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00:00It is one of the epic battles of the Bible.
00:09An army of nomads emerges from the desert
00:11and destroys the walls of a heavily fortified city,
00:18not by force, but by faith.
00:23The story of how Joshua fought the battle of Jericho using trumpets
00:27is among history's most memorable.
00:30And most controversial.
00:34For this wasn't Joshua's only victory.
00:37The Bible claims his Israelite army went on to conquer Canaan
00:40and settle in their promised land.
00:45There's no doubt ancient Israelites did occupy the region
00:48we now call Israel and the Palestinian territories.
00:54Indeed, their claim to the land still causes deep conflict there today.
01:00But is the battle of Jericho really how it all began?
01:04Answering that question will draw on the latest archaeological and scientific research
01:08and lead to a conclusion more startling than anyone could ever have imagined.
01:14The Middle East, some 3,000 years ago.
01:15The Middle East, some 3,000 years ago.
01:17The Middle East, some 3,000 years ago.
01:44The Middle East, some 3,000 years ago.
01:44A region that, even then, faced violence and war.
01:48In the mountains to the northeast of the Dead Sea, a soldier prepares to attack.
01:53This is Joshua, successor to the great leader Moses, and one of the Bible's most famous warriors.
02:02From here, Joshua looks west, across the Jordan Valley to the promised land.
02:08This was where his ancestor Abraham once lived.
02:11And Joshua believes he too must settle.
02:13But there's a problem.
02:15The land is already occupied by local people known as Canaanites.
02:22Joshua will have to fight for it.
02:26He's not alone.
02:28He leads some 150,000 people.
02:31Children of the Hebrew slaves who fled bondage in Egypt.
02:35They've spent 40 years trekking through the desert.
02:37Now they are preparing for war.
02:42And their first target?
02:44The Canaanite stronghold of Jericho.
02:49This is a defining moment in the story of ancient Israel, according to Hebrew Bible scholar Rachel Haverloch.
02:56This is really a story about beginnings, about the origins of a nation.
03:02And this is, in many ways, really the birth story of ancient Israel.
03:08And the battle of Jericho is just the beginning.
03:15The start of a holy war in which Joshua and the Israelites rapidly defeat the Canaanites
03:21and put them to the sword.
03:23The story is shocking.
03:27And not yet over.
03:30Joshua's war is still being waged today.
03:34You've got the Palestinians saying they're descendants of the Canaanites.
03:38You have the Israelis saying that they're the descendants of the Israelites.
03:42And it's ongoing.
03:44They're both trying to claim the same land.
03:46So what happened 3,000 years ago is basically still going today.
03:50But if Joshua did cleanse Canaan of its inhabitants and occupy their land,
03:58surely he must have left some evidence behind.
04:00In fact, there's surprisingly little proof.
04:08No archaeological evidence confirming Joshua's existence has ever been found.
04:13All we have is the Bible.
04:15And the book that bears Joshua's name.
04:17But that was written down around 500 B.C., some 1,000 years after Joshua's conquest could have happened.
04:28Despite this, surprisingly few scholars dismiss the story as fiction.
04:32Many believe it could be based on fact.
04:38As in most of these stories, there's a kernel of truth at the bottom of it, around which everything else is wrapped.
04:45Just what the truth is behind Joshua's conquest of Canaan has become one of the biggest puzzles of ancient history.
04:52And the quest for the answer, a detective story of epic proportions.
04:59It has intrigued scholars for decades, drawing many of them here, to the site of Joshua's first battle.
05:08This is modern Jericho, an oasis town in the Jordan Valley.
05:20Archaeologist Bill Deaver is an expert on the history of the area.
05:25Jericho's a unique site.
05:26It's the most important site anywhere south of the Sea of Galilee in the Jordan Valley.
05:31Its history is due to the fact that there's a source of water.
05:34The spring that supplies that water still serves the people of Jericho today.
05:42Next to the spring is what looks like a small hill, but is something very different.
05:49It's an occupation mound, or tell, where the inhabitants of ancient Jericho built their cities,
05:56one on top of each other, for centuries.
06:00Perhaps one could be Joshua's Jericho.
06:04Among the first archaeologists to try and find out was John Garstang,
06:09a professor from Liverpool University.
06:14His original field reports have been conserved by museum curator Felicity Cobbing.
06:21These photographs were taken from 1931 up to 1936.
06:28Garstang's pictures document an amazing discovery.
