Sodom and Gomorrah? Evidence That a Cosmic Impact Destroyed a Biblical City in the Jordan Valley

Cosmic Impact Destroyed City in Jordan Valley

Artist’s evidence-based depiction of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas. Credit: Allen West and Jennifer Rice

An Ancient Disaster: Researchers present evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed a biblical city in the Jordan Valley.

Scientists have found evidence of a cosmic airburst event around 1650 BCE that devastated the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam in the southern Jordan Valley, causing extreme temperatures and depositing high concentrations of salt. This event, potentially inspiring the biblical tales of Sodom and Jericho’s destruction, might have also led to a mass abandonment of cities in the region during the “Late Bronze Age Gap.”

In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Located on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had become the largest continuously occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having hosted early civilization for a few thousand years. At that time, it was 10 times larger than Jerusalem and 5 times larger than Jericho.

“It’s an incredibly culturally important area,” said James Kennett, emeritus professor of earth science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Much of where the early cultural complexity of humans developed is in this general area.”

A favorite site for archaeologists and biblical scholars, the mound hosts evidence of culture all the way from the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, all compacted into layers as the highly strategic settlement was built, destroyed, and rebuilt over millennia.

Researchers Stand Near the Ruins of Ancient Walls

Researchers stand near the ruins of ancient walls, with the destruction layer about midway down each exposed wall. Credit: Phil Silvia

But there is a 1.5-meter (5-foot) interval in the Middle Bronze Age II stratum that caught the interest of some researchers for its “highly unusual” materials. In addition to the debris one would expect from destruction via warfare and earthquakes, they found pottery shards with outer surfaces melted into glass, “bubbled” mudbrick, and partially melted building material, all indications of an anomalously high-temperature event, much hotter than anything the technology of the time could produce.

“We saw evidence for temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Celsius (3,600 degrees Fahrenheit),” said Kennett, whose research group at the time happened to have been building the case for an older cosmic airburst about 12,800 years ago that triggered major widespread burning, climatic changes, and animal extinctions. The charred and melted materials at Tall el-Hammam looked familiar, and a group of researchers including impact scientist Allen West and Kennett joined Trinity Southwest University biblical scholar Philip J. Silvia’s research effort to determine what happened at this city 3,650 years ago.

Their results are published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Salt and Bone

“There’s evidence of a large cosmic airburst, close to this city called Tall el-Hammam,” Kennett said of an explosion similar to the Tunguska Event, a roughly 12-megaton airburst that occurred in 1908, when a 56-60-meter (183-1960-foot) meteor pierced the Earth’s atmosphere over the Eastern Siberian Taiga.

The shock of the explosion over Tall el-Hammam was enough to level the city, flattening the palace and surrounding walls and mudbrick structures, according to the paper. The distribution of bones indicated “extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans.”

For Kennett, further proof of the airburst was found by conducting many different kinds of analyses on soil and sediments from the critical layer. Tiny iron- and silica-rich spherules turned up in their analysis, as did melted metals.

James Kennett

James P. Kennett, professor emeritus in UCSB’s Department of Earth Science. Credit:
Sonia Fernandez

“I think one of the main discoveries is shocked quartz. These are sand grains containing cracks that form only under very high pressure,” Kennett said of one of many lines of evidence that point to a large airburst near Tall el-Hammam. “We have shocked quartz from this layer, and that means there were incredible pressures involved to shock the quartz crystals — quartz is one of the hardest minerals; it’s very hard to shock.”

The airburst, according to the paper, may also explain the “anomalously high concentrations of salt” found in the destruction layer — an average of 4% in the sediment and as high as 25% in some samples.

