Jericho ( JERR-ik-oh; Arabic: أريحا, romanized: Arīḥā, IPA: [ʔaˈriːħaː] ; Hebrew: יְרֵחוֹ, romanized: Yərīḥō) is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and the capital of the Jericho Governorate. The city is located in the Jordan Valley, with the Jordan River to the east and Jerusalem to the west. Jericho is among the oldest cities in the world. Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than The Pre-Sultan (c. 8350 – 7370 BCE) is sometimes called Sultanian. The site is a 40,000 m2 (430,000 sq ft) settlement surrounded by a massive stone wall over 3.6 m (12 ft) high and 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) wide at the base, inside of which stood a stone tower, over 8.5 metres (28 ft) high, containing an internal staircase with 22 stone steps and placed in the centre of the west side of the tell. This tower and the even older ones excavated at Tell Qaramel in Syria are the oldest towers ever to be discovered. The wall and tower were built during the PPNA period around 8000 BCE. Carbon dates published in 1981 and 1983 indicate that the tower was built around 8300 BCE and stayed in use until c. 7800 BCE. The wall may have served as a defence against flood water (possibly to prevent the erosion of agricultural soil), with the tower used for ceremonial purposes. The wall and tower would have taken a hundred men more than a hundred days to construct, suggesting some kind of social organization. The town contained round mud-brick houses, but no street planning. The identity and number of Jericho's inhabitants during the PPNA period is still under debate, with estimates as high as 2,000–3,000 and as low as 200–300. It is known that this population had domesticated emmer wheat, barley and pulses, and hunted wild animals. Jericho was continually occupied into the Middle Bronze Age; it was destroyed in the Late Bronze Age, after which it no longer served as an urban centre. The city was surrounded by extensive defensive walls strengthened with rectangular towers, and possessed an extensive cemetery with vertical shaft-tombs and underground burial chambers; the elaborate funeral offerings in some of these may reflect the emergence of local kings. During the Middle Bronze Age, Jericho was a small prominent city of the Canaan region, reaching its greatest Bronze Age extent in the period from 1700 to 1550 BCE. It seems to have reflected the greater urbanization in the area at that time, and has been linked to the rise of the Maryannu, a class of chariot-using aristocrats linked to the rise of the Mitannite state to the north. Kathleen Kenyon reported "the Middle Bronze Age is… Welcome…