In addition to tectonics and climatic changes, humans have exerted a significant impact on surface erosion over timescales ranging from years to centuries. However, the magnitude of such impact over millennial timescales remains unsubstantiated. The Dead Sea drainage basin, Southern Levant, offers a rare combination of abundant archaeological evidence for past landscape-related human activity coupled with a continuous high-resolution record of basin erosion. Here we present measurements of detrital accumulation rates in the Dead Sea depocenter, showing anthropogenic-intensified basin erosion since ~11.5 kyr BP. The average detrital accumulation rate during the Holocene is ~2-3 times higher than during the last two glacial cycles. This erosive rate is incompatible with tectonic and climatic regimes during the corresponding period but is closely associated with the Neolithic Revolution in the Levant, suggesting that enhanced human impact on the landscape led to intensified erosion.
