Unknown Civilizations: Tell Qaramel is around nine thousand years old.

Found in the north of present day Syria, Tell Qaramel dates close in age to Gobekli Tepe (Turkey)  9130–8800 BCE. Civilization that was said to had started thanks to religious ceremonies, instead of conventional agricultural, or military unification.

Tell Qaramel is a tell, or archaeological mound, located in the north of present-daySyria, 25 km north of Aleppo and about 65 km south of the Taurus mountains, adjacent to the river Quweiq.

Before the excavations began, it was assumed that permanent sedentary settlements would occur only in combination with the first farming of cereals, and the first domestication and keeping of animals such as sheep and goats, marking the start of the Neolithic period, part of a transition between the proto-Neolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A cultures.

However the remains of the structures uncovered at Tell Qaramel appear to be older than this, giving the first evidence of permanent stone-built settlement without signs of animal domestication or organised farming.

Particularly striking are the remains of a succession of five round, stone-built towers, each over 6 metres in diameter, with stone walls over 1.5m thick.

These have been carbon-dated to between the eleventh millennium and 9650 BC. This dating makes the towers roughly two thousand years older than the stone tower found at Jericho, which was previously believed to be the oldest known tower structure in the world. Read the free article.