1.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam
2.
Jordan
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Jordan, officially The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is an Arab kingdom in Western Asia, on the East Bank of the Jordan River. Jordan is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the east and south, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north, Israel, Palestine and the Dead Sea to the west, Jordan is strategically located at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe. The capital, Amman, is Jordans most populous city as well as the countrys economic, what is now Jordan has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic period. Three stable kingdoms emerged there at the end of the Bronze Age, Ammon, Moab, later rulers include the Nabataean Kingdom, the Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. After the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in 1916 during World War I, the Emirate of Transjordan was established in 1921 by the then Emir Abdullah I and became a British protectorate. In 1946, Jordan became an independent state known as The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Jordan captured the West Bank, which it later lost in 1967, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Jordan is a founding member of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and is one of two Arab states to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. The country is a monarchy, but the king holds wide executive and legislative powers. Jordan is a relatively-small, semi-arid, almost-landlocked country with a population numbering at 9.5 million, Sunni Islam, practiced by around 92% of the population, is the dominant religion in Jordan. It coexists with an indigenous Christian minority, Jordan is considered to be among the safest of Arab countries in the Middle East, and has avoided long-term terrorism and instability. The kingdom is also a refuge to thousands of Iraqi Christians fleeing the Islamic State, while Jordan continues to accept refugees, the recent large influx from Syria placed substantial strain on national resources and infrastructure. Jordan is classified as a country of high human development with a middle income economy. The Jordanian economy, one of the smallest economies in the region, is attractive to foreign investors based upon a skilled workforce, the country is a major tourist destination, and also attracts medical tourism due to its well developed health sector. Nonetheless, a lack of resources, large flow of refugees. Jordan is named after the Jordan River, where Jesus is said to have been baptized, the origin of the rivers name is debated, but the most common explanation is that it derives from the word yarad, found in Hebrew, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages. Others regard the name as having an Indo-Aryan origin, combining the words yor and don, another theory is that it is from the Arabic root word wrd, as in people coming to a major source of water. The name Jordan appears in an ancient Egyptian papyrus called Papyrus Anastasi I, the lands of modern-day Jordan were historically called Transjordan, meaning beyond the Jordan River. The name was Arabized into Al-Urdunn during the Muslim conquest of the Levant, during crusader rule, it was called Oultrejordain
3.
Jordan River
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The Jordan River is a 251-kilometre -long river in the Middle East that flows roughly north to south through the Sea of Galilee and on to the Dead Sea. Israel and the West Bank border the river to the west, while the Golan Heights, both Jordan and the West Bank take their names from the river. The Jordan River has a course and a lower one. In this sense, the Jordan Valley may be separated into upper, central, over its upper course, the river drops rapidly in a 75-kilometre run to the once large and swampy Lake Hula, which is slightly above sea level. Exiting the now much diminished lake, it goes through an even steeper drop over the 25 kilometres down to the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan deposits much of the silt it is carrying within the lake, which it leaves again near its southern tip. At that point the river is situated about 210 metres below sea level, two major tributaries enter from the east during this last section, the Yarmouk River and Zarqa River. Its section north of the Sea of Galilee is within the boundaries of Israel, south of the lake, it forms the border between the Kingdom of Jordan, and Israel. The streams coming together to create the River Jordan in its basin are, west to east, Iyyon. Hasbani, a stream flows from Mount Lebanon. Dan, a stream whose source is also at the base of Mount Hermon, Banias, a stream arising from a spring at Banias at the foot of Mount Hermon. The full text of W. F. Lynchs 1849 book Narrative of the United States Expedition to the River Jordan, in 1964, Israel began operating a pumping station that diverts water from the Sea of Galilee to the National Water Carrier. Also in 1964, Jordan constructed a channel that diverted water from the Yarmouk River, another tributary of the Jordan River to the East Ghor Canal. Syria has also built reservoirs that catch the Yarmouks waters, environmentalists blame Israel, Jordan and Syria for extensive damage to the Jordan River ecosystem. In modern times, the waters are 70% to 90% used for human purposes, because of this and the high evaporation rate of the Dead Sea, as well as industrial extraction of salts through evaporation ponds, the sea is shrinking. All the shallow waters of the end of the sea have been drained in modern times and are now salt flats. A small section of the northernmost portion of the Lower Jordan, 3-kilometre below the Sea of Galilee, has been kept pristine for baptism and local tourism. Most polluted is the 100-kilometre downstream stretch—a meandering stream from above the confluence with the Yarmouk to the Dead Sea, environmentalists say the practice of letting sewage and brackish water flow into the river has almost destroyed its ecosystem. Rescuing the Jordan could take decades, according to environmentalists, the same environmentalist organization had said in a report that the Jordan River could dry up by 2011 unless the decay is stopped
4.