“The salt was thrown up due to the high impact pressures,” Kennett said of the meteor that likely fragmented upon contact with the Earth’s atmosphere. “And it may be that the impact partially hit the Dead Sea, which is rich in salt.” The local shores of the Dead Sea are also salt-rich, so the impact may have redistributed those salt crystals far and wide — not just at Tall el-Hammam, but also nearby Tell es-Sultan (proposed as the biblical Jericho, which also underwent violent destruction at the same time) and Tall-Nimrin (also then destroyed).

The high-salinity soil could have been responsible for the so-called “Late Bronze Age Gap,” the researchers say, in which cities along the lower Jordan Valley were abandoned, dropping the population from tens of thousands to maybe a few hundred nomads. Nothing could grow in these formerly fertile grounds, forcing people to leave the area for centuries. Evidence for resettlement of Tall el-Hammam and nearby communities appears again in the Iron Age, roughly 600 years after the cities’ sudden devastation in the Bronze Age.

Fire and Brimstone

Tall el-Hamman has been the focus of an ongoing debate as to whether it could be the biblical city of Sodom, one of the two cities in the Old Testament Book of Genesis that were destroyed by God for how wicked they and their inhabitants had become. One denizen, Lot, is saved by two angels who instruct him not to look behind as they flee. Lot’s wife, however, lingers and is turned into a pillar of salt. Meanwhile, fire and brimstone fell from the sky; multiple cities were destroyed; thick smoke rose from the fires; city inhabitants were killed and area crops were destroyed in what sounds like an eyewitness account of a cosmic impact event. It’s a satisfying connection to make.

“All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic airburst,” Kennett said, “but there’s no scientific proof that this destroyed city is indeed the Sodom of the Old Testament.” However, the researchers said, the disaster could have generated an oral tradition that may have served as the inspiration for the written account in the book of Genesis, as well as the biblical account of the burning of Jericho in the Old Testament Book of Joshua.

Reference: “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea” by Ted E. Bunch, Malcolm A. LeCompte, A. Victor Adedeji, James H. Wittke, T. David Burleigh, Robert E. Hermes, Charles Mooney, Dale Batchelor, Wendy S. Wolbach, Joel Kathan, Gunther Kletetschka, Mark C. L. Patterson, Edward C. Swindel, Timothy Witwer, George A. Howard, Siddhartha Mitra, Christopher R. Moore, Kurt Langworthy, James P. Kennett, Allen West and Phillip J. Silvia, 20 September 2021, Scientific Reports.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-97778-3

23 Comments on "Sodom and Gomorrah? Evidence That a Cosmic Impact Destroyed a Biblical City in the Jordan Valley"

  1. Now how long did it take for Scienctist to figure out what flattered all those trees in Russia? The truth will come to the top alot faster. S&H…what a conundrum.

    • How long did it take scientists to see there was a cosmic impact theory whose validity makes much more sense than that it was a gas leak or ancient aliens nuking them or that it was just a myth? They are finding that Tunguska type airbursts are far more common that impacts that leave craters. The Earth has had many more major meteorites hit us than previously thought.

  2. Dang! And all this time I thought God did it. Maybe She just aimed the damn meteor.

  3. Frankly, these scientists would benefit heavily by reading Immanuel Velikovsky’s books.

    While working to establish a unified timeline of ancient world history, he discovered that there had been many destructive cosmic events shaping that history. And that the same events were happening all over the world, not just in isolated areas.

    Ages in Chaos, Earth In Upheaval, Worlds in Collision. He clearly lays out the evidence that this kind of destruction happened worldwide 3,700 years ago. As well at other times in antiquity.

    Time after time, archaeologists are discovering destruction that happened 3,700 years ago (and other times that Velikovsky pinpointed) — maybe the time has come for the scientific community to finally acknowledge that Velikovsky was on the right track after all.

    • Wow, thanks Henry. I’d never heard of him, but his theories sound fascinating. Just ordered a copy of Worlds In Collision.

    • Velikovsky? I don’t think so – any episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus is taken more seriously than Velikovsky.

      • I have ejoyed Monty Python since the early 80’s. Great comedians.

