns and ensured their message was inscribed in history.
Analysis of the art has revealed the secrets of the prehistoric artists behind the stunning artwork known as the Karakol paintings, reports the Siberian Times.
Ancient Rock Art
Discovered in the remote Altai mountains, the ancient artists of the region drew a series of humanoid figurines with strange additions: some of them have round horns, halos, while others are depicted with feathers on their heads.
The artwork was discovered inside a burial in the Karakol village in the Altai Republic. And although the drawings were discovered back in 1985, it isn’t until now that they have revealed unexpecting secrets.
Different figurines were drawn by the ancients some 5,000 years ago.
The mysterious interpretations of humanoid figurines were paintings on stone slabs that were later used as walls of the burials.
Scientists were stunned after finding out that the ancient drawings were made in three distinct colours: white, red, and black, marking the first case of polychrome rock paintings ever found in Siberia.
Intricate Burials
Not only did experts find evidence of rock art in the burials, but they also discovered that the remains of people inside the burials were also painted with the same colours.
The analysis revealed traces of red ocher and a black and silvery mineral called Specularite, used by the ancient artists to decorate the burials. Researchers have revealed that the images on the stones were drawn at different times using elaborate techniques.
Among the earliest rock art, we find depictions of elks, mountain goats, and humanoid figurines which the ancients drew, running around with round horns and halos on their heads.
Mysterious rock art from Siberia.
To complete some of the drawings, the ancient humans did more than just mix engraving techniques and mineral paints. The research revealed that the ancient artists knew how to carry out chemical reactions more than 5,000 years ago, creating not just a colour but the precise tone they wanted to obtain.
“The results of the analysis of the composition of paints used in the funeral rite of Karakol people testify to the ability of the ancient inhabitants of Altai to distinguish pigments by colour and properties,” explained Alexander Pakhunov, one of the authors of the study.
Scientists from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia’s leading research and development centre for nuclear energy, and experts from the Paleo-Art Centre of the Institute of Archeology discovered that the figurines were drawn in red colour are actually made of thermally modified ocher.
The ancient Artists knew how to produce exact colours and tones.
The Siberian Times noted that the white-coloured drawings were created by scraping, which revealed light-reflecting rock crystals.
While for the black colour, the ancient artists of Karakol made use of soot.
“We determined the phased composition of pigments, that is, the structure of the crystal lattice of individual grains of the dye. Some structures are not typical for natural samples but are the product of heat treatment,” revealed Roman Senin, the head of the Kurchatov Institute’s synchrotron research department.
“Simply put, the primitive artist heated the mineral to a certain temperature to get the colour he needed,” Senin added.
Neanderthals Were Altering the Landscape at Least 125,000 Years Ago, New Evidence Suggests
Researchers at an archaeological site in Germany may have discovered the earliest evidence of hominins, or early humans, transforming their surroundings, they said Wednesday.
The dig at Neumark-Nord near Halle, Germany.
Specifically, they identified a distinct footprint of Neanderthal activities near a large body of water in the region surrounding the Neumark-Nord site, a dig location in the Geisel Valley in Saxony-Anhalt, dating about 125,000 years ago, they said, in an article published Wednesday by Science Advances.
Based on their findings, activities that include hunting, animal processing, tool production and fire use may explain why the region’s forests were cleared during this period compared with vegetation surrounding other nearby lakes, according to the researchers.
The discovery “adds an important aspect to early human, including Neandertal, behaviour [as] it shows that humans were already a locally visible factor in shaping vegetation 125,000 years ago,” lead researcher Wil Roebroeks told UPI in an email.
“We might expect to find other examples of this, especially since Neandertals and their contemporaries were skilled in fire technology,” said Roebroeks, a professor of Palaeolithic archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
The findings may complicate scientists’ understanding of the Last Interglacial period, which began about 130,000 years ago and ended about 115,000 years ago, as the last in which the landscape was untouched by humans, according to the researchers.
The Last Interglacial period is seen as the last in which environmental and climate conditions most mirrored those of the present day.
Scientists are still trying to confirm how, when and to what degree Pleistocene hunter-gatherers impacted their surrounding environments, they said.