Hula Valley
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The Hula Valley is an agricultural region in northern Israel with abundant fresh water. It is a stopover for birds migrating along the Syrian-African Rift Valley between Africa, Europe, and Asia. The marshland around Lake Hula, a ground for mosquitoes carrying malaria, was drained in the 1950s. A small section of the valley was later reflooded in an attempt to revive a nearly extinct ecosystem, an estimated 500 million migrating birds now pass through the Hula Valley every year. Lake Hula was historically referred to by different names, the 14th century BCE Egyptians called the lake Samchuna, while the Hebrew Bible records it as Merom. In the 1st century CE, the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus termed it Semechonitis, John Lightfoot writing it as Samochonitis, currently the lake is called Buheirat el Huleh in Arabic and Agam ha-Hula in Hebrew, stemming from the Aramaic Hulata or Ulata. The Waters of Merom has sometimes used in scientific literature. On both sides of the valley are steep slopes, the Golan Heights to the east and the Upper Galilees Naftali mountains to the west rise to 400 to 900 meters above sea level. Annual rainfall varies greatly between different parts of the valley and ranges from about 400 millimeters in the south of the valley, the wind regime is dominated by regional patterns in the winter with occasional strong north-easterly wind storms known in Arabic as Sharkiyah. Prior to its drainage in the early 1950s, Lake Hula was 5.3 kilometers long and 4.4 kilometers wide and it was about one and a half meters deep in summer and three meters deep in winter. The lake attracted human settlement from prehistoric times. Paleolithic archaeological remains were found near the Bnot Yaakov bridge at the end of the valley. The first permanent settlement, Enan, dates from 9, 000-10,000 years ago and was discovered in the valley, the Hula Valley was a main junction on the important trade route connecting the large commercial centre of Damascus with the eastern Mediterranean coast and Egypt. During the Bronze Age, the cities of Hazor and Laish were built at key locations on this route approximately 4,000 years ago. At some point the area came under Israelite control until it was captured by the Assyrian armies of Tiglath-Pileser III, the Bible records lake Merom as the site of a victory of Joshua over the Canaanites. Throughout the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and early Arab periods rural settlement in the Hula Valley was uninterrupted, during the Seleucid Empire, the town Seleucia Samulias was founded on the lake shore. Traditional crops were rice, cotton and sugar cane, sorghum, water buffalo were introduced in the eighth century supplying milk and serving as beasts of burden. In the 19th century, the valley, mainly marshy ground, John MacGregor, a Victorian adventurer, was captured with his boat, the Rob Roy, by dark-skinned Bedouin living in the Hula marshes
5.
