The Dead Sea, one of the most inhospitable places on the planet.

At 1,300 metres below sea level, the shores of this desolate salt lake are the lowest place on Earth.

Although the River Jordan, a sacred place for time immemorial,

flows into it, there is nowhere for the water to go.

Its only release being the punishing sun evaporating it during the course of each day,

leaving just salt and mineral behind.

This is very likely the saltiest body of water on the planet. More so than the Great Salt Lake of Utah.

Just a few gulps of this liquid will kill a human in a matter of hours.

Not only that, but deep sinkholes regularly appear all over its banks,

threatening to open up and swallow those foolish enough to wander too close to the shore.

Yet, all the same, people have not only lived here, but on many occasions thrived for thousands upon thousands of years.

This is Bible Country. According to biblical archaeologists, on one edge of this lake,

the once prosperous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah may have once thrived.

The similarly ancient city of Jericho and a whole

multitude of other biblical sites are located only a few days' walk away. And later still, salt merchants

from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman era risked their lives to brave the harsh,

deadly, still waters of the sea.

It was also here, generations later, in the spring of 1947, as Palestine teetered on the verge of a new war, that three young

Bedouin boys, their ancestors having wandered the region as nomads for time immemorial, stopped

at the ancient watering hole of Rashfeshka to rest their animals. The story goes that one of the

boys wandered off from the main group.

Bored, he began throwing rocks into some nearby caves.

...