It is believed these impacts are likely small, however, given the low population densities in these communities, the researchers said.
To determine whether Neumark-Nord may contribute to the ongoing debate over how far back in time the environmental influence of humans can be observed, Roebroeks and his colleagues analyzed paleoenvironmental data, including pollen counts, and archaeological data at the site.
Flint artefacts found at Neumark-Nord.
Neumark-Nord was abandoned by hominins, or early humans, when parts of the northern European plain were covered by ice sheets but re-inhabited at the beginning of the Last Interglacial period, earlier studies suggest.
The researchers compared the data with two other nearby locations that are also located in the eastern region of the Harz Mountains in Germany, they said.
While pollen composition and levels at these other sites indicate a closed, forested environment, pollen data at Neumark-Nord suggest more open vegetation, a pattern inconsistent with the rest of the region, the researchers said.
Combined with charcoal data and previous evidence of the presence of Neanderthals in the area, the findings suggest that early hominin hunter-gatherers left a lasting mark on the region’s environment, they said.
“With the quarry closed and the sites destroyed, our multidisciplinary team is still studying material from the excavations, such as the huge amount of remains of butchered animals,” Roebroeks said.
“The time period of 125,000 years ago is often used to provide reference information about the state of natural vegetation in the absence of human impact,” he said.
Incredible 5,500-year-old tomb discovery is ‘find of a lifetime’
It appears as if Meath is in the midst of a golden age of archaeological discovery after the unearthing of a 5,500-year-old megalithic passage tomb at Dowth Hall.
After last week’s incredible discovery of a previously uncharted henge site near Newgrange in Co Meath, another fascinating find nearby is shedding even more insight into ancient Ireland.
According to RTÉ News, a 5,500-year-old megalithic passage tomb has been revealed on the grounds of Dowth Hall, just down the road from the Newgrange monument. It is the most significant find of its type in Ireland in the past 50 years.
So far, two burial chambers have been discovered in what is the western section of the main passage tomb, buried by a massive stone cairn measuring 40 metres in diameter.
A series of six kerbstones have been found around the perimeter of the cairn, one of which is adorned with a number of well-preserved Neolithic carvings and drawings.
A kerbstone with elaborate carvings.
The discovery was made as part of a collaboration between the agritech firm Devenish and the University College Dublin School of Archaeology.
Speaking of its importance, Dr Clíodhna Ní Lionáin, who led the Devenish part of the dig, said: “For the archaeologists involved in this discovery, it is truly the find of a lifetime.”
Adding to this, Devenish’s executive chair Owen Brennan compared its decision to choose the site with those made by the tomb’s constructors thousands of years ago.
“From our archaeological research, it seems we made the same decision for the same reasons as a long line of our farming colleagues from the Neolithic, the Bronze Age, medieval and more recent times,” he said.
“The monuments here, created by some of Ireland’s first farmers, capture our imaginations and those of our visitors to the Devenish Lands of Dowth.”
The Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site at the tomb’s location is now a real hotbed of archaeological activity, and with the recent henge discovery made after an intense heatwave, more major digs could be in the works in the region in the years ahead.
The Venus of Hohle Fels is the oldest statue depicting a woman’s figure
The Venus of Hohle Fels is 2.4 inches in height and was carved from the tusk of a woolly mammoth tusk. It has been pieced together from six fragments found in a cluster, about 10 feet below ground, although the left arm and shoulder are still missing. It has a short and squat body whose waist is slightly narrower than its broad shoulders and wide hips.
The figurine has no head; in its place, a carved ring protrudes between the shoulders, indicating that the sculpture was probably worn as a pendant or amulet.
The figure is endowed with prominent breasts, while its two short arms with their carefully shaped hands and fingers rest on the upper part of the abdomen.
A number of deeply etched horizontal creases (indicating clothes?) traverse the torso from just below the breasts to the pubic triangle. The buttocks and genitals are portrayed in exaggerated detail, while the legs are small and pointed.
