GLACIAL EPOCH UPON THE EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 65 
and his associates were there subject to a similar destruction 
by local floods. Distinct evidence of a great change of land 
level of that region at about that time appears in a raised beach 
of modern origin 750 feet above the Black Sea at Trebizond. 
In fact, I think there is conclusive evidence that all Northern 
Siberia, Western Turkestan, and the larger part of Russia were 
depressed below sea-level in connection with the great earth 
movements which took place during the latter part of the 
Glacial Epoch. 
At a corresponding period, also, the Tarim depression south of 
the Thianshan mountains was covered with water to a great 
depth. I had suggested* that this may have been occasioned 
at the time of the depression apparent in Northern Siberia by 
the water pouring over into the desert of Gobi through the 
Sungarian depression; but Mr. Ellsworth Huntington, who has 
recently returned from an exploring expedition in that region, 
thinks that this accumulation of water in the Gobi basin was 
directly due to the glacial conditions which gave to the glaciers 
in the surrounding mountains the vast extension to which we 
have already referred. j* If that be so, it would be in close 
analogy to the enlargement of Great Salt Lake, the existence of 
both bodies of water being synchronous. 
In the case of the Dead Sea, which Professor Hull has shown 
to have been filled with water within a comparatively recent 
time, he has suggested that this enlargement, like that of Great 
Salt Lake and Lob Nor, was a direct result of the Glacial Epoch, 
and of the accumulation of glaciers upon the mountains at the 
north. But as my investigations appear to show that the 
Lebanon mountains never supported more than one glacier, and 
that a small one, on whose terminal moraine the famous grove 
of cedars is now standing, I am inclined to connect the tempor- 
ary enlargement of the Dead Sea (during which the Jordan 
Valley was filled to a depth of 1,400 feet) to that post-glacial 
depression of land which we have traced so extensively else- 
where, and of which Professor Hull and others have adduced 
such clear evidence around the eastern border of the Mediter- 
ranean basin. This depression was certainly 250 feet, which 
would be sufficient to admit Mediterranean water into the 
Jordan Valley through the valley of Esdrealon, whose highest 
point is only 215 feet above sea-level. 
* See Scientific Confirmations of 0. T. History , Hodder and Stoughton, 
London, 1907. 
t See the Geographical Journal , vol. xxx, No. 3, Sept. 1907. 
