After nearly two decades of research work, the Quatternary Science Review published the results of a historical agroclimatic study, which revealed amazing results about the climate, weather, and agricultural environment in the Middle East over the past 20,000 years.

The study showed the transition from very dry cold, to humid heavy rain, to temperate temperatures, after the end of the ice age at that time. It demonstrated how this climatic change was a major event during those years, and allowed the people living in this region to shift from a hunting pattern to a model of agriculture and agricultural stability, and subsequently the establishment of the infrastructure for the formation of the first civilizations in the Middle East.

Detailed scientific research was launched from an archaeological site in Wadi al-Hula, on the West Bank of the Jordan River. In 1999, archaeologists found the site of the oldest agricultural factory in history. They found an accumulation of more than 60 types of agricultural sediments, each of which dates back to different periods of time. Accumulated, dating back more than 12,000 years.

Using radioactive carbon, and after taking hundreds of samples from those plant sediments, scientists were able to form a model and visualization of how the climate developed in this region, which is located in the middle of the countries of the Middle East, and it constitutes a tool to learn a lot of data about the climatic shifts that took place in this region.

According to the data of the study, in which archaeologists from the TAU Institute, the Israeli “Tel Hai” Scientific Institute and the French University of Montpellier participated, the winter in this region 20 thousand years ago was about 5 degrees Celsius colder than it is, while the summer was 10 degrees colder , but precipitation levels are similar to what they are today.

At that time, when the world was witnessing the “peak of the last ice age”, the Middle East was not covered with ice for all months of the year, as was the case in the European continent and North America.

12 thousand years ago, temperatures decreased in most regions of the region, so that ice covered most of them throughout the months of the year, in line with the rest of the world, with climatic fluctuations and heavy precipitation throughout the year.