It is thought by some that the channels in the Black Sea were formed around 6, 000 years ago when sea levels were approaching their current point.

Cross-section of the Irish Sea through Man, showing sea levels.

Sea levels began to rise during the Jurassic, which was probably caused by an increase in seafloor spreading.

Sea levels fell, exposing land bridges between Africa and Eurasia and between Eurasia and North America.

During this period the southern Red Sea ’ s levels dropped and was only 2. 5 miles or 4 km wide.

Sea levels in the Permian remained generally low, and near-shore environments were limited by the collection of almost all major landmasses into a single continent -- Pangaea.

Sea levels had dropped coincident with the ice age, but slowly recovered over the course of the Silurian and Devonian.

This provided less natural dilution of Mediterranean salinity and ended the higher levels of natural turbidity, additionally making conditions more like those in the Red Sea.

Environment-current issues: inadequate sanitation facilities ; increasing levels of soil salinity ; industrial pollution ; excessive pesticides ; part of the basin of the shrinking Aral Sea suffers from severe overutilization of available water for irrigation and associated pollution

In 2003, ICES stated there is a high risk of stock collapse if then current exploitation levels continued, and recommended a moratorium on catching Atlantic cod in the North Sea during 2004.

Sea levels rise abruptly and massive inland flooding occurs due to glacier melt.

Water consumption is so high that groundwater levels in the Sanaa basin are diminishing ; because of this, government officials have proposed relocating large portions of the population of Sana ' a to the coast of the Red Sea.

Opposition came from fishermen along the Zuiderzee who would lose their livelihood, and from others in coastal areas along the more northerly Wadden Sea who feared higher water levels as a result of the closure, and others who doubted whether it was financially practical.

The main dungeon in Slash ' EM is much larger than in NetHack, introducing special levels such as the Sunless Sea, where a magic lamp lies, and the Guild of Disgruntled Adventurers, populated by " player monsters " ( archaeologists, barbarians, and the like ).

A Thames Barrier flood defence closure is triggered when a combination of high tides forecast in the North Sea and high river flows at the tidal limit at Teddington weir indicate that water levels would exceed in central London.

Bombay Beach is located on the east shore of the Salton Sea and, like many communities along its shores, has had to contend with rising and falling water levels.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as salinity and suspected pollution levels in the Salton Sea increased, the attraction of the Salton Sea as a recreational destination diminished.

Water levels rose and the western Tethys came to shallowly cover significant portions of Europe, forming the ( first ) Tethys Sea.

Whilst the lower reaches of the River Havel provide the most direct route to Hamburg and the North Sea ports, variable water levels in the River Elbe affect those in the lower River Havel, and together these can restrict navigation.

The current channel of the Great Belt was created by a relatively high fresh water phase of the rising Yoldia Sea breaking through to the lower Kattegat levels at about 10, 000 BP.

At the end of that time rising Kattegat levels broke into the Ancylus lake, creating the Littorina Sea.

The " Century Flood " of 1976 and the " North Frisian Flood " of 1981 brought the highest water levels measured to date on the North Sea coast, but because of sea defences such as improved warning systems and dikes built and modified after the flood of 1962, these led only to property damage.

Sea level rise may also contribute to accretion, as material is pushed up with rising sea levels.

The subsequent Bronze Age civilizations of Greece and the Aegean Sea have given rise to the general term Aegean civilization.

Amazons were said to have lived in Pontus, which is part of modern day Turkey near the shore of the Euxine Sea ( the Black Sea ).

* Aegea, queen of the Amazons who was thought by some to have been the eponym of the Aegean Sea.

Anacharsis (; ) was a Scythian philosopher who travelled from his homeland on the northern shores of the Black Sea to Athens in the early 6th century BC and made a great impression as a forthright, outspoken " barbarian ", apparently a forerunner of the Cynics, though none of his works have survived.

Studies of phytoplankton stocks in the southern sea have shown that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is dominated by diatoms, while the Weddell Sea has abundant coccolithophorids and silicoflagellates.

This description would actually have meant that the whole of the Baltic Sea had been covered with ice.

According to John J. Collins in his 1993 commentary, Daniel, Hermeneia Commentary, the Aramaic in Daniel is of a later form than that used in the Samaria correspondence, but slightly earlier than the form used in the Dead Sea Scrolls, meaning that the Aramaic chapters 2-6 may have been written earlier in the Hellenistic period than the rest of the book, with the vision in chapter 7 being the only Aramaic portion dating to the time of Antiochus.

Parts of the Book of Jeremiah have also been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in cave 4 in Qumran.

Although he must have been familiar with the ancient name, Balcia, meaning a supposed island in the Baltic Sea, and although he may have been aware of the Baltic words containing the stem balt -, " white ", as " swamp ", he reports that he followed the local use of balticus from baelt (" belt ") because the sea stretches to the east " in modum baltei " (" in the manner of a belt ").

:" Birka is the main Geatish town ( oppidum Gothorum ), situated in the middle of Sweden ( Suevoniae ), not far ( non longe ) from the temple called Uppsala ( Ubsola ) which the Swedes ( Sueones ) held in the highest esteem when it comes to the worship of the gods ; here forms an inlet of the Baltic or the Barbaric Sea a port facing north which welcomes all the wild peoples all around this sea but which is risky for those who are careless or ignorant of such places ... they have therefore blocked this inlet of the troubled sea with hidden masses of rocks along more than 100 stadions ( 18 km ).

Italy, it has been argued, wished to recreate the Roman empire, though its primary aim at the time seems to have been the denial of access to the Adriatic Sea to another major sea power.

The condition of the Ottoman railways of the time was primitive, so most reinforcement would have to come by sea through the Aegean Sea.

The second noteworthy characteristic is that the country borders on very different parts of the African continent: North Africa, with its Islamic culture and economic orientation toward the Mediterranean Basin ; West Africa, with its diverse religions and cultures and its history of highly developed states and regional economies ; Northeast Africa, oriented toward the Nile Valley and Red Sea region ; and Central or Equatorial Africa, some of whose people have retained classical African religions while others have adopted Christianity, and whose economies were part of the great Congo River system.

The contemporary Greek geographer Strabo testifies that the Cimbri still existed as a Germanic tribe, presumably in the " Cimbric peninsula " ( since they are said to live by the North Sea and to have paid tribute to Augustus ):

On the other hand, the traditional identification with a site in Assyria would then imply the later sense of " Babylonia ", and a few interpreters have additionally tried to identify Abraham's birthplace with Chaldia, a distinct region in Asia Minor on the Black Sea.

A number of scholars have argued that the ancient Israelites incorporated the combat myth into their religious imagery, such as the figures of Leviathan and Rahab, the Song of the Sea, Isaiah 51: 9-10's description of God's deliverance of his people from Babylon, and the portrayals of enemies such as Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar.

That would have effectively given Russia a free hand in the Black Sea.

Fragments of three deuterocanonical books have been found among the Dead Sea scrolls found at Qumran.

Since 1980, the Dead Sea basin has been dry and the algae and the bacteria have not returned in measurable numbers.

Both Jordan and Israel have established nature reserves around the Dead Sea.

On Jordanian side, three international franchises have opened seaside resort hotels near the King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Center along the eastern coast of the Dead Sea.

Both companies use extensive salt evaporation pans that have essentially diked the entire southern end of the Dead Sea for the purpose of producing carnallite, potassium magnesium chloride, which is then processed further to produce potassium chloride.