Tell es-Sultan, ancient Jericho, is among the oldest walled towns on earth, with a stone tower from about 8000 BC. It also held a Bronze-Age city whose mudbrick walls collapsed and whose remains show a fiery destruction — strikingly like Joshua 6. But the date is the whole question. John Garstang put the fall around 1400 BC, matching a conquest; Kathleen Kenyon's careful re-excavation moved it to about 1550 BC and found the site largely deserted by 1400; Bryant Wood argued back for 1400, which most scholars reject. Mainstream archaeology follows Kenyon — which leaves no walled Jericho standing for Joshua to take.
- Where it is
- Tell es-Sultan, near modern Jericho
- Scripture
- Joshua 6
What the evidence confirmsA fortified Bronze-Age city existed here and was destroyed by fire, its walls fallen — the physical scene the story paints.
What it does not proveThe timing does not fit: on the mainstream (Kenyon) dating the city already lay in ruins centuries before any Israelite conquest. This is a genuine, unresolved dispute, not a settled proof.
Sources & further reading