23,000-Year-Old Settlement & Earliest Cultivation: Ohalo II | Ancient Architects

There’s an archaeological site in Northern Israel, situated on the southwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee and it’s one of the most fascinating and important ancient sites that hardly anyone has ever heard of.

It’s one of the best-preserved hunter-gatherer sites of the Last Glacial Maximum, yes, we’re talking about a site 23,000 years old.

It’s called Ohalo II, and it wasn’t a mere seasonal camp, it was a permanent settlement, occupied throughout the year – and for many generations, which, in the current state of knowledge, is somewhat unique for a site so old.

But it’s what was discovered at the site that makes it so incredible. It contains two things that today, with the current level of research, can be called the ‘world’s oldest’.

Firstly, it has the world’s oldest brush dwellings, but also, and most importantly, it contains evidence of the world’s oldest small-scale plant cultivation, some 11,000 years before the onset of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent.

Watch this video to learn more about Ohalo II, a settlement 11,000 years older than Göbekli Tepe, and the evidence for ice age farming - and planting the seeds of civilization.



[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, July 23, 2026.]