# Lake Lisan reaches its greatest extent (c. 25,000 BCE)

URL: https://allhistories.com/jordan/timeline/-25000-lake-lisan-reaches-its-greatest-extent
Location: Jordan Valley, Jordan
Themes: main-event

Lake Lisan, the Pleistocene predecessor of the Dead Sea, existed from about 70,000 to 12,000 years ago. At its peak, between roughly 26,000 and 24,000 BCE, it covered about 2,000 square kilometres and filled the whole Jordan Valley about 200 metres above the modern Dead Sea. The lake extended from the Sea of Galilee to a ridge some 35 kilometres south of the present Dead Sea. Its level then fell sharply between about 14,000 and 13,000 BCE, perhaps to 500 metres below sea level or lower, leaving the flat valley floor known as the Ghor. Marl deposited by the lake formed terraces up to 40 metres thick along the valley. The lake's retreat shaped where later hunter-gatherers and Natufian groups could camp, and it created the fertile Ghor on which Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements such as Teleilat Ghassul later stood. At this point in the timeline (c. 25,000 BCE), no individual ruler is securely recorded for this period: Prehistoric communities (2000000 BCE – 3300 BCE).

## Why it matters
The rise and fall of Lake Lisan created the Jordan Valley landscape, its terraces and its fertile floor, on which every later farming community in the valley depended.

Ruler at the Time: [Prehistoric communities (no named rulers)](https://allhistories.com/jordan/rulers/prehistoric-communities-no-named-rulers--2000000)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Lake Lisan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lisan)
- [Wikipedia — Dead Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea)