Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan

People settled beside the spring of 'Ain es-Sultan more than ten thousand years ago, and the mound that grew there — Tell es-Sultan, beside modern Jericho — is often called the world's oldest town. By the 9th–8th millennium BCE its Neolithic community had raised a wall, ditch and stone tower, monuments of humanity's turn to settled life; plastered skulls and statues attest early religious practice, and Bronze Age layers record a fortified Canaanite city-state. UNESCO inscribed the tell in 2023.