Dataset Information

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.

ABSTRACT: We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5-10 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO₃ spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C. Amid city-side devastation, the airburst demolished 12+ m of the 4-to-5-story palace complex and the massive 4-m-thick mudbrick rampart, while causing extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans. An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300-600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). Tunguska-scale airbursts can devastate entire cities/regions and thus, pose a severe modern-day hazard.

SUBMITTER: Bunch TE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8452666 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.

Bunch Ted E TE LeCompte Malcolm A MA Adedeji A Victor AV Wittke James H JH Burleigh T David TD Hermes Robert E RE Mooney Charles C Batchelor Dale D Wolbach Wendy S WS Kathan Joel J Kletetschka Gunther G Patterson Mark C L MCL Swindel Edward C EC Witwer Timothy T Howard George A GA Mitra Siddhartha S Moore Christopher R CR Langworthy Kurt K Kennett James P JP West Allen A Silvia Phillip J PJ

Scientific reports 20210920 1

We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5-10 GPa); melted pottery a ...[more]

PMID: 34545151

Similar Datasets

Project description:The archaeological site of Salorno-Dos de la Forca (Bozen, Alto Adige) provides one of the rarest and most significant documentations of cremated human remains preserved from an ancient cremation platform (ustrinum). The pyre area, located along the upper Adige valley, is dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1150-950 BCE) and has yielded an unprecedented quantity of cremated human remains (about 63.5 kg), along with burnt animal bone fragments, shards of pottery, and other grave goods made in bronze and animal bone/antler. This study focuses on the bioanthropological analysis of the human remains and discusses the formation of the unusual burnt deposits at Salorno through comparisons with modern practices and protohistoric and contemporaneous archaeological deposits. The patterning of bone fragmentation and commingling was investigated using spatial data recorded during excavation which, along with the bioanthropological and archaeological data, are used to model and test two hypotheses: Salorno-Dos de la Forca would be the result of A) repeated primary cremations left in situ; or B) of residual material remaining after select elements were removed for internment in urns or burials to unknown depositional sites. By modelling bone weight and demographic data borrowed from regional affine contexts, the authors suggest that this cremation site may have been used over several generations by a small community-perhaps a local elite. With a quantity of human remains that exceeds that of any other coeval contexts interpreted as ustrina, Salorno may be the product of a complex series of rituals in which the human cremains did not receive individual burial, but were left in situ, in a collective/communal place of primary combustion, defining an area of repeated funeral ceremonies involving offerings and libations across a few generations. This would represent a new typological and functional category that adds to the variability of mortuary customs at the end of the Bronze Age in the Alpine are, at a time in which "globalising" social trends may have stimulated the definition of more private identities.

Dataset Information

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.

Publications

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets