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It is an extremely interesting fact, which has happily escaped capture for the purposes of the energetic misunderstanding, that the valley, at one time, was filled, certainly within 150 feet of this height probably higher. And it is almost equally certain, that the time at which this great Jordan-Arabah mere reached its highest level coincides with the glacial epoch.
The lowest portion of the rim of the Jordan-Arabah valley is situated at the village of El Fuleh, 257 feet above the Mediterranean. Everywhere else the circumjacent heights rise to a very much greater altitude.
Therefore it could not have failed to fill that remarkable trench in which the Dead Sea, the Jordan, and the Sea of Galilee lie, and which is known as the "Jordan-Arabah" valley.
In fact, the antiquity of the present Jordan-Arabah valley, as a hollow in a tableland, out of reach of the sea, and troubled by no diluvial or other disturbances, beyond the volcanic eruptions of Gilead and of Galilee, is vast, even as estimated by a geological standard.
Along with this upheaval of the sea-bed there was extensive denudation and erosion of the strata, so that valleys were eroded over the subaërial tracts, and the Jordan-Arabah valley received its primary form and outline.
The depression of the Jordan-Arabah valley, the elevation of the eastern side of this valley along the great fault line, and the channels of the principal tributary streams, such as those of the Yarmûk and Zerka Maïn, all these had been eroded out before they were invaded by the molten streams of lava.
Some of these and other springs break out along, or near, the line of the great Jordan-Arabah fault which ranges throughout the whole extent of this depression, from the base of Hermon to the Gulf of Akabah, generally keeping close to the eastern margin of the valley.
The strata were flexured, folded, and often faulted and fissured along lines ranging north and south, the great fault of the Jordan-Arabah valley being the most important. At this period the mountains of the Lebanon, the table-lands of Judæa and of Arabia, formed of limestone, previously constituting the bed of the ocean during the Eocene and Cretaceous periods, were converted into land surfaces.
The evidence that the Jordan-Arabah valley really was once filled with water, the surface of which reached within 160 feet of the level of the pass of Jezrael, and possibly stood higher, is this: Remains of alluvial strata, containing shells of the freshwater mollusks which still inhabit the valley, worn down into terraces by waves which long rippled at the same level, and furrowed by the channels excavated by modern rainfalls, have been found at the former height; and they are repeated, at intervals, lower down, until the Ghor, or plain of the Jordan, itself an alluvial deposit, is reached.
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