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A Tunguska size burst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, Bronze Age city in Jordan Valley
- golergka 5y agoDoesn't that sound really similar to a certain story from certain religious sources, where events supposedly took place exactly in that region?... Edit: looks like it does: > There is an ongoing debate as to whether Tall el-Hammam could be the biblical city of Sodom (Silvia2 and references therein), but this issue is beyond the scope of this investigation. Questions about the potential existence, age, and location of Sodom are not directly related to the fundamental question addressed in this investigation as to what processes produced high-temperature materials at Tall el-Hammam during the MBA. Nevertheless, we consider whether oral traditions about the destruction of this urban city by a cosmic object might be the source of the written version of Sodom in Genesis. We also consider whether the details recounted in Genesis are a reasonable match for the known details of a cosmic impact event.
- _Microft 5y agoThe authors wrote that this is "possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis)." This refers to the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
- stargazer-3 5y agoA more interesting bit of the paper: > It is worth speculating that a remarkable catastrophe, such as the destruction of Tall el-Hammam by a cosmic object, may have generated an oral tradition that, after being passed down through many generations, became the source of the written story of biblical Sodom in Genesis. The description in Genesis of the destruction of an urban center in the Dead Sea area is consistent with having been an eyewitness account of a cosmic airburst, e.g., (i) stones fell from the sky; (ii) fire came down from the sky; (iii) thick smoke rose from the fires; (iv) a major city was devastated; (v) city inhabitants were killed; and (vi) area crops were destroyed.
- smoyer 5y agoIt doesn't however explain how Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt. The Genesis story also includes a rain of burning sulphur which could have been identified by smell by the ancients. Sulphur isn't mentioned in the article but I'd be interested in knowing whether it was found in quantities above the normal background level.
- kuschku 5y agoConsidering the impact threw up a massive amount of salt, which in turn coated the surrounding landscape and is still measurable today, the "pillar of salt" might just be a description for "so much salt fell from the sky that she was covered in it".
- smoyer 5y agoThat's an explanation I hadn't considered and the dead sea certainly shows how the area has collected salt.
- p_l 5y agoThe abandonment of the region for approx. 600 years is judged as caused by hypersalinity preventing growing of crops till natural leaching lowered salt content of the soil.
- dane-pgp 5y agoGenesis chapter 19 verse 26 simply says "But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.", which maybe indicates someone being in such a state of shock that they just refused to move on, as the salt covered them. I'm not a psychologist, but I could imagine such an event causing what we would now call PTSD, and maybe triggering catatonia or similar symptoms.
- Sharlin 5y agoI mean, it would be astonishing if all the details matched after hundreds to thousands of years of oral tradition. Embellishment and exaggeration were not unknown devices to Bronze Age storytellers, and neither was changing details to suit your agenda. And that’s besides the unintended “broken telephone” effect.
- drewwwwww 5y agothe authors list as sponsoring institutions two quite small christian seminaries/universities - i don’t mean to impugn their fieldwork, but only mention it so as we may consider there to be some motivated reasoning in connecting it to events described in the Bible.
- Bayart 5y agoThe Bible is a major force behind archaeology in the Levant. Not only for religious reasons, but also because the prospect of correlating material culture and written documents is always exciting.
- amacbride 5y agoTo this point, the Wikipedia article on Veritas International University notes their doctrinal stance as follows: “Veritas International University has an evangelical doctrinal statement that emphasizes ‘three legs’ of biblical authority: inspiration, infallibility, and biblical inerrancy.” I admire the rigor of the archaeology and physical/chemical analysis of the site, but think it’s important to note the above when evaluating the conclusions.
- robinei 5y agoThough if the evidence presented for this event is persuasive, then all they achieve by making the connection is to speculate on a natural cause for a biblical "miracle". I mean it can strengthen a view of the Bible as source of historical information, but not as the word of God. If this event happened, I would expect it to leave long lasting trace in oral tradition.
- mcguire 5y agoOne would have thought it would leave a written tradition---"The year a city in the Levant got blowed up" in one of the year lists or something. Tunguska was apparently visible for 500 miles (800km); for a similar event north of the Dead Sea, that would be nearly to the Euphrates valley, central Anatolia, and most of the Nile Valley.
