Jericho facts for kids

Camel in Jericho (Palestine)

Jericho is a city in the Palestinian Territories and is located near the Jordan River in the West Bank. In 2007, it had a population of 18,346. The city was occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and has been held under Israeli occupation since 1967; administrative control was handed over to the Palestinian Authority in 1994.

It is believed to be one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and the city with the oldest known protective wall in the world. It was thought to have the oldest stone tower in the world as well, but excavations at Tell Qaramel in Syria have discovered stone towers that are even older.

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back 11,000 years (9000 BC), almost to the very beginning of the Holocene epoch of the Earth's history.

Copious springs in and around the city have attracted human habitation for thousands of years. Jericho is described in the Hebrew Bible as the "City of Palm Trees".

Images for kids

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  Calibrated carbon 14 dates for Jericho as of 2013

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  Dwelling foundations unearthed at Tell es-Sultan in Jericho

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  Head of an ancestor statue, Jericho, from c. 9000 years ago, among the oldest representations of a human face ever found. Rockefeller Archeological Museum, Jerusalem.

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  The 8000 BCE Tower of Jericho at Tell es-Sultan

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  Area of the fertile crescent, c. 7500 BC, with main sites. Jericho was a foremost site of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period. The area of Mesopotamia proper was not yet settled by humans.

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  Red terracotta jar, Ancient Bronze period 3500–2000 BCE, Tell es-Sultan, ancient Jericho, Tomb A IV. Louvre Museum AO 15611.

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  Remains from Herod's palace

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  Christ Healing the Blind in Jericho, El Greco

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  Copy of Mosaic of the Shalom Al Yisrael Synagogue, 6th–7th century CE

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  Arabic Umayyad mosaic from Hisham's Palace in Jericho

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  14th-century map of Jericho in Farhi Bible by Abraham Cresques

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  Postcard image depicting Jericho in the late 19th or early 20th century

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  Roman aqueducts

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  Jericho, the Jordan Hotel, 1912

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  Jericho from the air in 1931

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  Jericho 1938

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  2018 United Nations map of the area, showing the Israeli occupation arrangements

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  Municipality of Jericho, 1967

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  Jericho marketplace, 1967

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  Jericho cable car

See also

In Spanish: Jericó para niños