06:32What Garstang found that he believed was connected directly to the biblical story of Joshua's conquest of Jericho
06:47were two strong defensive walls running in parallel on the crest of the hill of Jericho.
06:55Mud brick, very, very deep, and evidently very strong.
07:02Using evidence from pottery fragments, Garstang dated these mud brick walls to 1400 BC,
07:10exactly when the Bible suggests the Battle of Jericho took place.
07:13What's more, the scribes who wrote the story claimed the city Joshua attacked was heavily fortified.
07:25And this is just what Garstang found.
07:30He discovered the mud brick walls had been built on top of earlier stone fortifications.
07:35You see here what is very typical of a Middle Bronze Age fortified system
07:43with a retaining wall that basically helped to hold in the sides of the tell.
07:49That wall stood at least 15 feet high.
07:55On top of it was a first mud brick rampart.
08:00Then, a steep slope plastered with lime.
08:05And finally, the main mud brick walls.
08:09Six feet thick
08:11To an invading army, ancient Jericho must have been a daunting sight,
08:32looming at least 50 feet above the valley floor.
08:34Here, it seems, Garstang had indeed discovered the city described in the Bible.
08:43Garstang discovered, or thought he had discovered,
08:45the very walls that Joshua brought tumbling down,
08:48and that's what made headlines.
08:50So, archaeological evidence does suggest the story is no mere myth.
08:55But that's not all.
08:57There are clues in the Bible itself.
08:59The book of Joshua contains a credible account of an ancient battle,
09:06according to archaeologist and military historian Eric Klein.
09:11In terms of the story,
09:13it's completely plausible that Joshua would want to attack Jericho.
09:16The fact that Jericho was an oasis would have made it extremely valuable.
09:21Food, water, supplies.
09:23Also, it's on the way to the central highlands.
09:26If you want to go that route, you must attack Jericho.
09:30There's no way around it.
09:33And it's not just the battlefield that's convincing.
09:36It's how Joshua commanded the battle.
09:39From the text,
09:41Joshua seems to be an excellent military leader.
09:43He's a very good general.
09:45I would compare him to Patton or to Montgomery.
09:50Like those Second World War generals,
09:52the story records that Joshua based his strategy on a key ingredient,
09:57military intelligence.
10:00According to the Bible,
10:01Joshua sent Israelite spies to scout out the city.
10:06His soldiers infiltrated Jericho successfully,
10:09but then did something unexpected.
10:12Our very hard-working spies go immediately to an inn
10:18that's run by a prostitute.
10:26This may not be so strange.
10:29Ancient inscriptions reveal the brothels
10:31were the boarding houses of the ancient world.
10:33They were the ideal place to blend in
10:37and gather information about the enemy.
10:41Who better to go to,
10:43a prostitute or a hostess?
10:45They found out very quickly what they needed to know.
10:51So far, the Israelites' actions sound plausible.
10:56Jericho was a strategic target.
10:59And using spies, a textbook tactic.
11:03But what about the people those spies saw inside?
11:08Given the size of ancient Jericho,
11:11there were probably 1,200 inhabitants.
11:14Men, women, and children.
11:16The story calls Canaanites.
11:19Here again, the Bible is in line with archaeological finds.
11:24While digging on the outskirts of Jericho,
11:27excavators found something extraordinary.
11:29The story of Canaanites.
11:33Tombs containing three-and-a-half-thousand-year-old skeletons.
11:38Canaanite skeletons.
11:41Buried with their grave goods.
11:43Connecting the people of Jericho to a wider world.
11:46To a real Canaanite culture,
11:49whose cities once spread across modern-day Syria,
11:52Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.
11:54But there's much more to the historical Canaanites
11:59than the Bible reveals,
12:01according to archaeologist Jonathan Tubb.
12:04I think that a lot of people
12:06who have followed the biblical view, if you like,
12:10see the Canaanites as wicked, evil people.
12:14They're not at all.
12:16They're very urbane, sophisticated people.
12:18And we know this from the examples of jewellery, metalwork,
12:23even the very basic pots and pans of daily life,
12:27which were often very refined.
12:29They enjoyed the good things in life.
12:33What's more, archaeology has revealed
12:36that the Canaanites were the first people to use an alphabet.
12:41A 40-letter system
12:43that replaced the ancient sign language known as cuneiform.
12:46And led to the form of writing we use today.
12:55The Canaanites were even great traders,
12:58influenced by other civilisations as far away as Greece and Egypt.
13:03Some of the jewellery is very beautiful.
13:06This one's interesting because it's in the form of a lotus bud,
13:10showing that strong Egyptian influence.
