A Dry Dead Sea Before Biblical Times

Discovery News 'blogs ^ | Thursday, December 8, 2011 | Emily Sohn

[SunkenCiv]

The Dead Sea nearly disappeared about 120,000 years ago, say researchers who drilled more than 1,500 feet below one of the deepest parts of the politically contentious body of water.

The discovery looms large at a time when the Dead Sea is shrinking rapidly, Middle Eastern nations are battling over water rights, and experts hotly debate whether the salt lake could ever dry up completely in the years to come.

New data from drilled deposits are also helping piece together geological history that slices through Biblical times. Further research may offer opportunities to verify whether earthquakes destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah or if Joseph stockpiled grains in Egypt to weather a real famine.

The new research started, not as an attempt to investigate Biblical events, but to understand the history of the Dead Sea, which has been drying up at dramatic rates in recent decades... an international team of researchers drilled down about 460 m (more than 1,500 feet) into sediments of the Dead Sea in Israeli territory at a spot that was just slightly shallower than the lake's deepest point, which lay on the other side of the border in Jordan. The cores they pulled up stretched back 200,000 years.

At a level corresponding with 120,000 years ago, during a warm period between ice ages, the researchers found a layer of small round pebbles sitting on top of 45 meters (nearly 150 feet) of thick salt deposits. Those pebbles, they announced this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, look just like the rocks that normally appear on the lake's beaches -- suggesting that one of the deepest parts of the lake was once dry.

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

Beneath the Dead Sea, Scientists Are Drilling for Natural History
NYT | 17 Dec 2010 | Beneath the Dead Sea, Scientists Are Drilling for Natural History
Posted on 12/18/2010 3:55:56 PM PST by smokingfrog
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2644707/posts

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
This was supposed to go up this morning, early, but FR grew unresponsive. I just now checked to see if it had actually gone through -- didn't want to risk double-posting a topic. Anyway, enjoy. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

"Dead Sea Sunset"

[Sawdring]

Joseph was a prepper?

[Thane_Banquo]

Still, there's no way to know how modern-day human interventions will interact with future climate change to affect the Dead Sea.

Somehow I knew that was coming.

[hellbender]

That very dry period many millennia ago was much hotter than it is today, said Jiwchar Ganor, an environmental geochemist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

Impossible. Climate never changed until the Industrial Revolution. Why are these guys drilling holes? The science is settled.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Just drill a tunnel to the Mediterranean.
It’s been 5 million years since that dried up.

[mountainlion]

The Dead Sea is in a riff valley and as you see is is slowly spreading apart. There is an inactive volcano under the Dead
Sea that on occasion belches a little smoke and smell of sulpher.

[SunkenCiv]

You probably knew this, but there are two different proposals for linking the Dead Sea with the rest of the world’s seas.

The Red-Dead canal would run the length of the Israeli-Jordanian border and bring water from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Dead Sea basin (a section of tunnel would be necesssary), using the fall to generate electrical power. As the Dead Sea filled back up, the surface would spread out and salt levels would drop, and eventually the evaporation would maintain the water level without having to stop the flow from outside.

The Med-Dead idea would work the same (and would be a shorter route; a section tunnel would still be required) and would be entirely under Israeli control.

Having a moat along the Jordanian border doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but I’d favor the Med-Dead canal version — with the canal being about 200 feet deep, and flowing along the border between Gaza and Egypt (buh-bye tunnels) and Israel and Egypt.

[SunkenCiv]

The Age of the Dead Sea
by Immanuel Velikovsky

There is a way of calculating the age of the Dead Sea. This interior lake contains concentrated solutions of salts. These salts flow into the sea with the waters of its tributaries. Thermal springs bring salt to the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan carries them to the Dead Sea, which has no outlet. From the surface of the Dead Sea, in the deep hot rift, the water evaporates, leaving the salts behind. By calculating the amount of salts in the sea and the amount that reaches it annually by way of the Jordan and other streams, as well as from thermal springs on its shores, the approximate age of the Dead Sea can be determined. Such an attempt was partially made. The magnesium salts in the Jordan served as a basis for the calculation. It was reckoned that the present annual rate of influx of magnesium in the water of the Jordan alone, when related to the concentration of magnesium in the Dead Sea, should give a figure of approximately 50,000 years as the age of the sea.(1) The author of this estimate admitted that even this figure is probably too high; the salinity of the Jordan must have decreased with time, for the thermal sources carry more salt when they are young and their temperature is high.

In the above calculation, it was estimated that the Jordan carries six million tons of water daily to the Dead Sea and that it deposits 181 million tons of magnesium annually. However, on an average day more than double that amount evaporates from the Dead Sea,(2) and its surface does not fall, other sources must be making up the difference.

