On the Trail of the Israelites
We shall follow the route of Moses out of the fertile, irrigated lands of Egypt into a
mountainous land where forests and fields were watered with the rain of Heaven. Fields
cleared on mountain slopes presented a new problem in farming--the problem of soil
erosion, which, as we shall see, became the greatest hazard to permanent agriculture and
an insidious enemy of civilization. We crossed the modern Suez Canal with its weird
color of blue into Sinai where the Israelites with their herds wandered for 40 years. They
or someone must have overgrazed the Peninsula of Sinai, for it is now a picture of
desolation. We saw in this landscape how the original brown soil mantle was eroded into
enormous gullies as shown by great yellowish gashes cut into the brown soil covering. I
had not expected to find evidences of so much accelerated erosion in the and land of
Sinai.
On the way to Aqaba we crossed a remarkable landscape, a plateau that had been eroded
through the ages almost to a plain, called a peneplain in physiographic language.
This peneplain surface dates back to Miocene times, in the geological scale. In the
plain now there is no evidence of accelerated cutting by torrential streams and no
evidence that climate has changed for drier or wetter conditions since Miocene times. Here
is a cumulative record going far back of the ice age, proclaiming that in this region
climate has been remarkably stable.
From this plateau we dropped down 2,500 feet into the Araba or gorge of the great rift
valley that includes the Gulf of Aqaba, the Araba, the Dead Sea, and the Valley of the
Jordan. At the head of the Gulf of Aqaba of the Red Sea we found Dr. Nelson Glueck
excavating Ezion Geber which he calls the ancient Pittsburg of the Red Sea, or Solomon's
Seaport. Here, copper was smelted 2,800 years ago to furnish instruments for Solomon and
his people. The mud brick used for building these ancient houses looked just like our
adobe brick of New Mexico and Arizona.
As we climbed out of the rift valley over the east wall to the plateau of Trans-Jordan
that slopes toward the Arabian Desert, we came near Amman upon the same type of peneplain
that we crossed west of the Araba. Topographically, these two plains are parts of the same
peneplain, that once spread unbroken across this region. But toward the end of Pliocene
times-that is, just before the beginning of the ice age-a series of parallel faults let
down into it the great rift valley to form one of the most spectacular examples of
disturbances in the earth's crust that is known to geologists.
From Ma'an we proceeded past an old Roman dam, silted up and later washed out and left
isolated as a meaningless wall. At Elji we took horses to visit the fantastic ruins of
ancient Petra (called Sela in the Old Testament). This much-discussed city was the capital
of the Nabatean civilization and flourished at the same time as the Golden Age of
China--200 B.C. to A.D. 200. Rose-red ruins of a great city are hidden away in a desert
gorge on the margin of the Arabian Desert.
Petra is now the desolate ruin of a great center of power and culture. It has been used
by some students as evidence that climate has become drier in the past 2,000 years, making
it impossible for this land to support as great a population as it did in the past. In
contradiction to this conclusion, we found slopes of the surrounding valley covered with
terrace walls that had fallen into ruin and allowed the soils to be washed off to bare
rock over large areas. These evidences showed that food had been grown locally and that
soil erosion had damaged the land beyond use for crops.
Invasion of nomads out of the desert had probably resulted in a breakdown in these
measures for the conservation of soil and water. Also, erosion had washed away the soils
from the slopes and undermined tile carrying capacity of this land for a human population
. Before ascribing decadence of the region to change of climate, we must know how much the
breakdown of intensive agriculture contributed to the fall and disappearance of this
Nabatean civilization.
The great buildings used for public purposes are amazing. Temples, administrative
buildings, and tombs are all carved out of the red Nubian sandstone cliffs. A fascinating
story still lies hidden in the unexcavated ruins of this ancient capital. The influence of
Greek and Roman civilization was found in a great theater with a capacity to seat some
2,500 persons. It was carved entirely out of massive sandstone rock that now only echoes
the scream of eagles, or the chatter of tourists.
And as we proceeded northward in the Biblical land of Moab, we came to the site of Mt.
Nebo. We were reminded of how Moses, after having led the Israelites through 40 years of
wandering in the Wilderness, stood on this mountain and looked across the Jordan Valley to
the Promised Land. He described it to his followers in words like these:
| For the Lord thy God bringth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of
fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley and
vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land wherein thou
shalt eat bread without scarceness; thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose
stones are iron and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. |
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