13:12The story leaves out these positive details.
13:19It's not surprising.
13:21In the Bible, the Canaanites are the Israelites' sworn enemies.
13:27Joshua's spies would have had much to report.
13:31But, like many military operations,
13:34their mission was compromised.
13:35The Bible records how Jericho's governor heard that the prostitute,
13:43called Rahab, was sheltering the spies.
13:47The head of Jericho would try and find these spies wherever they might have been.
13:51Why he knows or thinks that they're at Rahab's place,
13:54I imagine he had his own intelligence gathering for us.
13:57According to the story, Rahab faced a stark choice,
14:02to hand the spies over to torture and death,
14:05or turn traitor and protect them.
14:11She tells the spies that she knows that Israel will conquer the land.
14:17She knows that God has promised the land to them.
14:21And Rahab takes charge of the whole situation.
14:26She hides the spies in the stalks of grain on her roof.
14:32Moments later, Canaanite soldiers arrive.
14:39But Rahab managed to convince them that the spies had already left,
14:43and sent the soldiers off to find them.
14:47Before she helped the spies escape,
14:55Rahab made them promise to protect her and her family in the coming battle.
14:59The spies agreed, and returned to the Israelite camp.
15:07Up to this point, archaeology and military strategy
15:10are remarkably consistent with the Bible's build-up to the battle.
15:17But at the heart of the story is Joshua's advance on Jericho,
15:24and his use of trumpets to conquer the city.
15:26According to the Bible,
15:38Joshua's first tactic was to cross the River Jordan
15:40and establish a bridgehead on the West Bank,
15:45within a mile of his target.
15:47What he did next, must have surprised everyone.
15:59Rather than march towards Jericho,
16:01he ordered his troops to march around it.
16:07Once a day for six days,
16:09accompanied by priests blowing trumpets.
16:18This is a strange tactic.
16:21Perhaps here, fact gives way to fiction.
16:24Or maybe not.
16:26History records how other armies used the same strategy.
16:30We know the Romans, upon occasion,
16:35would tend to, say, march up to a city and march away again.
16:37They march up and away and up and away
16:40and basically lull the inhabitants into a false sense of security
16:44when they didn't know what was going to happen.
16:45Then all of a sudden, boom, in they go.
16:50So marching around Jericho may make sense,
16:52but the purpose of the accompanying trumpets remains a mystery.
16:59Unless a clue lies here, in this synagogue.
17:04The Jewish religion traces its roots back to the early Israelites,
17:09and trumpets still feature in its rituals today.
17:13But not the modern trumpet as we know it.
17:17According to musician Alan Friedman.
17:19This would be the type of horn
17:21that the priests at Jericho would have blown.
17:24This is the horn of a mountain goat,
17:26also known as a ram.
17:33The ram's horn trumpet is of particular interest
17:36to audio consultant David Lubman.
17:39He's an expert in the role of sound in ancient religion,
17:42and especially interested in the Joshua story.
17:46Today he's working with Friedman
17:48to conduct a precise audio analysis of the trumpet.
17:51Hopeful it will shed light on its role in the battle.
17:59Back at his lab, Lubman analyzes his results.
18:03He knows only too well that sound can have a military use.
18:06During the Vietnam War,
18:10the American army recruited Lubman to build an audio test chamber,
18:14where they could recreate high-intensity sound levels.
18:17Once, an experiment went wrong.
18:20A seal on the test chamber failed, noise leaked out,
18:25with dramatic consequences for one lab technician.
18:28One of the technicians, perfectly sane and stable,
18:36upon hearing the sound, was set into flight.
18:39He ran away in terror.
18:43And he didn't come back for hours that day.
18:45We didn't want to say anything to him.
18:46But such was the power to frighten and to create a sense of awe.
18:54So perhaps the sound of the trumpet also had a psychological effect.
18:59It's certainly loud.
19:00We're getting about 93 or 94 decibels of sound intensity
19:05when I measure nine feet from one shofar.
19:09And if we had seven shofars,
19:11then that would be 93 plus 8.5 decibels higher.
19:16That's the sort of levels that you'd expect to hear at a rock concert.
19:21So it could be that Joshua did use the trumpet,
19:24not as a musical instrument, but as a weapon.
19:27I think sound does play a very prominent role in the book of Joshua
19:32to create a sense of shock and awe.
19:37But according to the Bible,
19:40Joshua didn't just rely on trumpets to create shock and awe.
19:43A siege like this could drag on for years.
