Interesting links. Speaking of tangents, I just noticed something reading TGS4's link
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[li]We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age [li]city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea[/li]
[li]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[/li]
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[li]Tall el-Hammam has been purported [by some, not all]
as a possible candidate for Sodom (*) by Steven Collins directing the dig site which began in 2006. It is located in the southern Jordan river valley approximately 14 kilometres (9 mi) northeast of the Dead Sea, and according to Collins fits the biblical descriptions of the lands of Sodom[/li]
[li]Deuteronomy 29:22–23...And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath[/li]
[li]In 3 Maccabees 2:5, the high priest Simon says that God "consumed with fire and sulphur the men of Sodom...[/li]
[li]In Luke 17:28–30, Jesus compares his Second Coming to the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah...it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.[/li]
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* The basis for connecting Tall el-Hammam to Sodom as far as I know doesn't have anything to do with any evidence of unusual explosion/fire event (**), but rather...
The long-lost Biblical city of Sodom — a city that the Bible claims was destroyed by God because of its immorality — may finally have been found. Archaeologists have uncovered a slew of monumental structures and artifacts in a Jordan Valley mound known as Tall el-Hammam offering evidence of a city-state that is believed to have thrived during the Bronze Age when other Holy Land cities were being abandoned or were in decline.
Based on the location, dates of occupation, and the remains of other ancient cities nearby, archaeologists think it's the best candidate yet for what was once Sodom. "Tall el-Hammam seemed to match every Sodom criterion demanded by the text," Steven Collins, head of the archaeology team, said. In accordance with texts that say Sodom was the largest, the site at Tall el-Hammam is "at least five to 10 times larger than all the other Bronze Age sites in the entire region," Collins said.
The city is believed to have prospered during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages (between 3500 and 1540 B.C.), Popular Archaeology says, and is strategically located along water sources and trade routes, suggesting that it was a central hub during its time. The city-state is flanked by walls and fortifications that archaeologists say would have required "millions of bricks" and "large numbers of laborers" to build.
Excavated evidence suggests that the city came to a "sudden, inexplicable end" at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, Popular Archaeology says. For the last 700 years, the area has been largely uninhabited by humans.
** EDIT - I see the authors of the nature article already made that connection. But those archeologists who earlier proposed Tall el-Hammam as the location of biblical Sodom did not.
ps I'm not religious but I don't rule out that some of what is written in the bible has some basis in history. How would people who knew the town but were not in it at the time of destruction react to such an unfamiliar / unexplainable event (upon seeing the aftermath and maybe a few verbal reports from those close enough to see fire/explosion but far enough to survive)? It's not hard to imagine they would attribute it to God's wrath as they passed the story of a remarkable event on to later generations.
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(2B)+(2B)' ?