- mcguire 5y ago"The project is under the aegis of the School of Archaeology, Veritas International University [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritas_International_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritas_International_Universi...], Santa Ana, CA, and the College of Archaeology, Trinity Southwest University [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Southwest_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Southwest_University], Albuquerque, NM, under the auspices of the Department of Antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan." Veritas International University (VIU) is an accredited non-profit Christian university located in Santa Ana, California. Founded in 2008, the university began as a seminary before transitioning to a university with the addition of undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in late 2017. Trinity Southwest University (TSU) is an unaccredited evangelical Christian institution of higher education with a campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Principally a theological school that encompasses both the Bible college and theological seminary concepts of Christian education, it offers on-campus and distance education programs and degrees in Biblical Studies, Theological Studies, Archaeology & Biblical History, Biblical Counseling, Biblical Representational Research, and University Studies. The researchers in question are specifically looking for Sodom (and believe they have found it at Tall el Hammam).
- 57844743385 5y agoI expected there to be suggestions this city was nuked by ancient aliens.
- _nub3 5y agoAll wrong. As everybody should know by now it has been the former residents of Atlantis who disabled them in order to remain the only superior nation on the planet's face. That was shortly before a inner political force succeeded and they started space travel and submerged their old city.
- 57844743385 5y agoErrrr… yes. Ok. I’ll back gently out of the room and leave now, keeping my eyes on you the whole time.
- pantulis 5y agoJust remember you can't escape from the Illuminati.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- smoyer 5y agoCuriously, the sea people are associated with the collapse of the bronze age but there's still no real indication of who these mariners were.
- santialbo 5y agoIn a way, there are. It's theorized to be the ancient city of Sodom which was nuked by an "alien".
- ancode 5y agoA creator alien who loves us and knows every detail of your life and is a total prude
- raducu 5y agoSo, two early cities were destroyed by meteorites in the Bronze age, when there were very few cities world wide. And that's it, as cities kept poping out everywhere, this never happened again.
- erdewit 5y agoCould it have been ancient aliens ?!!!?....
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tokai 5y agoThat's stochastic events for ya.
- kuschku 5y agoNeolithic and Bronze Age settlements existed for tens of millenia, while modern cities only existed for 2½ millenia. Between Abu Hereya (10'800 BC) and Tall el-Hammam (1'650 BC) there was a 9'000 year gap. Of course you’re going to get more cosmic events if you wait a longer time. EDIT: The article discusses the potential impact at Tall el-Hammam in 1'650 BC, which also covered Jericho. A second impact at Abu Hereya in 10'800 BC is only mentioned, but not discussed in detail.
- raducu 5y agoDoes that mean there were two airbursts and not just one in the same place 9000 years apart? Not disputing that, but my interpretation would be that there was just one airburst that covered both cities.
- kuschku 5y agoJericho and Tall el-Hammam were destroyed in the same airburst, in the same place (~22km distance, ~same time). Abu Hereya (several hundred kilometers away, 9000 years earlier) was also discussed in the article, and is a separate impact.
- ginko 5y agoAnother major explosion theorized to be caused by bolides is the 1626 Wanggongchang Explosion[1] in Beijing which is considered one of the major causes of the fall of the Chinese Ming dynasty. Although having its epicenter in the middle of a gunpowder factory would of course also heavily imply a gunpowder explosion (or maybe both). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanggongchang_Explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanggongchang_Explosion
- thriftwy 5y agoBolides will very rarely hit a city precisely, especially in the periods where cities were small and not sprawling. Moreover, they usually fly tangentially and cover a huge area (such as, Chelyabinsk meteor was also seen from Yekaterinburg, 200 km away). There should be a lot of evidence towards it before it to be accepted as the primary cause (and not an omen, for example)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dboreham 5y agoThis isn't unusual. In 2009 I was sitting in my hot tub in Montana and saw this event, which hit in Utah, 500 miles away : https://www.nevadameteorites.com/nevadameteorites/November_18,2009_fireball.html https://www.nevadameteorites.com/nevadameteorites/November_1...
