Dutch researcher Eva Kaptijn succeeded in discovering – based on 100,000 finds – that the Zerqa Valley in Jordan had been successively inhabited and irrigated for more than 13,000 years. But it was not just communities that built irrigation systems: the irrigation systems also built communities.
Eva Kaptijn has given up digging in favour of gathering. With her colleagues, she has been applying an intensive field exploration technique: 15 metres apart, the researchers would walk forward for 50 metres. On the outward leg, they’d pick up all the earthenware and, on …

Although Egyptian-Israeli relations have been frosty in recent years, ties between the two lands were vibrant around 3,000 BCE during the Early Bronze Age – at least according to Tel Aviv University and University College London archeologists who discovered a rare, four-centimeter-long stone fragment at the point where the Jordan River exits Lake Kinneret.
The piece, part of a carved stone plaque bearing archaic Egyptian signs, was the highlight of the second season of excavations at Tel Bet Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak). The site lies along an ancient highway that connected Egypt …