After years of excavations and searching for the cause of the death and disappearance of some cities in Jordan, archaeologists found, during excavations in the ancient city of Tel Al-Hamam, evidence that the city was completely destroyed in 1650 BC, as a result of a massive ice meteor explosion above it.
The journal Scientific Reports indicates that, according to researchers, this explosion is similar to the one that occurred in 1908 in the Podkamna Tunguska region of Russia.
The ancient city of Tel El-Hammam, dating back to the Bronze Age, is located in Jordan, northeast of the Dead Sea. When archaeologists began excavations in the area several years ago, they discovered a black layer about 15 meters thick, of wood coal, ash, molten bricks, and earthenware, 3,600 years old, which indicates that it was exposed to a firestorm that completely destroyed it.
Scientists initially believed that the causes of the disaster might be a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, a fire, or a war. But all these factors do not cause high melting temperatures of metals, bricks, and ceramic pots. Laboratory experiments have shown that this only happens at temperatures of 1500 degrees Celsius and above.
Scientists from the United States, Canada, and the Czech Republic, including archaeologists, geologists, geochemists, geomorphologists, mineralogists, ancient plant scientists, sedimentologists, space impact experts, and doctors, have participated in the current study.
According to the calculations of experts, the fireball formed above the city at a height of about four kilometers above the surface of the earth, and the force of the explosion was a thousand times higher than the force of the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, which immediately set the entire city on fire, followed by a striking wave that destroyed all buildings and wiped out the entire city. All living things in it.
After about a minute, the beating wave and the flames reached the city of Jericho, 22 kilometers west of Tel Al-Hamam, which caused the collapse of its walls and burning completely.
To restore the picture of these events, 15 years of drilling operations were required, so that scientists developed a computer model of the explosion based on the indicators of space object collisions and nuclear explosions, in light of its results.
In addition to modeling, the researchers obtained physical evidence confirming this explosion, including mineral particles produced only at very high pressures and impacts such as impact quartz, diamanoids (granules of a diamond-like substance), and small balls of molten material composed of vaporized iron and sand.
Researchers believe that the Tel al-Hamam disaster is the basis of the biblical narrative about the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which according to the description of the Torah, stones, and fire fell on them from the sky, and because of the fires, thick smoke rose and all the inhabitants of the two cities died.
0 Comments