Wetlands Lost and Found in the Levant - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 52

HISTORY
The Hula area is one of the oldest documented wetland-lake systems in history, first
being mentioned in about 1400 bce in the Tel Amarna letters of Pharaoh Akhenaton
(Dimentman, Bromley, and Por 1992). The region has been occupied since 73,000
bce and contains Neolithic settlements as old as 10,000 bce. The very important
Bronze Age city of Hazor, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament as being a city
of Solomon and contemporaneous with the marshland cities of southern Iraq, over-
looked the marshes (Figure 6.1). Today the view from the Hazor Tell reveals agri-
cultural lands where once marshes existed, and distant views to the south of the Sea

FIGURE 6.1 Ruins of the Bronze Age biblical city of Hazor, at the edge of the Hula

wetlands.