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A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea
- Source :
- Scientific Reports 11(1),. (2021), Scientific Reports, Scientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-64 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021.
-
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.
- Subjects :
- Population dynamics
Science
Fragmentation (weaponry)
Article
biomass-burning episode
Bolide
Bronze Age
origin
shock metamorphism
Shocked quartz
cosmic-impact
Sedimentology
Quartz
Multidisciplinary
platinum-group minerals
diamonds
Geology
Geomagnetism
planar deformation features
quartz
Archaeology
placer deposits
Geochemistry
Meteoritics
refractory-metal nuggets
Medicine
Pottery
Zircon
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 20452322
- Volume :
- 11
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Scientific Reports
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....75c73fd22317d89ac1150d104189806e