12/10/2025
Rising from the dust of Jericho’s Tell es-Sultan, the world’s oldest stone tower stood guard over humanity’s first city around 8000 BCE. Built by the Neolithic Sultanians—hunters turned settlers—the 8.5-metre-high cylinder of undressed stone was a marvel of early engineering, its walls 3.6 metres thick.
No fortress, it likely served as a watchtower or communal signal, its spiral staircase leading to a summit where the first farmers could scan for raiders or floods. Some whisper it held ritual meaning, a link to the sky or gods.
Buried and forgotten for millennia, it was rediscovered in the 1950s, proof that even 10,000 years ago, man built not just to survive, but to reach higher.