- etrautmann 5y agoInteresting! How do you know that this was a meteorite and not another thing that went wrong at Dugway?
- dboreham 5y agoI could discern the rough trajectory, which was inbound towards the target. So unless they were under alien attack it had to be a meteor.
- _joel 5y agoScott Manley had an interesting video on the Meteor Crater where he also talked about the 1908 event and the differences in the projectile bodies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=704POGQFDoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=704POGQFDoQ
- taurath 5y agoIs it possible the burst was even larger, perhaps so far as to be a cause precipitating the Bronze Age collapse? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse Lots of close by civilizations had a rapid decline during the same timeframe.
- himinlomax 5y agoI think it's pretty clear now that the collapse was caused by mass migrations, but we don't know the root cause of those migrations. I don't see how a localized event such as this could have caused them.
- moogly 5y agoOne theory: a triple-whammy of drought, famine and earthquakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImnqYT9C0Ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImnqYT9C0Ws > Eric Cline, Professor of Classics and Anthropology at George Washington University, discusses the factors that caused the Bronze Age to come to an end.
- DavidPiper 5y agoThere is also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4 by Eric Cline, an (alternative) accompaniment to his book "1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed". - I do recommend the book, but for most folks the YouTube lecture is probably enough detail :)
- mkotowski 5y agoIf I remember correctly, currently it is thought that the collapse was caused by many negative events happening almost at the same time. One of those are so-called Sea Peoples (seriously [0]). A single impact could explain a collapse of a city or a country, but not the fall of the whole region. Extra Credits once did a series of videos describing various weak points that could lead to the Late Bronze Age collapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Moosdijk 5y ago"Meteors are space objects that have contacted Earth’s atmosphere and are beginning to incinerate, creating a visible vapor trail. Sometimes these are referred to as shooting stars, but if they are exceptionally bright they are called bolides or fireballs. Airbursts are violent explosions that occur when mid-sized meteors streak through the atmosphere, disaggregating as they begin to burn up."[1] [1]https://www.earthdate.org/node/153 https://www.earthdate.org/node/153
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoThe description is pretty scary. More worrisome is what are the chances of an event like this being mistaken for a nuclear attack and triggering a nuclear war. For example, if such an event happened to a major city in the US, how could you confirm that it was a bolide, and how do you convince the public calling for retaliation that it was not a nuclear attack.
- adriancr 5y agoWe'd ideally get early warnings of asteroids. Also, nukes don't get automatically launched (unless you're Russia at high alert and activated dead hand), that's why leaders exist.
- q1w2 5y agoUnlikely. The one that hit a couple years ago in Russia was not detected at all because it came from the solar side.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoWe have radars you can see nuclear missile coming. Also you have radiation. In any case, how do you retaliate if you have no idea who attacked you?
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago> In any case, how do you retaliate if you have no idea who attacked you? You get to choose who you want to attack, go invade your preferred targets? It worked for the US about 20 years ago. It's not a hypothetical, it's recent occurrence.
- EForEndeavour 5y ago> We have radars What if your strategic enemy secretly figured out how to evade detection? > also you have radiation. Ah, the lack of radiation explains it: this city-killing explosion was the horrible work of a top-secret kinetic impactor weapons program developed by [insert strategic enemy here]! > how do you retaliate if you have no idea who attacked you? The same way the USA justified invading Iraq: lie. The inevitable blizzard of online disinformation wouldn't help things either.
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- Severian 5y agoHere is the website to model a bolide impact as referenced in the paper for those that didn't catch it. https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffectsMap/ https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffectsMap/
- yread 5y ago> Based on the distribution of human bones on the upper and lower tall, we propose that the force of a high-temperature, debris-laden, high-velocity blast wave from an airburst/impact (i) incinerated and flayed their exposed flesh, (ii) decapitated and dismembered some individuals, (iii) shattered many bones into mostly cm-sized fragments, (iv) scattered their bones across several meters, (v) buried the bones in the destruction layer, and (vi) charred or disintegrated any bones that were still exposed. What a way to go
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoBut people keep saying they want to go out with a bang.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoIt's fascinating to think how many early civilizations or cities may have met a similar fate with the remains just too obliterated to identify / study.
