Better Living Through Technology

Technology certainly changes the way we live. Sometimes, the impact is staggering when you spend a moment thinking about it.

This morning, I got up, used modern plumbing to shower and brush my teeth, and went to the hotel restaurant to choose what food I might want to have served to me. As we wouldn’t be coming back to this hotel, I lugged my bags down the elevator and through the lobby out to the bus, a minor but not unnoticed inconvenience early in the day. Then, off in an air-conditioned bus to do exploring amidst a day full of field lectures.

Destination: an uninhabited part of the Negev Desert, a hill known as “Tel Arad”. The place is situated on a large hill located west of the Dead Sea in an area surrounded by mountain ridges. The archeological site is divided into a lower city at the bottom of the hill and an upper hill, both areas holding ruins of civilizations from centuries ago.

First thing noticed: no archaeological discovery of a plumbing system. Only primitive wells. No remnants of elevators either. Or luggage. Hmmmmm. Interesting.

The lower area was first settled during the Chalcolithic period, around 4000 B.C. (Stop here for a moment. That is 6000 years ago,. Try to wrap your mind around that, as I tried to, looking at ancient walls and paths. There were PEOPLE here, waking up on Monday mornings just like this way back then. What did they think of as they looked up to check the weather. Where did they keep the Cheerios and milk?)

Excavations at the site have unearthed a Bronze Age Canaanite settlement which was in use until approximately 2650 B.C. (That is what you are seeing in the photo I took below.) Kitchens, family rooms, bedrooms of these people. They were standing right here centuries ago. Did they ever dream of the concept of plumbing? Did anyone have to go out for milk (not a run to Cub, but out to track down the goat out back in the field)? As for water, they had a few cisterns around the village. A communal drinking fountain. The only water you are going to find for miles around these parts. No ESPN or CNN or daily newspapers, of course. What did they do – actually have to sit with others and visit? At a stone dining room table?


The site was then apparently deserted for over 1500 years until resettled in the Israelite period from the 11th century B.C. onwards. The Israelites were perhaps smarter. They built much of their city up on the highest part of the hill, I’m sure recognizing the better property values they were bound to realize there. (Photo below.) Location, location, location, even back then, was key. The elevated perch would also help if you wanted to watch for any Babylonians or Assyrians or other marauding people who might be passing through, looking to move into the area and involuntarily foreclose on your house and life in a somewhat inhospitable manner. Such was the reality of their lives.

Though the development was 1500 years after the Canaanites, I still didn’t notice any vestiges of plumbing. No elevators. No old Commodore computers or rotary dial phones. In fact, the stones looked pretty much the same as the Canaanite village down below the hill, a few hundred feet away. I guess that was a period of limited progress in architecture and home design, comparable to our 1946-1959 period in America.


The day was sunny and mild, and Tel Arad was silent except for the breeze. I walked around, listening for any voices from centuries ago that might speak to me, still being carried on the desert wind. Wondering if they would know I had come to visit years later, and was now standing outside their windows hoping to be invited it to visit and learn. Silence. Trying to think what life must have been like. So different. So much harder. So many things to deal with that are not part of our modern day concern. They didn't have an aggravating drippy faucet like I currently have back at home.

They probably would have sacrificed their last goat for something like that.