Sea of Galilee
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The Sea of Galilee, also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias, is a large freshwater lake in Israel. It is approximately 53 km in circumference, about 21 km long and its area is 166.7 km2 at its fullest, and its maximum depth is approximately 43 m. At levels between 215 metres and 209 metres below sea level, it is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth, the lake is fed partly by underground springs although its main source is the Jordan River which flows through it from north to south. The Sea of Galilee is situated in northeast Israel, between the Golan Heights and the Galilee region, in the Jordan Rift Valley, the caused by the separation of the African and Arabian Plates. Consequently, the area is subject to earthquakes, and in the past and this is evident by the abundant basalt and other igneous rocks that define the geology of the Galilee. The lake has been called by different names throughout its history, with changing fate of the towns, the lakes name also changed. This name was found in the scripts of Ugarit, in the Aqhat Epic. Kinneret was listed among the cities in Joshua 19,35. A persistent, though likely erroneous popular etymology of the name presumes that the name Kinneret may originate from the Hebrew word kinnor, the scholarly consensus though is that the origin of the name lies with the important Bronze and Iron Age city of Kinneret, excavated at Tell el-Oreimeh. However, there is no evidence that the city of Kinneret itself was not named after the body of water rather than vice versa, or for the origin of the towns name. Sea of Ginosar The Babylonian Talmud, as well as Flavius Josephus mention the sea by the name Sea of Ginosar after the fertile plain of Ginosar that lies on its western side. Ginosar is yet another name derived from Kinneret, Sea of Tiberias is also the name mentioned in Roman texts and in the Jerusalem Talmud, and was adopted into Arabic as Buhairet Tabariyya, Lake Tiberias. This is the name employed by the medieval Persian and Arab scholars Al-Baladhuri, Al-Tabari, in 1989 remains of a hunter-gatherer site were found under the water at the southern end. Remains of mud huts were found which are the oldest known buildings in the world, the Sea of Galilee lies on the ancient Via Maris, which linked Egypt with the northern empires. The Greeks, Hasmoneans, and Romans founded flourishing towns and settlements on the lake including Hippos. The first-century historian Flavius Josephus was so impressed by the area that he wrote, Josephus also reported a thriving fishing industry at this time, with 230 boats regularly working in the lake. Archaeologists discovered one such boat, nicknamed the Jesus Boat, in 1986, much of the ministry of Jesus occurred on the shores of Lake Galilee. In those days, there was a ribbon development of settlements and villages around the lake and plenty of trade
6.
Jordan Valley (Middle East)
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The Jordan Valley forms part of the larger Jordan Rift Valley. This Rift Valley segment is 120 km long and 15 km wide. In a wider sense, the term may cover the Dead Sea basin and the Wadi Arabah or Arava valley. Over most of its length, the Jordan Valley forms the border between Jordan to the east, and Israel and the West Bank to the west, Israel has allocated 86% of the land to Israeli settlements. According to the used in this article, what is elsewhere sometimes termed the Upper Jordan Valley is not considered part of the Jordan Valley. The Upper Jordan Valley comprises the Jordan River sources and the course of the Jordan River through the Hula Valley, the northern part of the valley, known in Arabic as the Ghor, includes the Jordan River segment south of the Sea of Galilee. Several degrees warmer than adjacent areas, its year-round agricultural climate, fertile soils, south of the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley contains the hot, dry southern part of the valley known as Wadi Araba, the wilderness or Arabah desert of the Bible. Prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, the valleys Jordanian side was home to about 60,000 people largely engaged in agriculture and pastoralism. By 1971, the Valleys Jordanian population had declined to 5,000 as a result of the 1967 war, investments by the Jordanian government in the region allowed the population to rebound to over 85,000 by 1979. 80% of the farms in the Jordanian part of the valley are family farms no larger than 30 dunams. Some 47,000 Palestinians live in the part of the valley lies in the West Bank in about twenty permanent communities. Thousands of Bedouins also live in temporary communities, since the end of the 1967 war, every Israeli government has considered the western Jordan Valley to be the eastern border of Israel with Jordan. The 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan defines the border between the countries on the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers in the center of those two river courses. In regard to the West Bank, Annex I provides that This line is the boundary between Jordan and the territory which came under Israeli military government control in 1967. Any treatment of this line shall be without prejudice to the status of the territory, in Area C of the West Bank, Israel has been steadily demolishing homes of Palestinians claiming a variety of rationales. In the context of pre-state Zionist and later Israeli settlement, Jordan Valley means the tip of the Sea of Galilee. In the late 1930s, the kibbutzim in the Jordan Valley formed the Council of the Gush, in the 1940s, this economic, cultural, and security cooperation between the kibbutzim continued, and a regional school system was established. In 1949, the Jordan Valley Regional Council was formed, becoming the model for regional councils throughout Israel, by about 3000 BCE, produce from the valley was being exported to neighboring regions
7.