- dotancohen 5y agoThis is very reminiscent of the Hiroshima attack. The city was so devastated that it took much time for reports of the destruction to reach the emperor and advisors. And even then it wasn't fully believed. If I'm not misremembering history, then their delay in action - due to the difficulty of getting news of the situation out of the area of destruction - led to the bombing of Nagasaki as well.
- KineticLensman 5y ago> If I'm not misremembering history, then their delay in action - due to the difficulty of getting news of the situation out of the area of destruction - led to the bombing of Nagasaki as well It was a bit more complicated than that [0]. There was intense resistance to the Allies' demands for unconditional surrender. Japanese scientists confirmed on the 7th August (the day after the bombing) that Hiroshima had been atom bombed and Nagasaki was bombed on the 9th. The Japanese didn't actually surrender until the 15th August, following a failed coup d'état in which elements of the Army rebelled against the emerging surrender plans [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Events_of_7–9_August https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_coup_d'état_(August_12–15) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_c...
- noisy_boy 5y agoWhat I find interesting is that, civilizations have fallen so many times due to catastrophic natural disasters or in the hands of each other. Some fell suddenly (Pompeii, Tall el-Hammam) and some perished gradually (Indus valley, Mayans). All these prayed to different gods who were not much use. And we still continue to put our faith in another set of gods hoping that they are the real deal (until the next city-block sized asteroid comes along). Humans are truly incapable of learning anything from history. PS: in case someone wonders where all this is coming from, I was pondering on the arrow that points to the Temple in this picture (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3/figures/1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3/figures/1). Countless may have prayed at its steps for their safety and at the end, universe just swept all that aside.
- roenxi 5y agoWhat would you like them to learn? Humans are small and the world they operate in is big. Sometimes humans get crushed.
- noisy_boy 5y agoIndeed. I guess I am going for not persecuting humans following other gods in the name of one's own gods.
- typon 5y agoBuild giant underground cities or diversify chance of survival by colonizing other planets
- bell-cot 5y agoGiant underground cities have so many cost, safety, supply, and water issues that colonizing other planets can start looking darn attractive by comparison.
- fnord77 5y agomy opinion is that god/religions evolve simply to provide psychological comfort to people and for social control. I don't think any rational person believes their god is going to save their city. how many people would be motivated to do anything if they knew that when you die, you cease to be? Or that there's no trial of your life's deeds.
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- collsni 5y agoi agree
- mh- 5y agoThis should have a "(1650 BCE)" added to the title.
- cs702 5y agoNot necessary, as the title is already qualified by "Bronze Age."
- api 5y agoCould this incident be the source for stories like Sodom and Gomorrah?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- p_l 5y agoIt's discussed in the article, including also the story of Jericho - whose fall happened around the same time frame, and could be explained by blast wave destroying city wall (archeological evidence shows damage concentrated on one side) with thermal radiation starting fire that devastated the rest of the city. Interestingly enough, the explosion is hypothesized to cause hypersalinity in the area, which caused its abandonment for around 600 years (as it made it impossible to grow crops).
- sayonaraman 5y agoSo that’s the infamous Sodom
- majinuub 5y agoI like the theory that this event is what inspired the biblical story of Sodom. It reminds me of how paleontologists use the ancient art and stories of Native Australians to figure out what Pleistocene animals looked like and how they may have behaved. In the story, Lot and his family were one of the few people to escape the city before its destruction. God told his family to not look back at the city as it was being destroyed. Lot's wife looked back and turned into "a pillar of salt". Maybe this is a metaphor for the people who went back to the site and couldn't grow food there due to the hypersaline that was spread across the region by the airburst.
- scns 5y agoOr maybe they watched her burn to a crisp from afar, did not go back to check and took the ashes for salt.
- sgc 5y agoThat area is full of salt pillars. The geology served as an opportunity to create a moral and religious story. Could this have also influenced the story? Perhaps, but the salt pillars are quite large, obvious, and unique. Edit: I note that nearby Jericho is dated to have been destroyed and abandoned in the same time period (within 50 years, likely well within margins of error). One of the most striking thing about the Tel in Jericho is that half the Tel is missing. Specifically the side to the East, which would be facing this Tel. I have never seen any good reason given for that missing section of Jericho, and would not be surprised at all if the same event destroyed both cities. Obviously lending more weight to this event having been integrated into Biblical writings.
