Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Archaeologists have advanced a theory that towns and people in a region just north of the Dead Sea may have been obliterated by a Tunguska style airburst, 3,700 years ago.
Cosmic Airburst May Have Wiped Out Part of the Middle East 3,700 Years Ago
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | November 28, 2018 06:32am ET
Some 3,700 years ago, a meteor or comet exploded over the Middle East, wiping out human life across a swath of land called Middle Ghor, north of the Dead Sea, say archaeologists who have found evidence of the cosmic airburst.
The airburst “in an instant, devastated approximately 500 km2 [about 200 square miles] immediately north of the Dead Sea, not only wiping out 100 percent of the [cities] and towns, but also stripping agricultural soils from once-fertile fields and covering the eastern Middle Ghor with a super-heated brine of Dead Sea anhydride salts pushed over the landscape by the event’s frontal shock waves,” the researchers wrote in the abstract for a paper that was presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting held in Denver Nov. 14 to 17. Anhydride salts are a mix of salt and sulfates.
“Based upon the archaeological evidence, it took at least 600 years to recover sufficiently from the soil destruction and contamination before civilization could again become established in the eastern Middle Ghor,” they wrote. Among the places destroyed was Tall el-Hammam, an ancient city that covered 89 acres (36 hectares) of land. [Wipe Out: History’s Most Mysterious Extinctions]
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Read more: https://www.livescience.com/64179-ancient-cosmic-airburst-middle-east.html
Obviously early days with this theory, but this claim opens the question, how many currently unexplained cultural collapses and devastations will turn out to have been caused by meteor impacts or other natural disasters?
Perhaps its time we started taking real threats seriously, even low probability high impact events like major meteor strikes, and stopped wasting time and resources chasing imaginary problems like global warming.
This paper from twenty years ago may be of some relevance https://www.sis-group.org.uk/abstract/courty.htm
There is a candidate (Bab ehd Dhra) for the biblical Sodom that was destroyed about this time (2350bce), but the details of the demise don’t seem to fit the “cosmic” destruction scenario. It also seems too early for the description of the Genesis event.
jonb,
Numeira has also been posited as a candidate, but it too was abandoned in the Early Bronze like it’s neighbor Bab end Dhra. Both of them appear to have lost their primary water source which would suggest earthquake rather than meteoric airburst.
PBH
I think this might explain https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/surprise-collapse/
Anhydride salts are not simply “a mix of salt and suphates”. First the chloride salts, which would make up most of it are naturally without a water molecule or two. Anhydride salts refer to the alkali and alkaline earth sulphates that are of the anhydrous varieties. They all have hydrous equivalents (ie: they have one to several H2O molecules attached as part of their composition). The most common natural sulphate is gypsum CaSO4.2H2O and a natural anhydrous mineral CaSO4 without the two water molecules is actually named “anhydrite”. Professionals who carelessly throw incorrect technical terminology around, even if they are mere archeologists or astronomers only degrade themselves.
Not too long after this event the Thera eruptions took place, I often thought the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah might have been linked to that instead. It almost makes you wonder if the two events are somehow connected.
This blog is one of the few places I hope to find actual, intelligent, fact-based, well-reasoned scientific discussion. This thread tempers my optimism. We have some real scientific evidence here and a hypothesis on the table. I am dismayed to hear commenters act as if that evidence were more or less likely to be true based on the name we choose to use for the site (“Sodom”).
Let’s leave the Bible story out of this, for our first pass. Either there is good evidence that a Tunguska-like event occurred over the north end of the Dead Sea 3700 years or there isn’t. So far, it seems like a good explanation for the observed data.
Assuming (as I do) that a Middle Bronze Age city (and surrounding civilization) were wiped out by a cosmic airburst, and the farmlands around were then rendered uninhabitable for centuries, we can then adjust our other concepts in light of new data.