Daughters of Jacob Bridge 2.65

The Daughters of Jacob Bridge is a site on the upper Jordan River. It has the last good ford at the southern end of the Hula Basin before the Jordan gets squeezed between the Korazim block and the Golan Heights, and has thus been a crossing point for thousands of years. The name Jacob's Ford arose during the Crusades and is still in use, mostly in English. The bridge was the best-known medieval bridge in Palestine, and was destroyed during the draining of Lake Hula by the PLDC.The bridges built here in the past have led to the site's Arabic name, Jisr Banât Ya'qūb, lit. "Daughters of Jacob Bridge", translated to Hebrew as Gesher Bnot Ya'akov, the name under which it is known today in Israel. The Hebrew name, written Gesher Benot Ya'aqov and abbreviated as GBY, is how the very important prehistoric archaeological site is known to the academic world. The modern bridge is part of Highway 91 and straddles the border between Israel and the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights. It is of strategic military significance as it is one of the few fixed crossing points over the upper Jordan River which enable access from the Golan Heights to the Upper Galilee.Prehistoric remains at the site, analysed by archaeologists from Germany, the United States and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, provided evidence that Lower Paleolithic hominins lived on the shore of a large lake and manufactured stone tools, butchered animals, gathered plant materials and probably controlled fire as early as 790,000 years ago.