Public Archeology announces the discovery of a 9,000-year-old `time capsule` in the Jordan desert

Weather of Arabia - Director of the General Department of Antiquities, Fadi Al-Balawi, announced the discovery of a 9,000-year-old time capsule in Jordan, in the Al-Khashabiya Mountains region of Al-Jafr in the southeastern Badia.

Al-Balawi said during a press conference held at the General Department of Antiquities on Tuesday (February 22), that Jordan is an open museum that contains more than 15,000 archaeological sites, all of which represent a small part of the big picture that helps us understand our history and the history of this ancient country, adding “Today, all of us, as the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the Department of Antiquities, Al Hussein Bin Talal University, the French Embassy and the French Institute of Archeology, open together, in a distinguished partnership, an era dating back 9,000 years.

The discovery included a unique facility in the world linked to the practice of religious rituals, containing the oldest architectural model in the world, and the oldest plan of stone traps dating back to 7 thousand years BC "the Neolithic period", in addition to two stones erected on human forms close to the size of a natural human.

The scientific team, consisting of archaeologists from Jordan's Al-Hussein Bin Talal University and the French Institute for the Near East, found a large number of different artifacts, a number of marine fossils, animal puppets, exceptional tray tools, and stoves related to the practice of religious rituals.

This discovery is due to a new culture called the Ghassanid culture, which is the culture of a hunter-gatherer society during the Neolithic era, who practiced collective hunting for deer using huge stone traps. .

For his part, Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Nayef Hamidi Al-Fayez said that this discovery is a qualitative discovery of previous civilizations that reflects a historical identity that enables individuals and societies to know their past, pointing out that Jordan is characterized by important archaeological sites globally.

The French Ambassador to Jordan, Veronique Voland-Enni, affirmed the fruitful cooperation between Jordan and France to highlight and shed light on the distinguished archaeological sites in the Kingdom, pointing out that many French archaeological missions are working in Jordan in multiple sites dating back to prehistoric times and even the Mamluk era.

In turn, Balawi said, that archaeological sites are the backbone of tourism and are non-renewable resources, and that the Department of Antiquities is facing an important task in protecting and preserving antiquities. He pointed out that the archaeological research techniques in the world and Jordan, which enriches tourism in Jordan and the world.