Artists evidence-based representation of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas. Credit: Allen West and Jennifer Rice
A giant space rock destroyed an ancient Middle Eastern city and everybody in it– possibly inspiring the Biblical story of Sodom.
As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam tackled their daily company one day about 3,600 years earlier, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding towards them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph).
Flashing through the environment, the rock blew up in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in the air. The blast was around 1,000 times more effective than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The stunned city residents who stared at it were blinded quickly. Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius). Clothing and wood right away burst into flames. Swords, spears, mudbricks, and pottery began to melt. Almost right away, the whole city was on fire.
None of the 8,000 individuals or any animals within the city made it through– their bodies were torn apart and their bones blasted into little fragments.
Years back, when archaeologists looked out over excavations of the messed up city, they might see a dark, approximately 5-foot-thick (1.5 m) jumbled layer of charcoal, ash, melted mudbricks and melted pottery. It was obvious that an extreme firestorm had actually ruined this city long ago. One staying puzzle is why the city and over 100 other area settlements were deserted for numerous centuries after this destruction. Tunguska-sized airbursts, such as the one that occurred at Tall el-Hammam, can ravage whole cities and areas, and they posture an extreme modern-day danger.
Some seconds later, a massive shockwave smashed into the city. Moving at about 740 miles per hour (1,200 kph), it was more powerful than the worst tornado ever tape-recorded. The lethal winds ripped through the city, demolishing every structure. They sheared off the top 40 feet (12 m) of the 4-story palace and blew the jumbled particles into the next valley. None of the 8,000 people or any animals within the city endured– their bodies were torn apart and their bones blasted into small pieces.
About a minute later, 14 miles (22 km) to the west of Tall el-Hammam, winds from the blast hit the biblical city of Jericho. Jerichos walls came toppling down and the city burned to the ground.
Everything sounds like the climax of an edge-of-your-seat Hollywood disaster motion picture. How do we understand that all of this really taken place near the Dead Sea in Jordan millennia ago?
Now called Tall el-Hammam, the city lies about 7 miles northeast of the Dead Sea in what is now Jordan. Credit: NASA
Getting the answer required almost 15 years of painstaking excavations by hundreds of people. It likewise involved comprehensive analyses of excavated material by more than two dozen researchers in 10 states in the U.S., in addition to Canada and the Czech Republic. When our group finally released the proof recently in the journal Scientific Reports, the 21 co-authors included archaeologists, geologists, geochemists, geomorphologists, mineralogists, paleobotanists, sedimentologists, cosmic-impact professionals and medical doctors.
Heres how we developed this image of devastation in the past.
Firestorm throughout the city
Years back, when archaeologists watched out over excavations of the ruined city, they could see a dark, roughly 5-foot-thick (1.5 m) jumbled layer of charcoal, ash, melted mudbricks and melted pottery. It was apparent that an intense firestorm had actually damaged this city long earlier. This dark band became called the destruction layer
.
Researchers stand near the ruins of ancient walls, with the damage layer about midway down each exposed wall. Credit: Phil Silvia.
No one was exactly sure what had actually occurred, however that layer wasnt triggered by an earthquake, warfare or volcano. None of them are capable of melting metal, mudbricks and pottery.
To figure out what could, our group used the Online Impact Calculator to design situations that fit the proof. Built by effect experts, this calculator permits researchers to estimate the lots of information of a cosmic impact event, based upon known effect events and nuclear detonations.
It appears that the culprit at Tall el-Hammam was a small asteroid similar to the one that tore down 80 million trees in Tunguska, Russia in 1908. It would have been a much smaller sized variation of the huge miles-wide rock that pushed the dinosaurs into extinction 65 million back.
We had a most likely culprit. Now we required proof of what took place that day at Tall el-Hammam.
Discovering diamonds in the dirt.
Our research study exposed an incredibly broad selection of evidence.
Electron microscopic lense pictures of numerous little cracks in stunned quartz grains. Credit: Allen West.
At the website, there are carefully fractured sand grains called stunned quartz that only kind at 725,000 pounds per square inch of pressure (5 gigapascals)– imagine six 68-ton Abrams military tanks stacked on your thumb.
The destruction layer likewise consists of small diamonoids that, as the name shows, are as hard as diamonds. Every one is smaller than a flu infection. It appears that wood and plants in the location were immediately turned into this diamond-like product by the fireballs high pressures and temperatures.
Diamonoids (center) inside a crater were formed by the fireballs heats and pressures on wood and plants. Credit: Malcolm LeCompte.
Experiments with lab heating systems revealed that the bubbled pottery and mudbricks at Tall el-Hammam melted at temperature levels above 2,700 F (1,500 C). Thats hot enough to melt an automobile within minutes.
The destruction layer likewise contains small balls of melted material smaller than air-borne dust particles. Called spherules, they are made from vaporized iron and sand that melted at about 2,900 F (1,590 C).
In addition, the surface areas of the pottery and meltglass are speckled with small melted metal grains, consisting of iridium with a melting point of 4,435 F (2,466 C), platinum that melts at 3,215 F (1,768 C) and zirconium silicate at 2,800 F (1,540 C).
Spherules made of melted sand (upper left), palace plaster (upper right) and melted metal (bottom two). Credit: Malcolm LeCompte.
Together, all this proof shows that temperatures in the city rose greater than those of volcanoes, warfare and regular city fires. The only natural process left is a cosmic impact.
The same proof is discovered at known effect websites, such as Tunguska and the Chicxulub crater, developed by the asteroid that activated the dinosaur termination.
One staying puzzle is why the city and over 100 other area settlements were deserted for a number of centuries after this destruction. It may be that high levels of salt transferred throughout the impact event made it difficult to grow crops. Were not certain yet, however we believe the surge may have vaporized or sprinkled poisonous levels of Dead Sea seawater throughout the valley. Without crops, no one could live in the valley for as much as 600 years, up until the very little rains in this desert-like environment washed the salt out of the fields.
Was there an enduring eyewitness to the blast?
Its possible that an oral description of the citys damage might have been handed down for generations until it was recorded as the story of Biblical Sodom. The Bible describes the destruction of a metropolitan center near the Dead Sea– stones and fire fell from the sky, more than one city was damaged, thick smoke increased from the fires and city occupants were killed.
Could this be an ancient eyewitness account? If so, the damage of Tall el-Hammam may be the second-oldest destruction of a human settlement by a cosmic impact event, after the town of Abu Hureyra in Syria about 12,800 years ago. Importantly, it may the first composed record of such a catastrophic event.
The scary thing is, it almost definitely will not be the last time a human city fulfills this fate.
Animation portraying the positions of known near-Earth items at times for the 20 years ending in January 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Tunguska-sized airbursts, such as the one that took place at Tall el-Hammam, can ravage entire cities and areas, and they pose an extreme modern-day hazard. One will inevitably crash into the Earth.
Unless orbiting or ground-based telescopes discover these rogue objects, the world may have no warning, much like the individuals of Tall el-Hammam.
Written by Christopher R. Moore, Archaeologist and Special Projects Director at the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program and South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina.
This short article was co-authored by research study collaborators archaeologist Phil Silvia, geophysicist Allen West, geologist Ted Bunch and space physicist Malcolm LeCompte.
This article was very first released in The Conversation.
For more on this research, see Sodom and Gomorrah? Evidence That a Cosmic Impact Destroyed a Biblical City in the Jordan Valley.
By Christopher R. Moore, University of South Carolina
September 27, 2021