        I’m not sure how that plays into Velikovsky though. He was very clear on the points he laid out for the historical timelines and they show that there were worldwide catastrophes happening — as evidenced by identical stories from opposite sides of the world thousands of years ago. Since they were not in communication then, it stretches credulity to try and come up with other ways for opposite sides of the world to have the same disaster stories unless they experienced the same events.

        If you can refute his ideas with good solid examples, I am open minded enough to consider them. Archaeological finds keep stacking up though, that match his timelines and narrative, and this article is simply about one of the latest finds bearing him out.

  4. “Sodom and Gomorrah? I thought they were San Francisco and LA!

    • ““Sodom and Gomorrah? I thought they were San Francisco and LA!”

      You need to roll your R’s more. Use your tounge! Enunciate! Who’s your Daddy?

  5. Nonsense. You folks make a pretense of following the “bible,” but then directly contradict its correct timeline, in which Earth itself is not yet six-thousand years old! You are liars who disbelieve God and scripture, and you are WRONG!

  6. No, guys. This was that other meteor swarm, that destroyed those other cities over there. That “the bible” also talks about this stuff is mostly because it happens a lot more often than most folks think.

  7. ““Sodom and Gomorrah? I thought they were San Francisco and LA!”

    You need to roll your R’s more. Use your tounge! Enunciate! Who’s your Daddy?

  8. Remi Ifueko Diagbare | October 1, 2021 at 8:41 am | Reply

    God is above all. Science May think it contradicts the Bible, but it does not. It actually confirms that God Is

  9. No mention of Steven Collins?

  10. Excuse me but in the bible it tells us that to God a day is a thousand years. The earth was created and the bible doesn’t say how long it took as a day is also used to denote a period of time. As in your grandmothers day etc. we know the creative days were a lot longer than a thousand years. Ie dinosaurs and fossil records. But, it was around 7000 years ago that God created Adam then eve. And they died within the 1000 year rule after disobeying Gods command not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. A simple test of respect for their creator. The eldest person to live was mathusalah at 969 years. After the flood of Noah God determined man wouldn’t live such a long life span, the average being 70 or 80 years. But, through Jesus we have the hope of living forever on a paradise earth after Armageddon. Indeed we are deep into the last days. And it will be worse than sodom and Gomorrah. People will be as in the days of Noah, and they took no note until the flood came and swept them all away. But a great crowd out of all nations tribes and tongues will be preserved alive through the great tribulation to begin cleaning up the earth under Gods direction. Most of the dead will be given a second chance of life, though not if they died as a result of divine judgement. Ie the flood of Noah, sodom and Gomorrah.

  11. It is not uncommon for real historical events ending up turning into myths, it happens all the time and probably what happened in this case. We shouldn’t lean towards the myth because it’s valuable to us and our preexisting beliefs, but treat it like every other myth. As a means of explaining cultures of the past

  12. The cosmic destroyer roared over 5 cities of the plain, streaking across the sky, causing at least two airbursts. It was recorded on an Assyrian cuneiform tablet. The date: June 29th, 3123bce. The same asteroid that exploded into the Alps, where scientists had wondered about the cause of a very large landslide that had occurred there.

    • Twerent no comet what done this mess!

      It’s called “star creation / formation” whose energy & mass was disbursed kinematically.

      Tunguska blast field was circular not elliptical…(implicate nuch?)

  13. Hello,

    A lot of jesuit trained theoretical hog wash, to be blunt. Revelation 14:6-13 KJV🙏🏻.

    Get right with God’s word with Christ, repent and renounce the father of lies and live. All will answer for their works of destruction, soon.

    God Bless, pray for our world and do God’s Commandments🙏🏻🕊💜…

  14. Interested readers should also read the lengthy discussion about this paper on PubPeer (just use the DOI to search). The paper has been corrected twice (by early 2024) and currently has an Editor’s Note indicating an on-going investigation.

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