The Venus of Hohle Fels was discovered in the cave of “Hohle Fels” (German for “hollow rock”) near Schelklingen, by a team of archaeologists from the University of Tubingen led by Professor Nicholas Conard, as reported in the prestigious journal Nature.
The six fragments were found in the cave hall, roughly 10 feet below ground about 65 feet from the cave entrance. They were lying, well preserved, in a layer of red-brown, clay silt below five Aurignacian horizons (radiocarbon-dated to the period 30-40,000 BCE), with about twelve stratigraphically intact anthropogenic features.
The latter’s thickness (2-4 feet) indicates that Venus was created at the beginning of the Aurignacian era, roughly 35-40,000 BCE, and refutes claims that figurative representations only appeared in the later phases of the Swabian Aurignacian (c.33,000 BCE). (Note: all of the 20+ previous finds in Swabia had been of animal or therianthropic imagery – human figures were entirely unknown.)
Curiously, neither the Hohle Fels cave nor the other Swabian caves of Hohlenstein-Stadel and Vogelherd, have yielded any significant cave art, such as paintings or engravings.
In effect the discovery of the Venus of Hohle Fels pushes back the date of the oldest prehistoric carving by at least 2,000 and perhaps as many as 7,000 years – that is, from 33,000 BCE to 35-40,000 BCE). According to Professor Nicholas J. Conard, the find “radically changes our views of the earliest Paleolithic art.”
The good condition of the fragments and the fact they were lying within inches of each other, suggests that the Venus suffered little if any disturbance during its time in the ground.
A few feet away, the team also discovered a flute carved out of a vulture bone, dating back to 34,000 BCE – which makes it the oldest known musical instrument – along with bones (or ivories) belonging to reindeer, horses, bears, mammoths, and ibexes.
To see how the Schelklingen Venus fits into the evolution of petroglyphs and other rock art during the Upper Paleolithic Era of prehistory, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline.
Interpretation
As in the case of later Venus figurines, the figure’s exaggerated reproductive attributes suggest that it may have been a fertility symbol.
Whatever the precise meaning or interpretation of the Schelklingen Venus, the immensely time-consuming work that went into it, using only primitive tools, suggests that this piece of primitive art had a particularly high value in the eyes of the sculptor(s) who carved it.
The Venus of Hohle Fels may not look like a sophisticated example of Paleolithic plastic art, but appearances in this case are misleading. All paleoanthropologists and archaeologists agree that the carving of a human figure – indeed any pictorial depiction (engraving, painting or otherwise) of the human form – represents a major step forward in the cultural development of mankind.
Just Under the Island’s sandy soil, archaeologists are discovering complex history extending back 4,000 years
A forgotten sliver of land in the far north of the Persian Gulf, Kuwait’s Failaka Island is home now mostly to camels. Its only town is a sprawling ruin pockmarked with bullet holes and debris from tank rounds, and the landscape beyond seems empty and bleak.
An aerial view of Kuwait’s Failaka Island shows four different sites representing thousands of years of civilization.
Even before Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait prompted its sudden evacuation, Failaka in the past century was little more than a quiet refuge for fishermen and the occasional Kuwaiti seeking relief from the mainland’s fierce heat. But just under the island’s sandy soil, archaeologists are discovering a complex history extending back 4,000 years, from the golden age of the first civilizations to the wars of the modern era.
The secret to Failaka’s rich past is its location, just 60 miles south of the spot where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers empty into the Gulf. From the rise of Ur, the world’s largest metropolis in the late third millennium B.C., until Saddam Hussein’s attack during the First Gulf War, the island has been a strategic prize. For thousands of years, Failaka was a key base from which to cultivate and protect—or prey on—the lucrative trade that passed up and down the Persian Gulf. In addition, there were two protected harbours, potable water, and even some fertile soil. The island’s relative isolation provided a safe place for Christian mystics and farmers amid the rise of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., as well as for pirates a millennium later.
Currently, archaeological teams from no less than half a dozen countries, including Poland, France, Denmark, and Italy, are at work on Failaka. Given the political volatility of neighbouring nations such as Iraq, Iran, and Syria, the island offers a welcome haven for researchers unable to conduct their work in many other parts of the region. “I started encouraging teams to come in 2004,” says Shehab Shehab, Kuwait’s antiquities director. “And I want to encourage more.”
