About 3,700 years ago, a meteorite may have crashed into Tall el-Hammam and exploded in the sky, killing the entire population of the city.
Scientists think that the meteorite event that exploded and destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley, Middle East, may have inspired the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. Holy, Smithsonian on September 22 reported. The new study is published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
The disaster happened around 1650 BC. At that time, Tall el-Hammam was the largest of the three great cities of the valley, possibly serving as the political center of the region. The total population of these three cities is about 50,000 people.
The mud-brick buildings at Tall el-Hammam are five stories high. Over the years, archaeologists studied their remains and found evidence of a destructive event with a sudden high temperature. For example, ceramic shards have melted on the outside but the inside is still intact.
In the new study, the team explored the possible causes of this disaster based on archaeological data. They concluded that war, fires, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes were highly unlikely as these events did not generate enough heat to cause the fusion traces found at the ruins. Thus, the meteorite fall is the most appropriate reason.
With no crater found in Tall el-Hammam, the team speculated that the city was destroyed by an airborne explosion, which occurs when a meteorite travels through the atmosphere at high velocity. It may have exploded about 4 km above the city with 1,000 times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to Christopher R. Moore, study co-author and archaeologist at the University of South Carolina.
"The temperature of the air quickly rose above 1,980 degrees Celsius. Fabrics and wood were immediately burned. Swords, spears, mud bricks and pottery began to melt. The city was almost immediately engulfed in flames," Moore said. know.
Seconds after the explosion, the shockwave spread across the city at about 1,200 km/h, faster than even the most violent tornadoes. Buildings turned into rubble. "None of the city's 8,000 inhabitants survived, neither did the animals," added Moore.
The team of scientists found molten metal and unusual mineral fragments in Tall el-Hammam, supporting the theory that an aerial explosion destroyed the city. "One of the key findings was 'shock quartz.' These are grains of sand with cracks that only form under extreme pressure," said James P. Kennett, an Earth scientist at the University of California Santa Barbara. , explain.
Archaeologists also found high concentrations of salt in the destroyed soil of the city, likely due to the impact of the explosion on the Dead Sea or the coast. The explosion may have dispersed salt over a large area, creating high salinity soil that made it difficult for trees to grow, leading to cities around the Jordan valley being abandoned for centuries. The details of this disaster may have been passed down orally for generations, forming the basis for the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities as close to the Dead Sea as Tall el-Hammam.
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