Archaeologists said Wednesday that the finding of a 4,000-year-old fortified town tucked away in an oasis in present-day Saudi Arabia shows how life was gradually shifting from a nomadic to an urban lifestyle at the period.
The walled oasis of Khaybar, a verdant and rich speck encircled by desert in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula, long obscured the remnants of the settlement, known as al-Natah.
Then, earlier this year, research led by French archaeologist Guillaume Charloux revealed an old wall at the location that was 14.5 kilometres long.
For a new study published in the journal PLOS One, a French-Saudi team of researchers have provided “proof that these ramparts are organised around a habitat”, Charloux told AFP.
According to the experts, the sizable village, which had a population of up to 500, was constructed in the early Bronze Age, circa 2,400 BC.
About a thousand years later, it was abandoned. “No one knows why,” noted Charloux.
Cities were thriving in the Levant region, which stretches from modern-day Syria to Jordan along the Mediterranean Sea, during the time al-Natah was constructed.
At the time, it was believed that northwest Arabia was a desolate desert that was traversed by pastoral nomads and had a number of graveyards.
That is, until 15 years ago, when archaeologists found Bronze Age ramparts in the north of Khaybar, in the oasis of Tayma.
This “first essential discovery” led scientists to look closer at these oases, Charloux said.
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