Artists evidence-based representation of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas. Credit: Allen West and Jennifer Rice
An Ancient Disaster
In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Found on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had ended up being the largest continually occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having actually hosted early civilization for a couple of thousand years. At that time, it was 10 times larger than Jerusalem and 5 times bigger than Jericho.
” Its an incredibly culturally essential area,” stated James Kennett, emeritus professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara. “Much of where the early cultural complexity of human beings developed is in this general area.”
A favorite website for archaeologists and scriptural scholars, the mound hosts proof of culture all the method from the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, all compressed into layers as the extremely strategic settlement was developed, ruined, and rebuilt over millennia.
In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. The high-salinity soil might have been accountable for the so-called “Late Bronze Age Gap,” the researchers state, in which cities along the lower Jordan Valley were abandoned, dropping the population from 10s of thousands to maybe a few hundred nomads. Proof for resettlement of Tall el-Hammam and nearby communities appears once again in the Iron Age, approximately 600 years after the cities abrupt destruction in the Bronze Age.
Tall el-Hamman has been the focus of an ongoing dispute as to whether it might be the scriptural city of Sodom, one of the 2 cities in the Old Testament Book of Genesis that were ruined by God for how wicked they and their inhabitants had become. Fire and brimstone fell from the sky; multiple cities were damaged; thick smoke increased from the fires; city inhabitants were eliminated and location crops were destroyed in what sounds like an eyewitness account of a cosmic effect occasion.
Researchers stand near the ruins of ancient walls, with the destruction layer about midway down each exposed wall. Credit: Phil Silvia
However there is a 1.5-meter period in the Middle Bronze Age II stratum that caught the interest of some scientists for its “highly uncommon” materials. In addition to the particles one would anticipate from destruction by means of warfare and earthquakes, they found pottery shards with external surfaces melted into glass, “bubbled” mudbrick and partially melted building product, all indications of an anomalously high-temperature event, much hotter than anything the technology of the time might produce.
” We saw evidence for temperature levels higher than 2,000 degrees Celsius,” said Kennett, whose research group at the time took place to have been building the case for an older cosmic airburst about 12,800 years ago that set off major widespread burning, climatic changes and animal terminations. The charred and melted materials at Tall el-Hammam looked familiar, and a group of researchers consisting of impact scientist Allen West and Kennett signed up with Trinity Southwest University biblical scholar Philip J. Silvias research study effort to determine what happened at this city 3,650 years ago.
Their outcomes are released in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
Salt and Bone
” Theres proof of a big cosmic airburst, near to this city called Tall el-Hammam,” Kennett said of a surge comparable to the Tunguska Event, an approximately 12-megaton airburst that took place in 1908, when a 56-60-meter meteor pierced the Earths atmosphere over the Eastern Siberian Taiga.
The shock of the surge over Tall el-Hammam was enough to level the city, flattening the palace and surrounding walls and mudbrick structures, according to the paper. The distribution of bones indicated “extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in neighboring humans.”
For Kennett, additional evidence of the airburst was discovered by carrying out several type of analyses on soil and sediments from the critical layer. Tiny iron- and silica-rich spherules turned up in their analysis, as did melted metals.
James P. Kennett, teacher emeritus in UCSBs Department of Earth Science. Credit: Sonia Fernandez
” I think one of the primary discoveries is stunned quartz. These are sand grains containing fractures that form just under extremely high pressure,” Kennett stated of among numerous lines of proof that point to a big airburst near Tall el-Hammam. “We have actually shocked quartz from this layer, and that suggests there were incredible pressures involved to stun the quartz crystals– quartz is one of the hardest minerals; its really hard to shock.”
The airburst, according to the paper, may likewise describe the “anomalously high concentrations of salt” found in the damage layer– an average of 4% in the sediment and as high as 25% in some samples.
” The salt was tossed up due to the high impact pressures,” Kennett said of the meteor that most likely fragmented upon contact with the Earths environment. “And it might be that the impact partially hit the Dead Sea, which is abundant in salt.” The regional coasts of the Dead Sea are also salt-rich, so the impact might have redistributed those salt crystals everywhere– not simply at Tall el-Hammam, but also nearby Tell es-Sultan (proposed as the biblical Jericho, which likewise underwent violent damage at the very same time) and Tall-Nimrin (likewise then damaged).
The high-salinity soil could have been accountable for the so-called “Late Bronze Age Gap,” the researchers state, in which cities along the lower Jordan Valley were abandoned, dropping the population from 10s of thousands to possibly a few hundred nomads. Absolutely nothing could grow in these previously fertile grounds, requiring individuals to leave the location for centuries. Proof for resettlement of Tall el-Hammam and close-by communities appears once again in the Iron Age, approximately 600 years after the cities abrupt destruction in the Bronze Age.
Fire and Brimstone
Tall el-Hamman has been the focus of an ongoing debate as to whether it could be the biblical city of Sodom, one of the 2 cities in the Old Testament Book of Genesis that were damaged by God for how wicked they and their occupants had actually become. Fire and brimstone fell from the sky; numerous cities were ruined; thick smoke increased from the fires; city residents were killed and area crops were ruined in what sounds like an eyewitness account of a cosmic impact occasion.
” All the observations mentioned in Genesis are constant with a cosmic airburst,” Kennett stated, “however theres no scientific evidence that this ruined city is undoubtedly the Sodom of the Old Testament.” The scientists stated, the catastrophe could have generated an oral tradition that might have served as the motivation for the written account in the book of Genesis, as well as the biblical account of the burning of Jericho in the Old Testament Book of Joshua.
Referral: “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea” by Ted E. Bunch, Malcolm A. LeCompte, A. Victor Adedeji, James H. Wittke, T. David Burleigh, Robert E. Hermes, Charles Mooney, Dale Batchelor, Wendy S. Wolbach, Joel Kathan, Gunther Kletetschka, Mark C. L. Patterson, Edward C. Swindel, Timothy Witwer, George A. Howard, Siddhartha Mitra, Christopher R. Moore, Kurt Langworthy, James P. Kennett, Allen West and Phillip J. Silvia, 20 September 2021, Scientific Reports.DOI: 10.1038/ s41598-021-97778-3.