Dead Sea
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The Dead Sea, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and Palestine to the west. Its surface and shores are 430.5 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea is 304 m deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 34. 2% salinity, it is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean and this salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 50 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide at its widest point and it lies in the Jordan Rift Valley and its main tributary is the Jordan River. The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years and it was one of the worlds first health resorts, and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from asphalt for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics, the Dead Sea water has a density of 1.24 kg/litre, which makes swimming similar to floating. The Dead Sea is receding at an alarming rate, multiple canals and pipelines were proposed to reduce its recession, which had begun causing many problems. The Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance project, carried out by Jordan, will provide water to neighboring countries, the first phase of the project is scheduled to begin in 2018 and be completed in 2021. In Hebrew, the Dead Sea is Yām ha-Melaḥ, meaning sea of salt, the Bible uses this term alongside two others, the Sea of the Arabah, and the Eastern Sea. The designation Dead Sea never appears in the Bible, in prose sometimes the term Yām ha-Māvet is used, due to the scarcity of aquatic life there. In Arabic the Dead Sea is called al-Bahr al-Mayyit, or less commonly baḥrᵘ lūṭᵃ, another historic name in Arabic was the Sea of Zoʼar, after a nearby town in biblical times. The Greeks called it Lake Asphaltites, the Dead Sea is an endorheic lake located in the Jordan Rift Valley, a geographic feature formed by the Dead Sea Transform. This left lateral-moving transform fault lies along the plate boundary between the African Plate and the Arabian Plate. It runs between the East Anatolian Fault zone in Turkey and the end of the Red Sea Rift offshore of the southern tip of Sinai. It is here that the Upper Jordan River/Sea of Galilee/Lower Jordan River water system comes to an end. The Jordan River is the major water source flowing into the Dead Sea, although there are small perennial springs under and around the Dead Sea, forming pools. The Mujib River, biblical Arnon, is one the larger sources of the Dead Sea other than the Jordan. The Wadi Mujib valley,420 m below the sea level in the southern of Jordan valley, is a biosphere reserve, other more substantial sources are Wadi Darajeh /Nahal Dragot, and Nahal Arugot
8.
Arabah
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The Arabah, known in Hebrew as Arava or Aravah, is a geographic name for the area south of the Dead Sea basin which forms part of the border between Israel to the west and Jordan to the east. This included the Jordan River Valley between Sea of Galilee and Dead Sea, the Dead Sea itself, and what is called today the Arava Valley. The modern use of the term is restricted to this section alone. The southern stretch of the Arabah is 166 km in length from the Gulf of Aqaba to the shore of the Dead Sea. Topographically, the region is divided into three sections, from this crest, the land slopes gently northward over the next 74 km to a point 15 km south of the Dead Sea. In the last section, the Arabah drops steeply to the Dead Sea, the Arabah is scenic with colorful cliffs and sharp-topped mountains. The southern Arabah is hot and dry and virtually without rain, there are numerous species of flora and fauna in the Aravah Valley. Notably the Caracal, Caracal caracal, is found on savannas of the valley, in Biblical times, the Arava was a center of copper production, King Solomon is believed to have had mines here based on copper mines dating to his reign. The Arabah was home to the Edomites, east of the Arabah was the domain of the Nabateans, the builders of the city of Petra. Kibbutz Yotvata founded in 1957, was named for an ancient town in the mentioned in the Bible. Kibbutz Lotan has a bird-watching center, the oldest moshav in the central Arava area is Ein Yahav. The Israel–Jordan Peace Treaty was signed in the Arava on October 26,1994, the governments of Jordan and Israel are promoting development of the region. There is a plan to bring sea water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea through a canal and this project was once an issue of dispute between Jordan and Israel, but it was recently agreed that the project shall be constructed on and by the Jordanian side. In 2004, the Jordanian administrative district of Wadi Araba had a population of 6,775, the main economic activities for these Arabah residents revolve around herding sheep, agriculture, handicrafts, and the Jordanian Army. Timna Valley Park is notable for its rock carvings, some of the oldest copper mines in the world. On the Jordanian side is the famous Wadi Rum, which is famous among rock climbers, hikers, campers, Feynan Ecolodge was opened in Wadi Feynan by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature in 2005. Below is a list of Jordanian population clusters in Wadi Araba, The total population of the Jordanian portion of the region is 103,000, below is a list of Israeli localities in the Arava, from north to south. The population of the Israeli portion is 52,000, of which 47,500 live in Eilat, and just over 5,000 live in 20 small towns north of Eilat, the Israeli residents of the region are almost entirely Jews
9.