The oldest settlement on Failaka was long thought to have been founded in about 1800 B.C. by the Dilmunites, a maritime people who likely hailed from what are today’s Bahraini and Saudi Arabian coasts, and who controlled the Persian Gulf trade. But on Failaka’s southwest corner, a team from Denmark’s Moesgård Museum has uncovered evidence that Mesopotamians arrived at least a century before the Dilmunites.
The finds are centred on a recently unearthed Mesopotamian-style building typical of those found on the nearby Iraqi mainland dating from around 2000 B.C. The structure was later partially covered by a Dilmunite temple.
In the mythology of ancient Sumeria (modern Iraq), Dilmun is described as an Eden-like place of milk and honey. But by 2000 B.C., Dilmunites were leaving their homeland to become seagoing merchants and establish a powerful trading network that eventually stretched from India to Syria. Mesopotamian clay tablets refer to ships from Dilmun bringing wood, copper, and other goods from distant lands. By the nineteenth century B.C., Failaka had become a linchpin in the Dilmunites’ operations. At this point, after the Dilmunites had either ousted the Mesopotamians or merely succeeded them, there are no further signs of a Mesopotamian presence.
The Dilmunites constructed a large temple and palace complex almost on top of the houses built by the earlier Mesopotamian residents. A French team that excavated the temple in the 1980s suggested that it was an oddity, possibly related to Syrian temple towers. But recent work by a team from the Moesgård Museum in Denmark points to a building remarkably similar to the Barbar sanctuary in Bahrain, considered the grandest Dilmun structure.
Failaka’s name is derived from the Greek word for the outpost. But Alexander the Great, according to later classical authors such as Strabo and Arrian, gave Failaka the name Ikaros, since it resembled the Aegean island of that name in size and shape. French archaeologists working on the island in recent years have found several stone inscriptions dating to the fourth and third centuries b.c. mentioning the name Ikaros, as well as architecture and artefacts that reveal a bustling community with international ties during that period.
The island’s accessible freshwater easily defended coastline and strategic location also attracted the attention of Alexander’s successors, who vied among themselves for control of regional trade routes. Antiochus I, who ruled the Seleucid Empire in the third century B.C., built a 60-foot-square fort around a well on Failaka. Inside the fortress compound, one small, elegant temple has Ionic columns and a plan that is quintessentially Greek, including an east-facing altar. This was no simple import, however, but a fascinating amalgamation of designs. The column bases, for example, are of the Persian Achaemenid style, similar to those in the capital, Persepolis, burned by Alexander’s troops in the fourth century B.C.
The centre of Failaka is a low-lying swampy area that is now the province of mosquitoes and wandering white camels that belong to the Kuwaiti emir. But a millennium ago, this was a three-square-mile pocket of fertile and well-watered plain cultivated by a small community of isolated Christians in a region populated by Muslims. Previous French excavations revealed several villages and two churches, including a possible monastic chapel.
A Polish team led by Warsaw-based archaeologist Magdalena Zurek is now busy excavating nearby sites to understand the extent of the settlements that flourished in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., several hundred years after the faith inspired by Muhammad swept through the region. “We know nothing about Christians on Failaka,” says Zurek, who suspects that a third church lies near her current excavation of a modest farmstead.
The story of Failaka after the abandonment of the Christian villages remains shadowy. Currently, archaeologists are turning their attention to several sites that sit along the northern shore of the island to probe the medieval and early modern periods. The most interesting is located on a high spot overlooking the gulf, facing Iraq. Nearly 30 years ago, a team from the University of Venice surveyed the site, pinpointing a village, called Al-Quraniya, that dates to at least as early as the seventeenth century A.D., and possibly several centuries earlier. In 2010, an Italian team led by Gian Luca Grassigli of the University of Perugia began intensive fieldwork there.