19:46But just one week into Joshua's attack, the battle reached its climax.
19:51On the seventh day, the Israelites circled the city,
19:55not once, but seven times.
19:57Then all 40,000 soldiers let out a deafening battle cry.
20:04Think of it in terms of somebody inside Jericho.
20:07You're watching these people for a week now.
20:09All of a sudden, they're shrieking, they're shouting.
20:12Just at the time when you need to talk to your other people,
20:15you know, watch out, here they come.
20:16You can't hear yourself think, let alone say anything.
20:20The Israelites, on the other hand, knew exactly what they're doing.
20:22They have no need to talk.
20:24So the din would have been just ear-shattering.
20:27It's at this point the Bible makes its most spectacular claim.
20:38That the ever-increasing din brought the mud-brick walls of Jericho crashing down.
20:43Allowing Joshua's troops to clamber up the fallen city walls.
20:49To attack Canaanite soldiers.
20:53And the Bible claims to massacre everyone inside.
20:58Apart from Rahab and her family, all of Jericho's inhabitants were killed.
21:09And their once mighty city set alight.
21:23But while sound might have terrified and confused the inhabitants of Jericho,
21:30it couldn't have demolished their walls.
21:32The possibility intrigues Professor Barry Gibb of Liverpool University's Audio Research Department.
21:47Assisted by colleague Gary Seafoot,
21:50he's exploring the physical impact of sound on solid objects.
21:53Sound can destroy structures if you take as the premise that sound is a pressure,
22:09a pressure is a force.
22:12And any force, if it's big enough, will move a body.
22:15Resetting on linear.
22:16Yeah, okay.
22:18Happy?
22:19Go.
22:20Gibb and Seafoot are currently conducting experiments
22:22to understand the exact science behind the phenomenon.
22:27What I'm doing here is to put some powder into the funnel.
22:33The idea of this simple experiment is to see if sound energy alone can cause the powder to flow.
22:42The experiment uses a fine powder, gypsum,
22:45in the belief that if sound can move a powder,
22:48it may affect a solid object too.
22:52The required level and pitch of sound is produced by a giant horn,
22:56situated in the adjoining room.
22:59The two scientists sit at a remote monitoring station.
23:04The experiment begins.
23:06Reset for linear.
23:08Yeah.
23:09Happy with the shot?
23:10Yeah.
23:11Okay.
23:11When the horn is off, the powder sits in the funnel.
23:19When it is on, something remarkable happens.
23:22The powder flows like a fluid.
23:26Why this happens is still a mystery.
23:28But Professor Gibb believes sound waves break the bonds between the powder particles.
23:32The effect is dramatic and opens up the possibility that a solid object may also be affected.
23:41This is a brick similar to the ones that would have been used to construct the walls of Jericho.
23:46And we intend now to replace the powder with the brick and repeat the test.
23:53Happy?
23:53Go.
23:53The experiment begins again.
23:56If the brick disintegrates, it will go a long way to explaining what made Jericho's walls fall down.
24:02The sound levels produced in this test chamber are significantly higher than Joshua's trumpets.
24:08If the brick does not respond here, it's unlikely to have been damaged at Jericho.
24:13Well, the brick is unaffected by the sound in this preliminary experiment.
24:23Also, the surface particles seem to be unmoved.
24:28From it, I would have to say that the walls of Jericho may well have fallen down, but it wasn't sound that did it.
24:35Of course, the fact that the brick was unaffected in these tests doesn't mean Jericho's walls didn't crumble.
24:46Or indeed, the city wasn't ransacked and set on fire.
24:50Far from it.
24:52As Garstang's excavations in the 1930s revealed.
24:57The walls that Garstang thought were associated with Joshua's conquest
25:03had very clear signs of damage and destruction.
25:08And you can see this in some of his photographs.
25:15Archaeology also supports another of the Bible's claims.
25:18That Jericho had been set alight.
25:20Probably the most sensational thing he found was wholesale destruction by fire of the city walls and the city gates
25:27and the shops and residences inside.
25:29Really quite dramatic evidence for a destruction.
25:33It's now clear the sound of trumpets alone could not have caused that devastation.
25:40Yet many of the facts do fit.
25:42The archaeological record seems remarkably consistent with Jericho's fate as described in the Bible.
25:49But if trumpets didn't bring Jericho's walls tumbling down, what did?
25:55Perhaps there's a clue earlier in the story.
25:58According to the Bible, when Israelite priests leading Joshua's army reached the river Jordan,
26:09something incredible happened.
