Exploring Stone Age High Society in Israel

Excavations of an ancient village in northern Israel have uncovered hundreds of artifacts that show links between part of the village's upper class and Mesopotamia and other distant civilizations.

Archaeologist Yair Milevski, head of the project at the Ein Tzipori archaeological site near the city of Nazareth, told Xinhua on December 10 that the discovery will contribute to understanding of Stone Age elite society and trade activities in the region.

Stone Age artifacts discovered at Ein Zippori, including a collection of colored beads. (Source: Israel Antiquities Authority)

The artifacts date back to the Chalcolithic period, more than 7,000 years ago, and are believed to be part of the local Wadi Rabah culture.

This discovery shows that the Wadi Rabah culture had close trade relations with other distant cultures as far away as Mesopotamia and Anatolia, now part of Türkiye.

According to Mr. Milevsky, this type of trade is not unusual, "but what is special is that we have a large collection of antiquities in one place and the most likely is that they carried out these exchanges by land. We assume that they conducted transactions by barter because they did not have money, and sometimes this form of exchange originated from very far away areas because we also found obsidian items from Anatolia and other parts of Türkiye as well as other items from Syria and the northern Levant."

Archaeologists believe that the luxury items discovered at Ein Tzipori belonged to the upper class and this was not a religious site or an area with prosperous trading activities./.

According to (Vietnam+) - VT