When I was in the British Museum this summer I again stumbled across an object that fascinates me every time I see it — the Jericho Skull. In 1953 in the city of Jericho, in what’s now the West Bank, Palestinian territories, archaeologists discovered 10 skulls in several caches, including this one. Jericho is fascinating in that it has been inhabited continuously for more than 11,000 years, since 9,000 B.C. Therefore, it’s the oldest continuously lived-in city on Earth. At an elevation below sea level, it’s also the lowest inhabited settlement on the planet. The find of skulls in Jericho was significant because their jaws had been removed, the faces adorned with cowrie shells for eyes and covered with plaster decoration. The skulls found there seem to represent an early form of ancestor worship and coincided with the period that saw hunter-gatherer groups of humans settling in cities along with a fixed agrarian lifestyle.
One wonders if this change from roaming to staying put — and placing so much emphasis on the wisdom of ancestors — also drove a heightened desire to look at the stars above. For eons humans had used stars for navigation or for seasonal timings, but, once cities were established, did the meaning of the stars change too? We will never know, but clues from the past like the Jericho Skull make such things more than intriguing to think about.
Related posts:
"The Astronomer, and that other painting"
"Galileo's big day"