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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDid a meteor blast destroy Sodom and bring down Jericho's walls?
As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph).
Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the ground. The blast was around 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly. Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius). Clothing and wood immediately burst into flames. Swords, spears, mudbricks and pottery began to melt. Almost immediately, the entire city was on fire.
..... Interesting article
https://theconversation.com/a-giant-space-rock-demolished-an-ancient-middle-eastern-city-and-everyone-in-it-possibly-inspiring-the-biblical-story-of-sodom-167678
Girard442
(6,059 posts)Everybody knows you never go full Velikovsky.
Response to Girard442 (Reply #1)
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Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)Scattered glass fragments have long puzzled researchers.
In the remote desert of western Egypt, near the Libyan border, lie clues to an ancient cosmic cataclysm. Libyan desert glass is the name given to fragments of canary-yellow glass found scattered over hundreds of kilometres, between giant shifting sand dunes.
Interest in Libyan desert glass goes back more than 3,000 years. Among items recovered from King Tuts burial chamber is a gold and jewel-encrusted breastplate. In the centre sits a beautiful scarab beetle, carved from Libyan desert glass.
Our research, published in the journal Geology, reports the first evidence of high-pressure damage, showing the glass formed during a meteorite impact.
Meteorite impacts and airbursts are both catastrophic events. Large meteorite impacts, such as the one that killed the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago, are rare.
A 100 megaton airburst should occur every 10,000 years. If this size event is supposed to have caused Libyan desert glass to form, the geological record does not support the idea. The reidite fingerprint points to a meteor impact as the only option.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/mystery-of-libyan-desert-glass-solved-at-last/
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)No connection to Tell-Al-Hammam or Sodom though.
Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Very hard to assign dates to most parts of the Bible, and of course large sections are essentially babble today that doesn't appear to have any rational basis. Maybe there is some kernel of truth underneath many of the stories, but they have gone through many generations of oral and (lost) written transmissions, so very hard to decipher them.
We now know that humans were doing quite amazing things that we think of as "civilization", easily 12,000 years ago (immediately after the Younger Dryas). There must have been some precursor steps before things like Gobekle Tepe, but we haven't found much of that yet.
Amishman
(5,541 posts)and its even more interesting to me that that hypothetical mega flood 7600 years ago would still be over 2000 years after Gobekli Tepe was built, abandoned, and buried.
Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)Of course local regions would have their own version.
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)It might be better to state there may have been a catastrophic event which much latter served as the inspiration for a tale useful to a priesthood.
packman
(16,296 posts)lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)They truly got sodomized.