The soils of the Fazael Formation, distributed across the lower Jordan Valley, provide a critical environmental framework for understanding late Pleistocene–Early Holocene settlement dynamics and the onset of agrarian society. The Gilgal Basin, located approximately 10 km north of Jericho, preserves a key stratigraphic record spanning the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution (NAR), recording the transition from mobile foraging to sedentary farming and eventual plant domestication. Modern surface soils in the Jordan Valley exhibit high agricultural productivity, characterized by a silty texture, low salt content, elevated cation exchange capacity, high base saturation, a dominant exchangeable cation sequence (Ca > K > Na > Mg), and alkaline pH values (7.7–9.3). We analyzed sediments from the Gilgal Basin and surface soils along the lower Jordan Valley to reconstruct paleoenvironmental conditions during this critical transition. At Gilgal, the Salibiya section, dated by OSL between 25 and 11 ka, records a stratigraphic sequence documenting the shift from lacustrine deposition (Lisan Formation) to soil accumulation. Valley soils are predominantly silt and silt loam with remarkably uniform grain-size distributions resembling local mountain soils and modern dust, composed primarily of quartz, calcite, feldspars, and phyllosilicates. These soils accumulated during the late glacial and early Holocene (15–12 ka) as Lake Lisan receded from the marginal terraces of the Jordan Valley. Enhanced erosion in the Samarian Hills to the west generated a "sedimentary blanket" comprising the Fazael Formation, a major soil accumulation event that supported the earliest phases of crop cultivation and domestication.