Lake Beisan was a

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

that existed from ca. 12,000 to 5,000 BC in the north of the

Jordan Valley The Jordan Valley ( ar, غور الأردن, ''Ghor al-Urdun''; he, עֵמֶק הַיַרְדֵּן, ''Emek HaYarden'') forms part of the larger Jordan Rift Valley. Unlike most other river valleys, the term "Jordan Valley" often applies just to ...

in the

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

near modern-day

Beit She'an Beit She'an ( he, בֵּית שְׁאָן '), also Beth-shean, formerly Beisan ( ar, بيسان ), is a town in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. The town lies at the Beit She'an Valley about 120 m (394 feet) below se ...

.Smith R. H. & Koucky F. L., Lake Beisan and the Prehistoric Settlement of the Northern Jordan Valley, Paléorient, Volume 12, Issue 12-2, pp. 27-36
/ref> This freshwater lake reached its highest level of 100 metres below sea level in the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

around 12,000 BC, when it extended from near the

Sea of Gallilee The Sea of Galilee ( he, יָם כִּנֶּרֶת, Judeo-Aramaic language, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ar, بحيرة طبريا), also called Lake Tiberias, Kinneret or Kinnereth, is a freshwater lake in Is ...

(aka Lake Tiberias) in the north to

Wadi Yabis Wadi ( ar, وَادِي, wādī), alternatively ''wād'' ( ar, وَاد), Maghrebi Arabic, North African Arabic Oued, is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some instances, it may refer to a wet (ephemerality, ephemeral) S ...

and Wadi Malih in the south. It occupied the northern basin of the former

Lake Lisan Lake Lisan was a prehistoric lake that existed between 70,000 and 12,000 BP in the Jordan Rift Valley in the Near East. It is sometimes referred to as a Pleistocene lake. Lisan means ''tongue'' in Arabic relating to the shape of the Lisan Penins ...

, "long after the retreat of the earlier lake" (which ended about 16-15 ka). It was first noticed by Dr.

Leo Picard Leo Picard ( he, יהודה ליאו פיקרד, 3 June 1900 – 4 April 1997), was an Israeli geologist and an expert in the field of hydrogeology. Biography Yehuda Leo Picard was born in Germany in 1900, and studied at universities in Freiburg a ...

in a publication of 1929 who noticed higher altitude lake beds and eroded rock structures and named the lake after a notable ancient town in the area. David Neev conducted stratigraphic analysis in 1967 to provide further evidence from a sequence of sediments left by the lake. Archaeological evidence supports the geological with no

Epipaleolithic In archaeology, the Epipalaeolithic or Epipaleolithic (sometimes Epi-paleolithic etc.) is a period occurring between the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic during the Stone Age. Mesolithic also falls between these two periods, and the two are someti ...

sites on the western side of the Beisan Basin below 100 metres below sea level. During the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

, the lake receded to approximately 200 metres below sea level due to erosion and formation of the Jordan River and an arid phase that peaked around 8500 BC. This was followed by a wetter and warmer phase between 7500 and 6500 BC where the population increased significantly and the receding lake gave way to agriculture. Later in the Neolithic the climate became dryer and the lake further retreated to around 220 metres below sea level between 6500 and 5500 BC as the flow through the Jordan Valley decreased. After this, in the

Chalcolithic The Copper Age, also called the Chalcolithic (; from grc-gre, χαλκός ''khalkós'', "copper" and ''líthos'', "stone") or (A)eneolithic (from Latin '' aeneus'' "of copper"), is an archaeological period characterized by regular ...

period it turned into a swamp with a possible shallow lake forming in winter. This left flood plains into the early

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

when settlements intensified on the eastern side of the basin. The Jordan River gradually deepened sufficiently for all remnants of the lake to have disappeared by the time of the Middle

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beisan Lake Former lakes of Asia Great Rift Valley