26:17The water level dropped.
26:18The water level dropped.
26:18The priests led the way across dry land.
26:36It's a miraculous moment, but not the only time it happened.
26:40The Jordan also stopped flowing in July 1927.
26:46And these photographs from the time tell us why.
26:49The Jordan Valley suffered an earthquake, causing landslides that dammed the river for two days,
27:07just like the story suggests.
27:09What's more, seismologists now believe an earthquake could also have been responsible for Jericho's destruction.
27:19Exactly why becomes clearer at the Seismological Institute of Israel.
27:25Here, computers record the output of sensors across Israel, the West Bank and Jordan.
27:30They monitor a major fault running the length of the Jordan Valley,
27:35a fault that caused minor fractures,
27:38one of which runs right under the east wall of ancient Jericho,
27:42making it extremely vulnerable to seismic activity.
27:49And there is archaeological evidence suggesting earthquakes did indeed strike the city.
27:54Not once, but many times, as archaeologist John Garstine discovered.
28:02Jericho was subjected more than once to significant earthquakes.
28:12In the early levels, he found very, very distinctive cracks that split earlier burials.
28:20Here you can see the crack has severed the head of this individual here.
28:26But if the damage to Jericho's walls was caused not by sound but by an earthquake,
28:31where does that leave Joshua and his advancing army?
28:37Perhaps the earthquake conveniently struck Jericho at the same time as the Israelites attacked the city.
28:44Remarkably, that's just what Garstine's evidence suggested.
28:47Garstine found evidence of earthquake damage in the walls that he associated with the Joshua Conquest.
28:57Very, very clear evidence of earthquake damage.
29:01Tumbles of bricks, repatching and general disarray of masonry.
29:08With the addition of earthquakes to the story,
29:15Garstine's discoveries seem to confirm almost all details of the Bible writer's account.
29:20It seems that Joshua did conquer Canaan, just like the story says.
29:26But there's a problem.
29:28In the 1950s, another British archaeologist followed Garstine to Jericho,
29:35and that's when all the trouble began.
29:40That archaeologist was the renowned expert Kathleen Kenyon.
29:45She became interested in Jericho when John Garstine asked her to re-examine his findings.
29:50In 1952, Kenyon began her own epic excavation.
29:57Kathleen Kenyon was able to examine in minute detail the very, very complex phases of occupation at Jericho.
30:08She was able to see an awful lot that Garstine had simply missed.
30:12What Garstine missed was crucial evidence contradicting his date for Jericho's destruction.
30:21Rather than the walls collapsing in 1400 BC, as Garstine believed,
30:27Kenyon concluded they had finally fallen 150 years before, in 1550 BC.
30:33If she was right, Jericho had been ruined long before Joshua could have left Egypt.
30:46An earthquake may have destroyed its walls,
30:49but it didn't coincide with Joshua's attack as Garstine originally supposed.
30:54And that's not the only problem facing the traditional version of Joshua's heroic conquest.
31:00If the Israelites did reach Jericho at the traditional date of 1400 BC,
31:06Kenyon's excavations revealed that the city they found
31:09would have looked very different to the one described in the Bible.
31:13The defences had fallen into disuse.
31:15It was effectively undefended.
31:19Very little population there.
31:21It wouldn't have been much of a conquest, to be honest.
31:24But if a battle for Jericho was unnecessary,
31:29it does beg the question,
31:31why the Israelites' arrival is described as a conquest at all?
31:35Well, the Bible says Joshua's invasion didn't just involve Jericho.
31:40He destroyed other cities as well.
31:42But experts excavating those sites eventually hit similar problems.
31:51The sites that are said to have been conquered by the Israelites,
31:56the archaeology shows that most of them weren't even inhabited at that time.
32:00And the sites at which we do have a destruction
32:03are not the ones mentioned in the biblical text.
32:05The archaeological record, it seems, no longer supports Joshua's story.
32:13And any lingering doubt was dispelled when historians realised
32:16that no Israelite army, however powerful,
32:19could have taken on the Canaanites.
32:25By 1400 BC, Egyptian forces had made Canaan part of their mighty golden empire.
32:32The Egyptians were unlikely to allow Joshua to invade their territory.
32:40It is inconceivable that you could have had early Israel developing
32:45at the time when the Egyptian empire was at its absolute peak.
32:49It doesn't make any sense at all.
32:53In fact, almost all evidence unearthed since the 1950s
32:57has revealed the dramatic discrepancy between history and the Bible.
