Jordan announced the discovery of an archaeological facility “unique in the world” linked to the practice of religious rituals in the Khashabiyeh Mountains in Jafr, which includes the oldest architectural model in the world.
The Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Nayef Hamidi Al-Fayez, said that a French-Jordanian team of archaeologists discovered the facility, which the ministry described as “unique of its kind in the world”, linked to the practice of religious rituals, in the southeastern Badia region in the Khashabi Mountains in Jafr.
According to the ministry, the facility consists of the oldest architectural model in the world and the oldest plan of stone traps dating back to 7000 BC, and it also contains two stones erected on human figures close to the natural size of humans.
The scientific team at the facility found a large number of different artifacts, a number of marine fossils, animal dolls, exceptional flint tools, and stoves related to the practice of religious rituals.
The discovery, according to the ministry, is due to a new culture called the Ghassanid culture, which is the culture of the hunter-gatherer community during the Neolithic era, who practiced collective hunting for deer using huge stone traps.
The ministry’s page quoted the Director-General of the Department of Antiquities, Fadi Balawi, as saying that “Jordan is an open museum that contains more than 15,000 archaeological sites.”