Trove of Discoveries from the Stone Age Found in Israel

Luxury Items up to 10,000 Years Old

Do you know those annoying nouveau – riche neighbors who have more money than you and love to flaunt it? We may think it’s a modern invention but new archaeological finds show those bothersome neighbors may have been around up to 10,000 years ago.

“We found a series of small and delicate bowls made of fine stone and decorated that we believe was not something that every person in a village would have,” Dr. Ianir Milevski, one of the excavation directors told The Media Line. “There are also beads made of stones and shells, luxury items that we think these items probably belong to a special elite group.”

The finds were made at extensive archaeological excavations that the Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out before widening a highway in northern Israel. Archaeologists said the 50-acre site might be the largest in Israel that goes back to prehistoric settlement from the Pre-pottery Neolithic Period (about 10,000 years ago) to the Early Bronze Age, around 5000 years ago.

“The surprise is how extensive the site is,” Milevski said. “There are other smaller sites of this culture in Israel or Jordan but this site has millions of items, including pottery shards, beads and shells. We have the remains of the buildings and we have all the tools and vessels they utilized for cooking, storage tools for working with wood, flint axes, sickle blades that are made of flint. We have a large repertoire of jars, bowls and cooking pots. They are charateristic of these cultures with very distinctive decoration.

In Israel, before any construction work can be done, the Antiquities Authority must investigate to make sure important finds will not be destroyed. At times it can spark violence such as when Israel’s graves were found and needed to be disinterred at Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon.

In this case, there were no graves but just many examples of what is called “Wadi Rabah” culture, which was common in Israel from the end of the sixth millennium to the middle of the fifth millennium BC. This site, at Ein Tzipori or the Tzipori Spring in the lower Galilee, may be the largest discovered so far. The Antiquities Authority says the architecture is rectangular and the floors are make of crushed chalk or small stones.

But it is the luxury items that are most interesting for archaeologists. There is a group of small stone bowls. One of the bowls had more than 200 black, white and red stone beds. There are also a group of stone plaques with an elegant carving of two running ostriches.

“Beauty is subjective but I find this plaque with the ostriches very beautiful and I think the people then did too,” Milevsky says. “Even though these items were made thousands of years ago, they communicate to us. I feel excited every time I find something new.”