Archaeologists at Tall el-Hammam in Jordan discovered a Bronze Age city where even thick mud brick walls were sheared off uniformly at the same height. Everything—debris, pottery, wood—was blasted in the same southwest to northeast direction, as if the entire city was impacted by a powerful force. A controversial 2021 study (now retracted by Nature) suggested a cosmic airburst destroyed the settlement around 1650 BCE, though the research has faced significant scientific criticism.
1.8-second catastrophic destruction event at Tell el-Hammam
JordanGeneral
Site mentioned
Key facts
- Mud brick walls with 3-meter thickness were sheared off at the same level across the entire site
- Pottery vessels were found strewn in pieces across 22 meters of floor space
- Fragments of the same vessel were recovered at different heights within the destruction matrix
- The event lasted approximately 1.8 seconds
- All destruction moved from southwest to northeast direction
- A 400-kilogram saddle quern was rolled a quarter turn off its base to the northeast
Sources
Pseudoscience About the Tall el-Hammam Site – SAPIENSsapiens.org
A team of anthropologists argues that flawed research linking biblical Sodom to an archaeological site led to media hype that harms science ...
A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle ...pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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 ...
Tall el-Hammam: an airburst of gullibility - The Panda's Thumbpandasthumb.org
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.
Modeling how a Powerful Airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a ...scienceopen.com
A previous study presented evidence supporting the hypothesis that a low-altitude airburst approximately 3600 years ago destroyed Tall el-Hammam ...
RETRACTED ARTICLE: A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el ...nature.com
In summary, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the city's mudbrick walls were pulverized by hypervelocity winds from a high-temperature event ...
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