High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Towers are tall structures that are almost always taller than they are wide, usually by a significant margin. Towers are generally built to take advantage of their height, and can stand alone or as part of a larger structure. Towers have been used by mankind since prehistoric times. The oldest known may be the circular stone tower in walls of Neolithic Jericho (8000 BC). Some of the earliest surviving examples are the broch structures in northern Scotland, which are conical towerhouses. These and later examples from Phoenician and Roman cultures emphasised the use of a tower in fortification and sentinel roles.