Evidence of Sodom? Meteor Blast Cause of Biblical Destruction

Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur out of the heavens.

A multi-disciplinary team of scientists has a new theory for why all human civilization abruptly ended on the banks of the Dead Sea some 3,700 years ago. Evidence of Sodom? Meteor blast cause of biblical destruction, say scientists. This multi-disciplinary team of scientists uses 3,700-year-old archaeological evidence from Jordan’s Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project to understand the end to civilization near the Dead Sea. According to analyzed archaeological evidence, the disaster of biblical proportions can be explained by a massive explosion, similar to one recorded over 100 years ago in Russia.

The 3.7kaBP Middle Ghor Event

As reported in Science News, at the recently concluded Denver-based ASOR Annual Meeting, director of scientific analysis at Jordan’s Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project Phillip J. Silvia presented a paper, “The 3.7kaBP Middle Ghor Event: Catastrophic Termination of a Bronze Age Civilization” during a session on Environmental Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. According to the paper’s abstract, the scientists discovered evidence of a “high-heat” explosive event north of the Dead Sea that instantaneously “devastated approximately 500 km2.”

The explosion would have wiped out all civilization in the affected area, including Middle Bronze Age cities and towns. Silvia told Science News that the blast would have instantly killed the estimated 40,000 to 65,000 people who inhabited Middle Ghor, a 25-kilometer-wide circular plain in Jordan.

Environmental Consequences

The impact had severe consequences for the region's ecology. The fertile soil would have been stripped of nutrients by the high heat, and waves of the Dead Sea’s briny anhydride salts would have — tsunami-like — washed over the surrounding area. Likewise, the explosion’s fallout caused blisteringly hot, strong winds, which deposited a rain of mineral grains, which have been found on pottery at Tall el-Hammam.

Comparative Models of Meteor Destruction

Now an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and scientists are using the Tunguska explosion as a model to explain the equally curious end to a thriving civilization. In 1908, a massive blast near Siberia’s Stony Tunguska River flattened some 2,000 square kilometers of uninhabited taiga forestry. Curiously, no crater was discovered and scientists explain the strange phenomena through a meteor explosion some 5-10 km above land. For comparison, the mile-wide meteor crater near Winslow, Arizona was made 500 centuries ago when a 10,000,000-ton meteor impact dislodged 300,000,000 tons of rock. The 600 foot deep crater is three miles in circumference.

Location	Scale of Disaster	Observed Evidence
Middle Ghor (Jordan)	Devastated approximately 500 km2	40,000 to 65,000 estimated casualties
Tunguska (Russia)	Flattened 2,000 square kilometers	No crater was discovered
Winslow (Arizona)	Three miles in circumference	600 foot deep crater