Archaeological excavations have indicated near continuous settlement from the
Ghassulian culture of the
Chalcolithic Age (c. 4500–3300 BCE) to the
Ayyubid periods of the 11–13th centuries CE.
Bronze and Iron Ages . It was discovered in 1928. Signs of the zodiac surround the central chariot of the Sun (a Greek motif), while the corners depict the 4 "turning points" ("
tekufot") of the year, solstices and equinoxes, each named for the month in which it occurs—tequfah of
Tishrei, tequfah of
Tevet, tequfah of
Nisan, tequfah of
Tamuz. Biblical cities in the Jezreel Valley include Jezreel,
Megiddo,
Beit She'an,
Shimron and
Afula.
Roman period In the late
Second Temple period,
Josephus refers to both the Jezreel Valley and the
Beit Netofa Valley as the "Great Plain".
Mamluk period During the
Mamluk period, the Jezreel Valley formed the southern part of Mamlakat Safad (the province of Safed). In the 14th century, it was inhabited by the Bani Haritha tribe of
Yaman (southern Arab)-affiliated
Bedouins, the progenitors of the
Turabay dynasty.
Ottoman period During the early
Ottoman period, the Jezreel Valley was the core territory of the
Turabay Emirate (1517–1683). The Valley's capital was initially at
Lajjun, the center of an
eponymous sanjak and one of
Palestine's provincial capitals during the 16th century. Around 1600, the seat of the Turabays moved to
Jenin.'' In 1858,
Josias Leslie Porter summarized the appearance of the valley in the following words: "Two things strike us forcibly when looking over the plain of Esdraelon. First, its wonderful richness, ..., second, its desolation. if we except its eastern branches there is not a single inhabited village on its whole surface, and not more than one-tenth of its soil is cultivated. It is home to the wandering Bedawy... It has always been insecure."
Laurence Oliphant, who visited the
Akko Sanjak valley area in 1887, then a subprovince of the
Beirut vilayet, wrote that the Valley of Esdraelon (Jezreel) was "a huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands; and it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible to conceive." In the early 1900, the
Ottomans constructed the
Jezreel Valley railway which ran along the entire length of the valley. " in the 1880s In the 1870s, the
Sursock family of
Beirut (present-day
Lebanon) purchased the land from the Ottoman government for approximately £20,000.
British Mandate After the land was sold to the
American Zion Commonwealth, some of the Arab farmers who lived in nearby villages and had been working for the absentee landowners were given financial compensation or were provided with land elsewhere. Despite the sale, some of the farmers refused to leave their land, as in
Afula (El-Ful), however the new owners decided that it would be inappropriate for these farmers to remain as tenants on land intended for Jewish labor. This was a commonplace feeling among segments of the Jewish population, part of a socialist ideology of the
Yishuv, which included their working the land rather than being absentee landowners. British police had to be used to expel some and the dispossessed made their way to the coast to search for new work with most ending up in
shanty towns on the edges of
Jaffa and
Haifa. Following the purchase of the land, the Jewish farmers created the first modern-day settlements, founded the modern day city of
Afula and drained the swamps to enable further land development of areas that had been uninhabitable for centuries. The first
moshav,
Nahalal, was settled in this valley on 11 September 1921. After the widespread
Arab riots of 1929 in the then
British Mandate of Palestine, the
Hope Simpson Enquiry was appointed to seek causes and remedies for the instability. The commission's findings in regard to "Government responsibility towards Arab cultivators", was that the Jewish authorities "have nothing with which to reproach themselves" in the purchase of the valley, noting the high prices paid and land occupants receiving compensation not legally bound. The responsibility of the Mandate Government for "soreness felt (among both
effendi and
fellahin) owing to the sale of large areas by the absentee
Sursock family" and the displacement of Arab tenants; noted that, "the duty of the Administration of Palestine to ensure that the rights and position of the Arabs are not prejudiced by Jewish immigration. It is doubtful whether, in the matter of the Sursock lands, this Article of the Mandate received sufficient consideration."
State of Israel In 2006, the
Israeli Transportation Ministry and
Jezreel Valley Regional Council announced plans to build an international airport near Megiddo but the project was shelved due to environmental objections. ==Archaeological excavations==