Video narration
On our timeline, we roll back to a label that reads: “10,000+ YEARS AGO.” Follow the marker as it glides to the Levant, then zooms down into a dry desert plain—this is ancient Jericho. Archaeologists have found signs of people living here more than ten thousand years ago, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited places we know. In this landscape, the settlement takes shape: round homes, storage areas, and thick stone walls—evidence of permanent building and early defensive architecture. People move between structures, showing a community choosing to stay put and organize life in one place. Then the marker reveals Jericho’s famous stone tower, rising beside the walls—an enormous project for its time, built long before Egypt’s pyramids or the great cities of Mesopotamia. But was it the “first city”? That depends on how you define a city—population, planning, writing, or government—so historians use the claim cautiously. As the tower fills the frame, its stones stretch upward… and become the next line on our timeline.