A prehistoric 'paradise' has been discovered just metres from a modern highway in Israel, archeologists announced on Sunday.
The rare site at Jaljulia, northeast of Tel Aviv, dates back half a million years and shows evidence of a luxury destination for ancient hunter-gatherers, with a stream, vegetation and an abundance of animals, according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority.
Hundreds of flint handaxes and other artefacts believed to be used by Stone-Age homo erectus — the direct ancestor of today's homo sapiens — were discovered at the dig.
'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 according to Art Daily.
'It seems that half a million years ago, the conditions here in Jaljulia were such, that this became a favoured locality, subject to repeated human activity.'
He added: 'The water brought flint nodules from the hills, which were used to make tools on the spot, and it attracted animals, which were hunted and butchered here. They had everything that prehistoric people needed.
'For people it was like a paradise, so they came here again and again.'
