Robert L. O’Connell at Quillette:
In what we know as the Middle East, a dramatic jump in the emerging pattern of human violence took place around 5500 BCE, the primary evidence being circumvallation, the construction of walled fortifications around population centres.
Circumvallation was not unprecedented. The massive and fabled walls of Jericho appeared around 8000 BCE. Twelve feet high and six feet thick, an estimated 1,800 feet in circumference, the walls were a mute indicator of both the place’s unprecedented wealth—perhaps derived from trading Dead Sea salt—and the need to protect it. But these fortifications stood alone for 2,500 years; and then, rather suddenly, equivalents began to spring up again, as town after town in the Middle East either was destroyed, built walled fortifications, or both.
What was responsible? Had the forces of social complexity simply reached a stage that it had turned these agricultural communities against each other? This was certainly possible; but why had so many simultaneously perceived the environment as being dangerous enough to undertake the massive task of circumvallation? What had changed?
More here.
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