- eloff 5y agoWasn't Jericho the one where they brought down the walls by making noise in the biblical story? I wonder if that could have been inspired by finding the wreckage of the city with the East wall destroyed.
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoI get correlation and causation, but if I was sitting in an ancient Jericho, and watching another Army walk round the walls - and after they did a sodding great meteorite fell from the gods and blew down half my city walls, I would certainly think about religious conversion. :0) On the other hand we should not get too carried away matching up events like this. The team behind this article took pains to prove it must have been an airburst by finding molten glass that could only come from certain temperatures etc etc. I always understood that walking round the walls of Jericho was supposed to be cover for the sounds of sappers, just as the wooden horse of Troy may well have been a animal shaped cover for a battering ram, as opposed to a rather easy to avoid foot-gun.
- mapt 5y agoConfirming or falsifying this and locating the potential impact crater seems relatively easy conceptually, but it requires that they go beyond the archeological approach and into statistical geological tools. Shocked quartz is characteristic of impact events, and if shocked quartz is present in a layer here, it will be present in the surrounding areas (all of them, not just the ones where warfare is a reasonable alternate hypothesis) in a characteristically greater thickness & concentration, centered on the crater. Drill a few hundred or a few thousand sediment cores from the surrounding areas, and map out the shocked quartz layer.
- andyxor 5y agoapparently adding this reference to Wikipedia article on Tel El Hammam is repeatedly reverted by some wikipedia "power user"
- aaron695 5y agoThis is a fictional story. It should not be on Wikipedia other than perhaps people belief systems about magic meteors blowing up magic towns all stated as fact. How Wikipedia deals with this is problematic. It seems like a valid source. No one has had time to put out comment it's false. Could you use to to screw up the astronomy section how contrary to all the decades of modelling they are wrong as well?
- mongol 5y agoReminds me of an old David Letterman joke when it was about similar news about an old asteroid. "Bob Dole: Oh was that what I heard?!". Seems like it would have been in the 90s...
- kemiller 5y agoTsk. Someone didn’t make the right burnt offering.
- mjfl 5y agoLook for pillars of salt!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- j_d_b 5y ago*maybe
- jameshart 5y agoExperts seem skeptical… https://twitter.com/markboslough/status/1440377970497966089?s=21 https://twitter.com/markboslough/status/1440377970497966089?... https://twitter.com/chrisstantis/status/1440404380386160646?s=21 https://twitter.com/chrisstantis/status/1440404380386160646?...
- 8bitsrule 5y agoWhen they get around to it, it'll be interesting to see them describe how the following is 'just a coincidence': "diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C."
- Blammar 5y agoDoes anyone have a mental model for why an airburst generates so much energy? For the Chelyabinsk meteor, quick math shows the kinetic energy was about 2e15 joules or .5 megatons. Apparently, ALL of the kinetic energy was converted to radiation and heat, even though it never hit the ground. My mental model was that something that big (20m) would just punch through the atmosphere and hit the ground, converting all its kinetic energy, and leaving a nice crater. An airburst, instead, is caused by the inverse operation, i.e., the atmosphere punching into the meteor and shredding it. Hmm. In the airburst case, the meteor is slowed down just as if it had hit the ground. Okay. Model updated. Thanks for reading. Yeah, for some reason, I was thinking that stuff that got vaporized by the atmosphere didn't generate as much energy compared to the stuff hitting the ground.
- daniel_iversen 5y agoWhat I’d really like to know is how far away from the center of impact would a human have to be to escape life-threatening or -deforming harm?
- kragen 5y agoRelevant criticisms of this paper have surfaced (as well as some fairly convincing ad-hominem attacks): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28717721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28717721 https://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/01/criticism-engulfs-paper-claiming-an-asteroid-destroyed-biblical-sodom-and-gomorrah/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/01/criticism-engulfs-pap...