The excavators have since uncovered an array of pottery, porcelain, glass bangles, and bronze objects, including nails and coins, dating to between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries A.D. The mound seems to have two large concentrations of building materials, and the archaeologists hope to make a detailed plan of the settlement in future campaigns. Deeper trenches may reveal evidence of earlier settlement, filling in the long gap between the abandonment of Christian villages and more recent times.
What is clear is that Failaka was still a notable outpost two millennia after Alexander. Just to the southeast of the village is a small square rock fort dating to about the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
Some researchers believe that this structure was constructed by Portuguese soldier-merchants who did frequent business in the region. others suspect that Arab pirates built the base to attack the lucrative shipping lanes that led to wealthy Iraqi cities such as Basra or to ports along the Iranian coast to the east. In this era, European, Iranian, and Chinese elites had a growing appetite for the gulf pearls that dominated the region’s economy. Pirates were a constant threat until the nineteenth century; British guns and diplomacy put an end to their raids.
Pirate hideout.
The mainland of Kuwait is mostly a harsh desert, with only a handful of significant ancient sites. Even the old town of Kuwait City, dating back two centuries, was long ago demolished to make way for skyscrapers. Thus Failaka is of prime importance to the country’s heritage. Recently, much of the island’s history was threatened by a plan to transform the barren land with its rocky coast into a major tourist magnet, complete with marinas, canals, spas, chalets, and enormous high-rise hotels and condominiums. In the wake of the global economic recession, however, the $5 billion projects foundered and was recently shelved. Shehab has moved into the resulting vacuum, lobbying hard to turn all of Failaka into a protected site in order to enable archaeologists to uncover, study, and preserve this small nation’s past.
The government already sets aside more than $10 million annually to cover the costs of foreign projects in Kuwait, and hopes to promote science as well as encourage heritage tourism. “Shehab’s dream is to create in Kuwait a kind of research centre for Gulf basin archaeology,” says archaeologist Piotr Bielinski from the University of Warsaw, who is digging at a prehistoric site on the mainland just north of Kuwait City.
And excavators on Failaka are making the most of this unique opportunity, exposing evidence of Mesopotamian merchants, religious structures representing three cultures and spanning more than 2,500 years, a pirate’s lair, and the remains of Failaka’s last battle, ample testimony to the island’s millennia-long endurance.
Researchers Uncovered a 5,000-Year-Old Crystal Dagger Buried in Spain
Inside an ancient tomb near Seville, researchers found the remains of several individuals buried in a ritualistic fashion, as well as a most striking artefact: a quite beautiful dagger made from rock crystal.
The intricately carved crystal dagger has been dated to at least 3000 BCE, making it the “most technically sophisticated and esthetically impressive collection of rock crystal material culture ever found in Prehistoric Iberia,” according to Spanish researchers who investigated the site.
Prehistoric humans in Europe made most of their tools from chert and flint. Tools made by knapping ‘rock crystals’ (macro-crystalline quartz) were far less prevalent, but nevertheless, people developed a technique for their manufacturing that appeared during late prehistory in certain European regions, such as the southwest Iberian Peninsula in the third millennium BCE.
Although rock crystal tools were more difficult to fashion and the raw materials weren’t as abundant as sedimentary rock, prehistoric people likely cherished them due to their social value.
Just as we stand in awe today at their sight, one would imagine that people were even more impressed by the thousands of years ago.
This particularly exquisite rock crystal tool, an 8.5-inch long dagger, was found in one of eight megalithic tombs from Valencina de la Concepción, a site near Seville in Spain that is considered one of the most significant for the study of Copper Age Iberia.
The tomb, known as the Montelirio tholos, was excavated between 2007 and 2010.
It is a great megalithic construction with a 39-meter (128-foot) corridor leading to the main chamber with a 4.75-meter (15.5-foot) diameter from which, through a narrow corridor, a secondary chamber is accessible.
Researchers found the remains of at least 25 individuals, alongside numerous sumptuous grave goods, including shrouds and clothes made of tens of thousands of perforated beads and decorated with amber beads, as well as many flint arrowheads, found fragments of gold blades, ivory objects, and of course the dazzling crystal core.
The arrowheads, blade, and rock crystal dagger were found at the back of the main chamber. No other objects were found in the rest of the chamber, which is suspicious.