33:02In 1400 BC, Jericho was a village, not a walled city.
33:08There are no clear signs of Joshua's battles elsewhere,
33:11and Canaan was an Egyptian colony.
33:14Historically and archaeologically,
33:16there's almost no evidence for a destruction,
33:18and certainly not in the 15th century
33:20when biblical chronology would require it to be placed.
33:23I think it's safe to say
33:24that almost no mainstream archaeologist or biblical scholar today
33:28takes the story in Joshua of the fall of Jericho literally.
33:34Joshua's miraculous battle, it seems, is a myth after all.
33:38But that raises a new and explosive question.
33:44If Israelites didn't invade Canaan,
33:47then how did they get there?
33:51To answer this fundamental question, we need a benchmark.
33:55The earliest firm date by which we're certain
33:58Israelites were living in Canaan.
34:00Only then can we piece together what really happened.
34:02That benchmark is provided by an intriguing discovery made in Egypt.
34:11This is the Menepta Stele,
34:13the record of an Egyptian military campaign in Canaan,
34:16led by Menepta, the son of the pharaoh Ramesses II.
34:22The Menepta Stele, otherwise known as the Israel Stele,
34:25is the first mention of Israel outside the Bible.
34:27It dates, now we think, to about 1207 B.C.
34:32So if the Israelites were living in Canaan by 1207 B.C.,
34:36then Joshua's conquest, if there was one,
34:39must have begun some time before.
34:42The question is when.
34:48We've seen no evidence of a conquest back at 1400 B.C.,
34:52the traditional date.
34:54However, there are some tantalizing clues 150 years after.
34:59If you move down a century and a half or so,
35:03you reach a very good point in history
35:04in which it is much more feasible,
35:07and the archaeological evidence may support it to a larger extent.
35:14Archaeological evidence from around 1250 B.C. is striking.
35:17It reveals a Canaanite world that did indeed collapse,
35:23often in destruction and fire.
35:27At first, the finds supported the idea
35:29that Joshua's conquest of Canaan did take place as the story records,
35:33only at a different date.
35:36But those hopes were soon dashed
35:38when further excavations across the rest of the eastern Mediterranean
35:41revealed something completely unexpected.
35:44What ever destroyed Canaanite society
35:51also struck every other civilization in the region.
35:55Something else,
35:56something altogether more dramatic, was going on.
35:59What was going on is really one of the major revolutions
36:06in the history of the world, if you wish.
36:08A complete annihilation of the old world
36:11and the emergence of something completely different.
36:15The cause of this catastrophe is a mystery.
36:19But a controversial new idea explaining it
36:21may also reveal how the conquest of Canaan really took place.
36:25The theory involves destruction,
36:29not inflicted by one military general,
36:33but by Mother Nature.
36:37Coincidentally, the idea involves earthquakes.
36:39But with a big difference to the tremors
36:48that destroyed the walls of Jericho 300 years before,
36:52this seismic activity shook the entire eastern Mediterranean.
36:59All ancient cities destroyed between 1225 and 1175 BC
37:03have been marked on this map.
37:05Some of the sites are quite major.
37:07We have Mycenae on the Greek mainland.
37:09We have Troy, famous Troy, in Anatolia.
37:13And then down here,
37:13a cluster of sites in what is now modern-day Israel.
37:17Another map records all significant earthquake activity
37:20monitored in the same area during the 20th century.
37:24With one map superimposed on the other,
37:27a remarkable pattern emerges.
37:30There's almost a one-to-one correlation.
37:32Wherever we have a cluster of the ancient sites
37:34were destroyed, we have modern earthquakes of high intensity
37:38that have taken place in the same region.
37:41Until recently, it was inconceivable
37:43that earthquake activity could have caused so much destruction
37:46in the same area around the same time.
37:50But now it can be explained
37:51through a seismic phenomenon called an earthquake storm.
37:55Over the last century,
38:00scholars observing seismic activity in Turkey
38:03realised that earthquakes were progressing west
38:06along the North Anatolian Fault.
38:11In the last four years alone,
38:13tremors have killed some 18,000 people
38:15and left countless more homeless.
38:17It seems that if you don't get a big earthquake
38:23releasing all the tension in the fault at once,
38:26what you sometimes get is a smaller earthquake
38:29releasing the tension in a part of the fault,
38:31which then puts pressure on the next segment,
38:34which will eventually go,
38:35and basically you get the fault unzipping along its line.
