Footnote 3 – The Saga of the Goliath Family—As Revealed in Their Newly Discovered 2,000-Year-Old Tomb

Another study, by Patricia Smith and Baruch Arensburg (“Life Expectancy in Jews Living in Israel at the Time of the Second Temple”), compared life spans and illness patterns of the people buried in the Jericho tomb with their contemporaries in the Mediterranean area. Smith and Arensburg conclude that this Jericho family had a substantially higher percentage of adults over 50 years old (23%) than families in other communities where bones have been studied in Jerusalem, in the Galilee and in Classical Greece. The dry, hot Jericho climate apparently provided a healthy place to live. In the Galilee and Jerusalem, most adult skeletons showed arthritic lesions at the joints. This was rare at Jericho. Rheumatic and respiratory diseases were also far less common at Jericho than at sites with cold, wet winters.