This arid and rugged landscape near the Dead Sea was still submerged at the end of the last Ice Age. A little later, however, the water level dropped by around 240 meters, as sediment analyzes reveal.
In regions like the Eastern Mediterranean, water availability is an important factor in socio-economic and political development – and often a source of conflict. It is all the more important to understand how the water cycle there reacts to climate changes. In order to be able to better assess future developments, for example due to climate change, it can help to look back into the past – that’s exactly what Daniela Müller from the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) Potsdam and her colleagues did at the Dead Sea.
The team studied how the water levels of the Dead Sea and nearby bodies of water changed during the transition from the last Ice Age to the warm Holocene. To do this, they analyzed layers of sediment that were deposited between 24,000 and 11,000 years ago at the bottom of the Dead Sea and on the edge of Lake Lisan near the rock city of Masada.
This image shows sandstone formations that were still deep under water during the Ice Age. When the Ice Age ended and the climate got warmer, the water level of the once huge lake dropped drastically: Within a few thousand years, the level dropped by around 240 meters. As a result, the layers of sediment that used to lie in the water now rise around 200 meters above the water level of the Dead Sea.
However, it is interesting that the change to a drier climate in the Middle East was repeatedly interrupted by wet periods lasting ten to one hundred years. This could also have influenced the cultural development of the people in this region. It is possible that the wetter phases favor the settlement of the so-called Natufi culture, one of the first sedentary cultures of mankind.