“The story of the human race is war,” Sir Winston Churchill once stated. “Except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world; and before history began, murderous strife was universal and unending.”
This week, the Israel Antiquities Authority (iaa) revealed just that: prehistoric evidence of warfare—the earliest thus far discovered in the southern Levant.
In a press release issued Wednesday, the iaa announced the discovery and analysis of two large slingstone ammunition caches, dated to the first part of the Chalcolithic period; they were discovered at the large archaeological sites of ‘En Esur (Israel’s northern Sharon Plain) and ‘En Ẓippori (Lower Galilee). The discovery has been recently published in the iaa’s latest ‘Atiqot journal issue, themed “The Science of Ancient Warfare and Defense.” The article is titled “Up in Arms: Slingstone Assemblages From the Late Prehistoric Sites of ‘En Ẓippori and ‘En Esur,” by Gil Haklay, Hendrik Bron, Dina Shalem, Ianir Milevski and Nimrod Getzov.
The collection of projectiles from both sites totals 424, almost-identical slingstones made of hard limestone/dolomite, uniform in size, weight and shaping—“a specific biconical aerodynamic form, enabling exact and effective projection,” according to the researchers.
According to the press release, “Similar slingstones have been found at other sites in the country, mainly from the Hula Valley and the Galilee in the north to the northern Sharon, but this is the first time that they have been found in excavations in such large concentrations.” They believe that due to the quantity, this constituted some kind of preparation for large-scale warfare. Together with other discoveries, it also points to these sites as important early regional hubs.