Gulf of Aqaba
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The Gulf of Aqaba or Gulf of Eilat is a large gulf at the northern tip of the Red Sea, east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian mainland. Its coastline is divided between four countries, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, the gulf is east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian Peninsula. With the Gulf of Suez to the west, it extends from the portion of the Red Sea. It reaches a depth of 1,850 m in its central area. The gulf measures 24 kilometres at its widest point and stretches some 160 kilometres north from the Straits of Tiran to where Israel meets Egypt, like the coastal waters of the Red Sea, the gulf is one of the worlds premier sites for diving. At this northern end of the gulf are three important cities, Taba in Egypt, Eilat in Israel, and Aqaba in Jordan and they are strategically important commercial ports and popular resorts for tourists seeking to enjoy the warm climate. Further south, Haql is the largest Saudi Arabian city on the gulf, on Sinai, Sharm el-Sheikh and Dahab are the major centers. The largest population center is Aqaba, with a population of 108,000, followed by Eilat with a population of 48,000. The gulf is one of two created by the Sinai Peninsulas bifurcation of the northern Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez lying to the west of the peninsula. Geologically, the forms the southern end of the Dead Sea Transform. It contains three small pull-apart basins, the Elat Deep, Aragonese Deep and Dakar Deep, formed between four left lateral strike-slip fault segments, movement on one of these faults caused the 1995 Gulf of Aqaba earthquake. Trade across the Red Sea between Thebes port of Elim and Elat at the head of the gulf is documented as early as the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, egyptian settlements near Timna at the head of the gulf date to the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. At the northern edge, the ancient city of Ayla was a hub for the Nabateans. The Romans built the Via Traiana Nova, which joined the Kings Highway at Aqaba and connected Africa to Asia, Aqaba was a major Ottoman port, connected to Damascus and Medina by the Hejaz railway. During World War I, the Battle of Aqaba was the key battle that ended a 500-year Ottoman rule over Greater Syria, the gulf is one of the most popular diving destinations in the world. About 250,000 dives are performed annually in Eilats 11 km coastline, the Landscape of Wadi Rum to the east of the northern edge of the gulf is a popular destination. Other destinations are the ruins of the civilization of Ayla in the city of Aqaba. Whales, orcas, dolphins, dugongs, and whale sharks live in the gulf as well
10.
Red Sea
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The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait, to the north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez. The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion, the sea is underlain by the Red Sea Rift which is part of the Great Rift Valley. The Red Sea has an area of roughly 438,000 km2, is about 2250 km long and. It has a depth of 2211 m in the central median trench. However, there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life, the sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species, and 200 soft and hard corals. It is the worlds northernmost tropical sea, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Red Sea as follows, On the North. The Southern limits of the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, a line joining Husn Murad and Ras Siyyan. Red Sea is a translation of the Greek Erythra Thalassa, Latin Mare Rubrum, Arabic, البحر الأحمر. Al-Baḥr Al-Aḥmar, Somali Badda Cas and Tigrinya Qeyyiḥ bāḥrī, the name of the sea may signify the seasonal blooms of the red-coloured Trichodesmium erythraeum near the waters surface. A theory favored by modern scholars is that the name red is referring to the direction south. The basis of this theory is that some Asiatic languages used color words to refer to the cardinal directions, herodotus on one occasion uses Red Sea and Southern Sea interchangeably. Historically, it was known to western geographers as Mare Mecca. Some ancient geographers called the Red Sea the Arabian Gulf or Gulf of Arabia. C, in that version, the Yam Suph is translated as Erythra Thalassa. The Red Sea is one of four seas named in English after common color terms — the others being the Black Sea, the White Sea and the Yellow Sea. The direct rendition of the Greek Erythra thalassa in Latin as Mare Erythraeum refers to the part of the Indian Ocean. The earliest known exploration of the Red Sea was conducted by ancient Egyptians, one such expedition took place around 2500 BC, and another around 1500 BC. Both involved long voyages down the Red Sea, historically, scholars argued whether these trips were possible
11.
