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

Autor
Bunch, Ted E.
LeCompte, M.A.
Adedeji, A.V.
Wittke, J.H.
Burleigh, T.D.
Hermes, R.E.
Mooney, C.
Batchelor, D.
Wolbach, W.S.
Kathan, J.
Patterson, M.C.L.
Swindel, E.C.
Witwer, T.
Howard, G.A.
Mitra, S.
Moore, C.R.
Langworthy, K.
Kennett, J.P.
West, Allen
Silvia, Phillip J.
Datum vydání
2021Publikováno v
Scientific ReportsRočník / Číslo vydání
11 (1)ISBN / ISSN
ISSN: 2045-2322Metadata
Zobrazit celý záznamKolekce
Tato publikace má vydavatelskou verzi s DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-97778-3
Abstrakt
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 ~ 1000x 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.
Klíčová slova
platinum-group minerals, refractory-metal nuggets, planar deformation features, biomass-burning episode, shock metamorphism, cosmic-impact, placer deposits, quartz, origin, diamonds
Trvalý odkaz
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14178/1898Licence
Licence pro užití plného textu výsledku: Creative Commons Uveďte původ 4.0 International