Bruce Barley, aged 7, of Wichita, Kansas for his question:

Why Is the Dead Sea called by that name?

For such a small lake, the Dead Sea is very famous. Its widest part is only ten miles across. Its whole length is no more than 46 miles. The experts tell us it was once four times its present sire. Millions of years ago, its waters covered the whole Jordan Valley. Today we can truthfully call it the Dead Sea. For no creature can live long in its waters. They are saturated with strong chemicals. But in Roman days a beautiful dye color was made from a snail that lived in the Dead Sea.

The famous little salt lake is almost 1300 feet below the level of the nearby Mediterranean Sea. Its waters are warmer than the parched desert land around it. The hot sun beats upon its surface. Soft clouds of water vapor hang above it, For the Dead Sea evaporates at a great rate.

 Look at your map of the Mediterranean region. You will see that the Dead Sea is fed by an even more famous river ‑ the Jordan River of the Holy Land. Jordan flows from a still more famous lake ‑ the Sea of Galilee, The river and the Dead Sea are fed from deep springs below the floor of the Lake of Galilee.

The experts tell us that all these waters carry heavy loads of chemicals. The chief chemical is bromine, a substance which destroys living things. The waters of Jordan and Galilee are flowing waters. There is not enough bromine in them at one time to harm fish. Hut the water of the Dead Sea is trapped without an outlet.

The only way water can leave the Dead Sea is by evaporation, by drying up into the air. This way it turns from liquid water to airy water vapor. Only tiny particles of water can go off into the air this way. The load of dissolved chemicals must stay behind.

Day by day more chemicals are added to the Dead Sea. by the River Jordon. Day by day its waters become more salty and more full of chemicals. Already the water contains 100 times more bromine than does ordinary sea water.  It is estimated that the little lake contains some 850 million tons of strong, destroying bromine. Any fish that comes in from the Jordan River soon perishes in the bitter craters of the Dead Sea.

In Roman days, the Phoenicians knew of a snail that lived in or near the waters of the Dead Sea. It seemed to thrive on the bitter bromine. They used it to make a dye color which was famous in the ancient world. It was called Tyrian purple. Much of the dye was most likely a red crimson color. Some of it was a rich red‑blue purplish color. The little snail is called murex. He managed to survive in the Dead Sea two thousand years ago. Since then the waters have become too bitter even for him.