Jerusalem is a city in the Middle East that is holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The earliest settlement grew around the Gihon Spring on a ridge south of the present Old City, and it appears in Egyptian texts and in the Amarna letters of the Late Bronze Age. According to the Hebrew Bible, King David made it his capital, and his son Solomon built the First Temple. It was later conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians, rebuilt, and destroyed again by the Romans. Christian, Muslim, Crusader and Ottoman rule followed, and the city's status remains one of the most contested issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Before and after
- c. 4,360 BCEEruption of Macauley
- c. 4,350 BCEEruption of Kikai
- c. 4,050 BCEEruption of Masaya
- from 5th millennium BCE to 1st millennium BCEAncient Egypt
- 5th millennium BCEOrigins of Jerusalem
- c. 4,000 BCEOrigins of Thinis
- from c. 4,000 BCE to 3,100 BCEUruk period
- c. 4,000 BCEEruption of Witori
- c. 3,600 BCEConstruction of Ġgantija
More in Civilizations & archaeology
- 86th century BCESheep, goats and cattle are domesticated
- c. 7,350s BCEConstruction of Cueva de las Manos
- 8th millennium BCEOrigins of Athens
- 71st century BCEMaize is domesticated in Mexico
- 71st century BCERice is domesticated in the Yangtze valley
- from 56th century BCE to 35th century BCEUbaid period
The era
This moment belongs to the Human prehistory (300,000 years ago to 3,200 BCE), the human story before writing.