In emergency excavations before road works researchers in northern Israel have uncovered the remains of an imposing ancient metropolis. The En Esur archeological site near present-day Harish in Haifa district is about 5,000 years old, and the largest and most central one ever discovered in the Middle East region, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said Sunday. "This is the New York of the Early Bronze Age in our region," enthused the archaeologists in a statement.
Cosmopolitan and planned was the city, which according to their estimates had about 6000 inhabitants. The work on the archaeological site of En Esur therefore exposed a fortified city wall, residential areas, public squares and streets and alleys. Aerial imagery made by drones shows the amazing dimensions of the facility. According to archaeologists Itai Elad and Dina Schalem, En Esur covered an area of 0.65 square kilometers, twice the size of any other ancient site in the region.
The researchers discovered parts of a two-meter-high rampart, a cemetery and a temple with animal and human figures - and two massive stone pools, which were probably used for religious rituals. As the Israeli daily Haaretz writes, the hollowed-out stones must have weighed between ten and fifteen tons - and transported long distances. Stone of this kind was not to be found in the immediate vicinity.
Yoli Schwartz / Israel Antiquities Authority / dpa
Stone water basin on the site of the excavation site En Esur
In one of the tanks found animal and human bone remains to draw conclusions about the cultural habits of the inhabitants - it was apparently made sacrifices.
In addition, the archaeologists found traces of a presumably 2000 years older settlement from the Copper Age - directly under the housing remains of the Bronze Age metropolis.
So far, around four million fragments have been excavated in En Esur, including pottery shards, stone tools and stone and basalt vases. Some of the tools came from Egypt according to the researchers. The excavations lasted two and a half years and were carried out with the support of some 5,000 volunteers.
The Bronze Age is the period in human history in which weapons and tools were mainly made of bronze - an alloy of copper and tin. In Central Europe, this era covered the period from about 2200 to 800 BC. The Early Bronze Age began again a thousand years earlier.