An ancient city, now in the Palestinian-administered West Bank of the River Jordan. A well-watered oasis near the Jordan river-crossing at the head of the Dead Sea, it was of strategic importance, located at the junction of the trade routes of antiquity. It was occupied from c.9000 bc and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Traces of a hunting society that developed into a settled agricultural community have been found. The principal mound, one of the best known of all Near Eastern tells (mounds of rubbish), accumulated over 15 m (50 feet) of deposit, even though the later occupation levels, from 2000 to 500bc, have been swept off the summit by erosion. The most interesting layers are of the pre-pottery Neolithic period c.7000 bc, when Jericho was already a walled settlement of some 4 ha (10 acres). Little remains of the late Bronze Age period, the probable date of its destruction by Joshua recorded in the Old Testament of the Bible. Modern Jericho was granted Palestinian self-rule in 1994, as part of the 1993 peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.