Sinai Peninsula
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The Sinai Peninsula or simply Sinai is a peninsula in Egypt, situated between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, serving as a land bridge between Asia and Africa. It is the part of Egyptian territory located in Asia. Sinai has an area of about 60,000 km2. The bulk of the peninsula is divided administratively into two of Egypts 27 governorates, the Sinai Peninsula has been a part of Egypt from the First Dynasty of ancient Egypt. In periods of occupation, the Sinai was, like the rest of Egypt, also occupied and controlled by foreign empires, in more recent history the Ottoman Empire. Israel invaded and occupied Sinai during the Suez Crisis of 1956, on 6 October 1973, Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War to retake the peninsula, which was the site of fierce fighting between Egyptian and Israeli forces. Today, Sinai has become a tourist destination due to its setting, rich coral reefs. Mount Sinai is one of the most religiously significant places in Abrahamic faiths, in addition to its formal name, Egyptians also refer to it as Arḍ ul-Fairūz. The ancient Egyptians called it Ta Mefkat, or land of turquoise, Sinai is triangular in shape, with northern shore lying on the southern Mediterranean Sea, and southwest and southeast shores on Gulf of Suez and Gulf of Aqaba of the Red Sea. It is linked to the African continent by the Isthmus of Suez,125 kilometres wide strip of land, the eastern isthmus, linking it to the Asian mainland, is around 200 kilometres wide. The peninsulas eastern shore separates the Arabian plate from the African plate, the southernmost tip is the Ras Muhammad National Park. Most of the Sinai Peninsula is divided among the two governorates of Egypt, South Sinai and North Sinai, together, they comprise around 60,000 square kilometres and have a population of 597,000. Three more governates span the Suez Canal, crossing into African Egypt, Suez is on the end of the Suez Canal, Ismailia in the centre. The largest city of Sinai is Arish, capital of the North Sinai, other larger settlements include Sharm el-Sheikh and El-Tor, on the southern coast. Inland Sinai is arid, mountainous and sparsely populated, the largest settlements being Saint Catherine, Sinai is one of the coldest provinces in Egypt because of its high altitudes and mountainous topographies. Winter temperatures in some of Sinais cities and towns reach −16 °C, the mines were worked intermittently and on a seasonal basis for thousands of years. Modern attempts to exploit the deposits have been unprofitable and these may be the first historically attested mines. According to the Hebrew Bible, the peninsula was crossed by the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt and this included numerous halts over a 40-year period of travel sometime towards the end of the Bronze Age
12.
Miocene
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The Miocene is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago. The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell and its name comes from the Greek words μείων and καινός and means less recent because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene Epoch and is followed by the Pliocene Epoch, the earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, with the climate slowly cooling towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event, the apes arose and diversified during the Miocene, becoming widespread in the Old World. By the end of this epoch, the ancestors of humans had split away from the ancestors of the chimpanzees to follow their own evolutionary path, as in the Oligocene before it, grasslands continued to expand and forests to dwindle in extent. In the Miocene seas, kelp forests made their first appearance, the plants and animals of the Miocene were fairly modern. The Miocene faunal stages from youngest to oldest are typically named according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, Two subdivisions each form the lower, middle, continents continued to drift toward their present positions. Mountain building took place in western North America, Europe, both continental and marine Miocene deposits are common worldwide with marine outcrops common near modern shorelines. Well studied continental exposures occur in the North American Great Plains, India continued to collide with Asia, creating dramatic new mountain ranges. The Tethys Seaway continued to shrink and then disappeared as Africa collided with Eurasia in the Turkish–Arabian region between 19 and 12 Ma. The subsequent uplift of mountains in the western Mediterranean region and a fall in sea levels combined to cause a temporary drying up of the Mediterranean Sea near the end of the Miocene. The global trend was towards increasing aridity caused primarily by global cooling reducing the ability of the atmosphere to absorb moisture, climates remained moderately warm, although the slow global cooling that eventually led to the Pleistocene glaciations continued. Although a long-term cooling trend was well underway, there is evidence of a period during the Miocene when the global climate rivalled that of the Oligocene. The Miocene warming began 21 million years ago and continued until 14 million years ago, by 8 million years ago, temperatures dropped sharply once again, and the Antarctic ice sheet was already approaching its present-day size and thickness. Greenland may have begun to have large glaciers as early as 7 to 8 million years ago, life during the Miocene Epoch was mostly supported by the two newly formed biomes, kelp forests and grasslands. This allows for more grazers, such as horses, rhinoceroses, ninety five percent of modern plants existed by the end of this epoch. The higher organic content and water retention of the deeper and richer grassland soils, with long term burial of carbon in sediments, produced a carbon and this, combined with higher surface albedo and lower evapotranspiration of grassland, contributed to a cooler, drier climate. The expansion of grasslands and radiations among terrestrial herbivores correlates to fluctuations in CO2
