No one ‘expected to find what we did’: 4,000-year-old Canaanite arch in Israel may have been used by cult

Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed a mysterious Canaanite arch and vaulted stairway sealed inside a well-preserved mud brick constructing that dates to three,800 years in the past, in the course of the Center Bronze Age. The archaeologists do not know why the arch was constructed.

The workforce had beforehand excavated an extended hall resulting in the arch and stairway on the archaeological web site of Tel Shimron, however they have been blown away by the preservation of the newfound buildings, calling them “breathtaking, particularly because the constructing materials is unfired (!) mud brick — a cloth that solely hardly ever survives a very long time,” Mario A.S. Martin, co-director of the excavation at Tel Shimron and an archaeologist on the College of Innsbruck in Austria, informed Dwell Science in an e mail.

“In fact you by no means know what you discover at a web site that has by no means been excavated, however I can say with confidence that no person … anticipated to search out what we did,” Martin added.