Ian, That's enough. I am, among other things, a trained artist and also have architectural training; I may know that sea, surface and bed, to the point that I believe that I could still draw maps without another reference; and I may be a well-informed amateur on geological, etc. aspects, but I am an amateur nonetheless. Dave has supplied an impeccable one-book source by professionals in their fields that will answer your questions.
Included in this source book there is a report on the rate of evaporative loss on a salt water lake as opposed to a fresh water lake. When dealing with any subject outside of ones fields of expertise, one should cross- check with other sources on a subject. So, ... Studies on this particular subject, for example, have been done on the Great Salt Lake in Utah... thus, cross-checks on the subject are available. (As I recall, these studies have been performed both by the US government and by private institutions.) Many studies on subjects covered in this source book have been done on the Mediterranean itself. Because the outlet is so narrow, the Med remains essentially a closed basin sea (large lake with some deep spots, e.g. the Rhodes deep, would be a more accurate description). The narrowness of the outlet, for instance, restricts the exchange of the waters of the less saline Atlantic with the waters of the Med. Approximately 6,000-8,000 years after the breakthrough, the Med is still saltier than the Atlantic. As the Med is comparatively shallow, quite saline, and essentially a closed-basin, studies of the Med is another place to cross-check. Studies of the Great Lakes are not too helpful, except perhaps for a comparative/contrastive analysis. Although enormous in terms of the combined area, the lakes are fresh water and the terrain is totally different. They sit in an area gouged out of the stable Cambrian basalt of the Canadian Shield during the last glacial period. (If interested in any case; check first with the geological, hydrological, etc. research done under the US government and now available on-line through the Library of Congress.) Just remember that these sources for cross-checking will have to be adjusted for the area studied. Parenthetically, I may also remind you that across the lifetime of this list, everytime anyone (I am not the only one, you know) has mentioned that the water level was much higher at the time of construction, someone on this list has shouted them down using the Roman structure as the reason for denying it. While the Roman structure indicates a low water level at the time of *its* construction, it tells us nothing at all about the water level at the time of the original construction of the Qumran complex. Expect no more from me. Outside of supplying sources for cross-checking, it would be the height of impudence on my part when such a one-book source is readily available. Rochelle -- Dr. R.I.S. Altman, co-coordinator, IOUDAIOS-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] For private reply, e-mail to "Rochelle I. Altman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: "unsubscribe Orion." Archives are on the Orion Web site, http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il. (PLEASE REMOVE THIS TRAILOR BEFORE REPLYING TO THE MESSAGE)