38:39Klein suggests that 3,000 years ago,
38:47an earthquake storm migrated across the faults
38:49that not only run up the Jordan Valley,
38:52but fracture the entire eastern Mediterranean
38:54with catastrophic consequences.
39:00I think trade routes would have been cut.
39:02Eventually you're going to get an internal rebellion
39:05as people get hungry,
39:06and you will wind up with a systems collapse
39:08in which everything fails.
39:12And it's the catastrophic collapse
39:14of the Old World Order,
39:16including Canaanite civilisation,
39:19that could explain how early Israelites settled in Canaan.
39:23Not by conquest,
39:25but through simple opportunism.
39:28It was a time when new groups could appear,
39:32could establish themselves,
39:34and the Israelites,
39:35these people we call Israelites,
39:36or proto-Israelites,
39:37took advantage, I think,
39:39of this upheaval
39:40to insinuate themselves
39:42into areas previously not densely settled.
39:47This is a far cry from the biblical account.
39:50But if Joshua and the Israelites
39:52did enter the promised land this way,
39:54by infiltration rather than conquest,
39:57then tell-tale signs of a new and distinctive people
40:00should begin to appear in the archaeological record.
40:02At first, there was no such evidence.
40:11Then, during the 1980s,
40:14archaeologists,
40:15excavating the highlands of Israel and the West Bank,
40:18began to find what they were looking for.
40:23The remains of hundreds of small farming communities,
40:26quite unlike the Canaanite buildings that had gone before.
40:29Among the archaeologists who excavated them
40:37was Israel Finkelstein.
40:40He took us to the village of Izbet Zata,
40:43five miles northeast of Tel Aviv,
40:45a small site he first excavated 25 years ago.
40:50The site is now badly overgrown,
40:52but it is still possible to make out some of the buildings.
40:55In particular, the outline of a new type of dwelling,
41:00a four-room farmhouse,
41:02distinctly different from Canaanite architecture.
41:06The building itself is over here,
41:07with the central courtyard right in the middle
41:10and the two aisles on the side.
41:12And the building was surrounded by silos for storing grain.
41:17And then there were more buildings on the outskirts.
41:21Evidence supporting the idea
41:23that the new people who lived here
41:25were Israelites, not Canaanites,
41:27was in their diet.
41:30During the period archaeologists call Iron Age One,
41:33there were no traces of bones from one animal
41:35common in Canaan,
41:37but banned in the Hebrew Bible,
41:39pigs.
41:40We see something extremely interesting and new
41:44in their foodways,
41:47in their culinary practices.
41:49These people in the highlands,
41:50in the Iron One,
41:52do not eat pork.
41:54This idea of a peaceful settlement of Canaan
42:01has now replaced the belief
42:03that the Israelites arrived in Canaan
42:05on the back of a military conquest.
42:08But in the wake of this conclusion,
42:10archaeologists began to ponder
42:11a new and even more remarkable scenario.
42:15What if the early Israelites
42:16had never actually arrived in Canaan at all?
42:21What if they had always lived there?
42:24Further excavations of the four-room farmhouses
42:28suggested this could be a strong possibility.
42:32Distinct differences between this new culture
42:35and the Canaanites do exist,
42:37but there are also startling similarities.
42:40When archaeologists began to compare
42:42the pottery of the highland farmers
42:44to the old Canaanite population,
42:46they found something surprising.
42:49Early Israelite society
42:51is, in many respects,
42:54it's a poorer reflection
42:56of Canaanite society,
42:58but it's not as fancy,
43:00it's not as sophisticated,
43:01but it's exactly the same.
43:05Further parallels between Israelite
43:08and Canaanite cultures
43:09were found on the coast of Syria.
43:13Archaeologists excavating here at Ugarit
43:16uncovered an archive of clay tablets
43:18revealing details about Canaanite religion.
43:22One tablet contains the tale
43:24of a Canaanite king called Keret
43:26and his military conquests.
43:29One of his methods of disposing of a city
43:32was to walk around it
43:33and blow trumpets at it
43:35and, you know,
43:37lo and behold,
43:38the walls come falling down.
43:39All these parallels point towards
43:44a radical new theory
43:45that Canaanites and Israelites
43:48were not just similar,
43:50they were identical.
43:53It's a controversial idea,
43:56but one seemingly supported
43:57by breakthroughs in genetic testing.
43:59Cultural anthropologist Yossi Nagar
44:07has been studying ancient Canaanite skeletons.
