The Life of the Dead Sea - The BAS Library

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Millions of years ago, seismic forces where two tectonic plates come together formed the Great Rift Valley. Millions of years later, the Dead Sea was created in that valley—the lowest point on earth. Thus begins the story of the life of the Dead Sea. That life is now imperiled. Can the Dead Sea be saved? 036 Between 70,000 and 14,000 years ago (the Pleistocene epoch in geologic time), a large body of water we call Lake Lisan filled the valley that extends from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea and beyond it to the south. At its […]

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Footnotes

See Nikos Kokkinos, “Herod’s Horrid Death,” BAR 28:02

See Hershel Shanks, “Who Lies Here?” BAR 25:05.

See Konstantinos Politis, “Where Lot’s Daughters Seduced Their Father,” BAR 30:01.

See Rami Khouri, “Where John Baptized,” BAR 31:01.

See Emanuel Levine, “BAR’s Centenniel Salute—The United States Navy Explores the Holy Land,” BAR 02:04.

Endnotes

David Neev and K.O. Emery, “The Dead Sea, Depositional Processes and Environments of Evaporates,” Geological Survey of Israel Bulletin 41 (1967), p. 147. David Neev and K.O. Emery, “Geophysical Investigations in the Dead Sea,” Sedimentary Geology 23 (1979), pp. 209–238.

Neev and Emery, “The Dead Sea, Depositional Processes and Environments of Evaporates,” p. 147. Neev and Emery, “Geophysical Investigations in the Dead Sea”, pp. 209–238. Revital Bookman, Yuval Barov, Yehouda Enzel and Mordechai Stein, “Quaternary Lake Levels in the Dead Sea Basin: Two Centuries of Research,” in Yehouda Enzel, Amotz Agnon, and Mordechai Stein, eds., New Frontiers in Dead Sea Paleoenvironmental Research, Geological Society of America Special Paper 401 (Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America, 2006), pp. 155–170.

Noam Greenbaum, Arie Ben-Zvi, Itai Haviv and Yehouda Enzel, “The Hydrology and Paleohydrology of the Dead Sea Tributaries,” in Enzel et al., eds., New Frontiers in Dead Sea Paleoenvironmental Research, pp. 63–93.

Greenbaum et al., “The Hydrology and Paleohydrology of the Dead Sea Tributaries.”

Bookman et al., “Quaternary Lake Levels in the Dead Sea Basin: Two Centuries of Research,” pp. 155–170. Claudia Migowski, Mordechai Stein, Sushma Prasad, Jörg F.W. Negendank and Amotz Agnon, “Holocene Climate Variability and Cultural Evolution in the Near East from the Dead Sea Sedimentary Record,” Quaternary Research 66 (2006), no. 3, pp. 421–431.

Amos Frumkin, “The Holocene History of of Dead Sea Levels,” in Tina M. Niemi, Zvi Ben-Avraham and Joel R. Gat, eds., The Dead Sea: The Lake and Its Setting, (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 237–248. Amos Frumkin and Yoel Elitzur, “Historic Dead Sea Level Fluctuations Calibrated with Geological and Archaeological Evidence,” Quaternary Research 57 (2002), pp. 334–342.

Øystein S. LaBianca, “Tells, Empires, and Civilizations: Investigating Historical Landscapes in the Ancient Near East,” Near Eastern Archaeology 69 (2006), no. 1, pp. 4–11.

Yizhar Hirschfeld, “The Archaeology of the Dead Sea Valley in the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods,” in Enzel et al., eds., New Frontiers in Dead Sea Paleoenvironmental Research, pp. 215–230.

D. Yakir, A. Issar, J. Gat, E. Adar, P. Trimborn and J. Lipp, “¹³C and ¹⁸O of Wood from the Roman Siege Rampart in Masada (70–73 AD): Evidence for a Less Arid Climate for the Region,” Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta 58 (1994), pp. 3535–3539.

10.

Tali Erickson-Ginni, “‘Down to the Sea’: Nabataean Colonization in the Negev Highlands,” in Piotr Bienkowski and Katharina Galor, eds., Crossing the Rift: Resources, Routes, Settlement Patterns and Interaction in the Wadi Arabah (Oxford: Council for British Research in the Levant and Oxbow Books, 2006), pp. 157–166.

11.

Aharon Oren, “Microbiological Studies in the Dead Sea: 1892–1992,” in Niemi et al., eds., The Dead Sea, pp. 205–213.

12.

Konstantinos D. Politis, “Rescue Excavations in the Nabataean Cemetery at Khirbat Qazone 1996–1997,” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 42 (1998), pp. 611–614.

13.

Hirschfeld, “The Archaeology of the Dead Sea Valley in the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods,” pp. 215–230.

14.

Hirschfeld, “The Archaeology of the Dead Sea Valley in the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods.”

15.

Arie Nissenbaum, “The Dead Sea—An Economic Resource for 10,000 Years,” Hydrobiologia 267 (1993), pp. 127–141.

16.

David Neev and K.O. Emery, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and Jericho (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), p. 175.

17.

Josephus, Jewish War, 4.479, William Whiston edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979), p. 540.

18.

Michael Gardosh, Eliezer Kashai, Shalom Salhov, Haim Shulman and Eli Tannenbaum, “Hydrocarbon Exploration in the Southern Dead Sea Area,” in Niemi et al., The Dead Sea, pp. 57–72.

19.

Richard Holmgren and Anders Kaliff, “The Hermit Life on Al-Lisan Peninsula—Results of the Swedish Dead Sea Expedition: A Preliminary Report,” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 49 (2005), pp. 167–176.

20.

Yizhar Hirschfeld, “The Nabataean Presence South of the Dead Sea: New Evidence,” in Bienkowski and Galor, eds., Crossing the Rift, pp. 167–190.

21.

Meir Abelson, Yoseph Yechielei, Onn Crouvi, Gideon Baer, Daniel Wachs, Amos Bein and Vladimir Shtivelman, “Evaluation of the Dead Sea Sinkholes,” in Enzel et al., eds., New Frontiers in Dead Sea Paleoenvironmental Research, pp. 241–253.

22.

Bookman et al., “Quaternary Lake Levels in the Dead Sea Basin,” pp. 155–170.