Israeli 500,000-year-old settlement found.

Dear Friends: I always knew the Middle East was ancient as far as human settlement was concerned, but these latest findings are truly astonishing!

Israeli archaeologists announced Sunday they have uncovered a rare site dating back some half a million years -- just next to a modern highway and only several metres underground.

Archaeologists envision the site at Jaljulia, northeast of Tel Aviv, as a sort of "paradise" for prehistoric hunter-gatherers, with a stream, vegetation and an abundance of animals.

 This is part of the main structure of the site as it looks today!

"It's hard to believe that between Jaljulia and highway 6, five metres below the surface, an ancient landscape some half of a million years old has been so amazingly preserved," Ran Barkai, head of Tel Aviv University's archaeology department, which participated in the dig, said in a statement.

With the help of the 'Perspective Research Department' ...........

we have managed to re-create what these settlments looked like back then, and I was amazed at how well these people lived.

Here are artist renditions of some of the dwellings according to the ruins left behind!

And finally: Overlooking the settlement was this structure (see ruins site in top picture) that we can only assume was a community centre and/or a possible seat of government!

The way I see it anyway!

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P.S. There is no way to determne if these settlements were Israeli or Palestinian folks, so they do little to settle the ongoing debate on who was there first!