The rivers Zerka (Callirhoe) and Arnon, which flow into the sea from the east, carry salt solutions from many springs. The shores of the Dead Sea abound in highly concentrated thermal springs which contain rich amounts of magnesium. These sources flow directly into the sea, bringing a richer influx of magnesium than the Jordan.(3) In addition there are, on the shores of the Dead Sea, abundant vestiges of thermal springs with rich sediments of salts that are inactive at present.(4) It is highly probable, too, that there are submarine sources in the Dead Sea which may provide magnesium, but they are indeterminable.(5)

When these factors are taken into consideration the age of the Dead Sea, computed on the basis of its magnesium content, must be drastically reduced.

A computation that takes, as its basis, the amount of sodium in the Jordan points to a recent date for the origin of the Dead Sea. The proportion of sodium to magnesium in the water of the Jordan is about 4:1; in the Dead Sea it is 1:2.(6) If the Jordan were the only source of the sodium for the Dead Sea the age of the Dead Sea would be only about 6,000 years. But the thermal sources on the western, eastern, and southern shores contain sodium too; so may the submarine sources, which cannot be evaluated. It is likely, therefore, that the sea has existed for only about four thousand years. When again the fact is taken into account that the thermal sources are usually more concentrated when they first break out and when they are at a higher temperature, it may well be asked why the age of this sea should not be reduced still more. It is probable that deeper levels of water have a greater salt concentration.(7)

Fifty thousand years as the age of the Dead Sea was an unexpectedly low estimate: the rift in which the Dead Sea is situated is considered to be the result of a catastrophe at the beginning of the first glacial period.(8) Now a simple reckoning shows that the saline sea with the Jordan has not existed longer than five thousand years

[SkyPilot]

[SunkenCiv]

And, one of *those* topics.

---

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

---

[SunkenCiv]

• Exciting New Archaeological Evidence Uncovered Could be the Site of Biblical Sodom

  12/14/2011 4:03:27 PM PST · by GiovannaNicoletta · 50 replies

  Breaking Christian News ^ | December 12, 2011 | Brian Nixon

  "It may be too early to say, but initial evidence points towards a large-scale destruction from a catastrophic event. I say this because, in that area, the skeletal remains were traumatized by an east-to-west directional event, demonstrating that the catastrophe came from a particular compass point." -- Dr. Collins snip Dr. Collins and his team began digging at a new site [last year], Tall el-Hammam, which corresponded to several factors. Dr. Collins summarized the end result: "To start with, the Tall el-Hammam site has twenty-five geographical indicators that align with the description in Genesis. Compare this with something well known -- like Jerusalem -- that...

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[Altariel]

Don’t blame me! I know nothing about it!

Even if I did know anything, how was I supposed to know that giant plugs underwater should be left alone, and not removed from their holes?

[ApplegateRanch]

Amazing! During exceptionally long wet or dry periods, the Dead Sea level also fluctuates drastically! Who’da thunk it?

[Bellflower]

Based upon what the Bible says, and a strong gut feeling, I have always thought that the Dead Sea was a result of what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah and came into existence because of the disaster that happened at that time.

In fact from what the Bible says I think that when Lot first decided to live on the plains settling quite near Sodom and Gomorrah when he looked out over from what apparently was a higher vantage point all he could see was a plain that was as a garden.

______________________________________

Gen 13:10 And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it [was] well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, [even] as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar.

Gen 13:11 Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.

Gen 13:12 Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched [his] tent toward Sodom.

___________________________________________

It sounds like the river Jordon was there as the area is called the plain of Jordon but as far as the eye could see there was rich land as a garden with lots of water, probably irrigation.

Years later when Abraham fought a battle to get Lot back after Sodom was sacked (by that time Lot had moved directly into the city of Sodom maybe because whereas the land had been as a garden, pits of slime were surfacing) here is a description of the area, Siddim meaning field or plain:

___________________________________________

Gen 14:10 And the vale of Siddim [was full of] slimepits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.

_____________________________________________

I have a feeling that these slimepits may have been a new occurrence cropping up all over. They may be the reason that Lot who was an agrarian ended up moving into the city of Sodom that according to The Bible he was vexed with and must of hated living there. Whatever was causing the slime to rapidly surface also ended up being used by The LORD in His providence to destroy the whole area, raining fire and brimstone down upon it.

_____________________________________________

2Pe 2:7 And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked:

______________________________________________

Then there is the verse about the kings of the area being joined together in a vale which is said to be the salt sea. To me it seems that The Bible is saying that the vale of Siddim, valley of the plain, that the kings were joined together in had in the present time that this was written become the salt sea or what we know of as the Dead Sea which would make the Dead Sea not very old as your article has determined.

_______________________________________________

Gen 14:3 All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea.

[RitchieAprile]

Not so easy. There is a couple thousand feet elev change to get over from the rift zone to the coast.

[wildbill]

Its funny how they find new evidence every few years about the location of Sodom and Gomorrah when I know the real location.

As I recall, Sodom and Gomorrah were a couple of rooms in our Sigma Nu house.