44:11By comparing their DNA
44:12with the DNA of the region's current population,
44:15he has concluded that many of today's Jews,
44:18Israeli Arabs and Palestinians
44:19share a common racial heritage,
44:23suggesting that their ancestors,
44:26the Israelites and Canaanites,
44:27were once one
44:28and the same people.
44:31The Israelis and the Canaanites
44:33are the same,
44:34only that they are separated.
44:36They're separated because of theology,
44:38not because of biology.
44:40They are the same.
44:41If this controversial new theory
44:43gains acceptance,
44:45the history behind Joshua
44:46and his conquest
44:47will have to be completely revised.
44:51Joshua and his Israelite army
44:53did not march in and kill Canaanites.
44:55They were Canaanites.
44:58They were not military invaders.
45:01They did not strike a blow
45:03at the great city-states of Canaan,
45:04annihilate the Canaanite population.
45:07I think most of us believe
45:08that the Israelites
45:09had been largely Canaanites,
45:11perhaps peasant farmers
45:12who were thrown off their land
45:14by their Canaanite overlords,
45:16people escaping the collapsing
45:18Canaanite city-states,
45:20fleeing from conscription,
45:22from taxes,
45:23finding a foothold somewhere
45:24in the highland frontier,
45:25which was sparsely occupied.
45:28If this is what happened,
45:30the origin of early Israel
45:32is not what is portrayed in the Bible.
45:34No miraculous battles,
45:36no military conquest,
45:38no mass infiltration,
45:40just a group of Canaanite peasants
45:42and nomads resettling the hills
45:44of what they would later call
45:45their promised land.
45:47But if the story of Joshua
45:51and the Battle of Jericho
45:53is, at heart,
45:54a product of the imagination
45:55of Hebrew scribes,
45:57how did they get so many
45:58of their geographical,
46:00military and historical details right?
46:04One explanation
46:05is that the arrival in Canaan
46:07was the experience
46:08not of all Israelites,
46:10but a handful of Hebrew people.
46:12In my judgment,
46:13the stories came to be told
46:15by a small group
46:16who had made their way
46:17across the desert,
46:18who entered Canaan
46:19in some way or another,
46:21who had been involved
46:22in conflicts with Canaanites.
46:24And when they came
46:24to write their story,
46:25hundreds of years later,
46:27they told their story
46:28as though it were the story
46:29of all Israelites.
46:31But in fact,
46:32most Israelites
46:32had never been in Egypt.
46:36In writing that story,
46:38its authors seem to have
46:40embellished it
46:40with other elements.
46:42Canaanite myths like Karet,
46:44dramatic memories
46:45of catastrophic death
46:47and destruction
46:47and detailed knowledge
46:49of ancient Jericho.
46:52My guess is
46:53they drew on a number
46:55of separate traditions
46:57which come together.
46:58They put them together.
47:00You have the recognition
47:03that Jericho is a place
47:04of seismic activity
47:06and therefore
47:07the walls kept falling down.
47:09there may also have been
47:13a historical character
47:14and we might as well
47:16call him Joshua
47:17otherwise we'd have to invent
47:18somebody with the same name.
47:19You put all these ingredients
47:21together
47:21and you have the story
47:23of Joshua capturing Jericho.
47:28Here at last,
47:30we begin to glimpse
47:31the reality behind
47:32the story of Joshua
47:33and the battle of Jericho.
47:34it's not one true story
47:37but many
47:37woven together
47:39to make a point
47:39not about history
47:41but freedom
47:42and faith.
47:45If we press the story
47:47too far
47:47and try to prove
47:48that everything in it
47:49is historically true,
47:51I think we lose the point
47:52the biblical writers
47:53wanted to make.
47:54It was a point
47:55about liberation.
47:57The liberation of a people
47:59who had nothing going
48:00for them whatsoever
48:01but became in time
48:02a mighty nation.
48:04And I think the story
48:04can be read still
48:05in that way
48:06metaphorically.
48:07A story about
48:08a new land,
48:09a new beginning,
48:10a new way
48:10of viewing human destiny.
48:13Perhaps this is
48:14the legacy
48:15and tragedy
48:16of Joshua's battle
48:17at Jericho.
48:21That one man's liberation
48:23is another man's oppression.
48:25That a fictional battle
48:27became a real
48:28and terrible conflict.
48:29And two and a half thousand years
48:32after the writers
48:33described it,
48:34the bloodshed
48:35is not yet over.
48:37Let's just end the coming
48:41of thes.
48:46See you next time.
48:49See you next time.
48:54You
48:55...
48:58...
49:03...
49:04You
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