Around three million years ago what is now the valley of the Jordan River, Dead Sea, and Wadi Arabah/Nahal Arava was repeatedly inundated by waters from the Mediterranean Sea. The waters formed in a narrow, crooked bay which was connected to the sea through what is now the Jezreel Valley. The floods of the valley came and went depending on long scale climatic change. The lake that occupied the Dead Sea Rift, named “Lake Sodom”, deposited beds of salt, eventually coming to be 3 km (2 miles) thick.

According to geological theory, approximately two million years ago the land between the Rift Valley and the Mediterranean Sea rose to such an extent that the ocean could no longer flood the area. Thus, the long bay became a long lake.