Nine thousand years ago — a couple of millennia after the first humble farming villages appeared in the Middle East — Motza was a town ahead of its time, a vanguard of urban life. Home to thousands, the roughly 80-acre site was about 10 to 100 times larger than other settlements of the day.
Israeli Archaeological Dig Uncovers 9,000-year-old Mega City
#19 in our top science stories of 2019.
By Bridget Alex
Dec 27, 2019 12:00 AMDec 27, 2019 1:09 AM
The Motza mega-site is about 3 miles from Jerusalem. Stabilized by white sandbags, excavation squares contain stone walls and plaster floors, which reveal the ancient town’s architecture and roads. Urban planning and variable-sized homes suggest the presence of formal leaders
and social strata. Credit: E. Marco/Israel Antiquities Authority
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