The accumulation of artefacts right next to the main chamber’s access corridor “suggest an offering similar to those discovered in the main corridor, where the arrowheads, although made of lower quality materials, were found in large groups associated with an altar and other offerings (plants),” said researchers at the University of Granada and the University of Seville in a study published in Quaternary International.
At least several females and one male-identified within Montelirio tholos are believed to have died due to poisoning.
The remains of the women were arranged in a circular fashion in a chamber next to the bones of the male, who may have been a person of high status. The dagger itself was found in a different chamber “in association with an ivory hilt and sheath.”
There are no sources of quartz of the kind used in the dagger near the site, which suggests the materials were sourced from far afield.
The researchers say this is another reason why these crystal daggers and arrowheads may have been reserved to a few elite individuals who could afford them, having a dual significance.
“On the one hand, it had a social significance due to the exoticism of the material and the fact that its transformation required very specific skills and probably some degree of technical specialisation. They probably represent funerary paraphernalia only accessible to the elite of this time period. The association of the dagger blade to a handle made of ivory, also a non-local raw material that must have been of great value, strongly suggests the high-ranking status of the people making use of such objects.”
“On the other hand, rock crystal must have had a symbolic significance as a raw material invested with special meanings and connotations. The literature provides examples of societies in which rock crystal and quartz as raw materials symbolise vitality, magical powers and a connection with ancestors.”
This was once one of ancient Israel’s most powerful cities
Gezer used to be a major city. Some 3,000 years ago, this settlement – situated between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – was considered one of the main regional cities, along with Jerusalem and Beit She’an.
Down the rabbit hole: Visitors to Gezer’s ancient water system.
Twenty-five layers of habitation have been found here during decades of archaeological excavations. Its earliest structures were built about 5,500 years ago.
The Bible recounts how the king of Egypt “had taken Gezer and burnt it with fire,” giving it as a loving wedding gift to his daughter who married King Solomon (1 Kings 9:16). Solomon subsequently rebuilt the city.
There is always a crucial question when it comes to ancient sites: what can we see there today? Are these just piles of “important” ruins, or can you actually enjoy the place and is it interesting?
Tel Gezer offers several wonderful observation points.
It can get a bit dark in the ancient water system at Gezer.
With Gezer, the answer is a resounding yes – especially now its ancient water system is open to the public.
The residents of Gezer dug out this water system 3,600 years ago in order to reach groundwater. It’s the largest Canaanite water system ever discovered, established around 600 years before the presumed reign of King Solomon.
On the eastern side is Solomon’s Gate and the Canaanite steles, an area used for worshipping that features a stone basin and 10 huge stone monuments.
The first person to find it was the Irish archaeologist Robert Macalister, in the early 20th century. That excavation also yielded the Gezer calendar – one of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions, which is now on show in an Istanbul museum.
The water system was blocked over the years and only recently excavated. A new stairwell has been installed, allowing us to look and be amazed.
The system is 90 meters long and 7 meters high (295 x 23 feet), and groundwater is used to accumulate at the bottom, at a depth of some 40 meters. This pool is currently dry (you should bring a flashlight when visiting).
The water system is not the only attraction. There is also a Canaanite gate that served as the entryway into the city, flanked by a high guard tower.
These are the largest such fortifications found in Israel to date.
On the eastern side is Solomon’s Gate and the Canaanite steles, an area used for worshipping that features a stone basin and 10 huge stone monuments. The western end of the site boasts large jujube (Ziziphus) tree, providing pleasant shade.
Tel Gezer offers several wonderful observation points, allowing you to gaze over the green fields and beautiful vineyards surrounding the moshav of Karmei Yosef.
Tel Gezer seen from the air.
The western side also features the tomb of Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali. Up until 1948, 1,000 residents of the Arab village of Abu Shusha lived next to the archaeological mound.
They grew cereals and fruit trees. The village’s houses were all destroyed when the village was conquered during the War of Independence.
Spring can be found southeast of the site with a memorial honouring Itay Steinberger from Karmei Yosef, who fell during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
