Could the biblical story that recounts the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah be based on verso natural apocalypse that occurred around the Dead Sea con the Middle East?
Book of Genesis
One of them has stood for thousands of years as per powerful lesson per the perils of wickedness: the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
According preciso the Bible, the men of Sodom ‘were wicked, such sinners against the Nobile, He decided preciso destroy them’. God allowed Lot, the one good man living there, to flee the town with his family, before God showed his wrath. But Lot’s wife disobeyed God’s warning not preciso aspetto back towards Sodom as she fled, and she was turned into per pillar of salt, where she stood.
For the wicked people of Sodom, not even that escape was open onesto them: soon the Nobile showed his displeasure, and ‘rained down fire and brimstone. He destroyed everyone living there and everything growing mediante the ground’.
The story is certainly dramatic – but is it just sceneggiato? There’s niente affatto agreement among archaeologists, scientists and Biblical scholars that Sodom, and its sister town Gomorrah, existed at all – let alone that it came puro verso sudden and apocalyptic end.
However, one man is convinced that Sodom and Gomorrah not only existed, but were also destroyed by verso terrible natural apocalypse matching the description durante the Book of Genesis. Graham Harris is per retired geologist with per passion for solving ancient riddles – and the clues esatto this one, he says, are sopra the Bible itself.
The Bible places Sodom and Gomorrah mediante the region of the Dead Sea, between what together2night prova gratuita are now Israel and Jordan in the Middle East. Harris spent a addirittura convinced the conditions there were right for per huge earthquake that would trigger per massive landslide. So complete would be the destruction, the event would pass into folklore.
Could science prove that Harris’s ambiente might have happened? Professor Lynne Frostick, a geologist from Hull University mediante England, and Jonathan Tubb from the British Museum, decided onesto investigate just that.
They travelled sicuro the Middle East preciso pursue their research, and their findings there enabled Dr Gopal Madabhushi, at the Cambridge University Centrifuge Laboratory back in England, esatto build an accurate scaled-down model of the buildings durante Sodom, and the ground on which they stood. Dr Madabhushi then subjected the model onesto verso simulated earthquake – and his scadenza provided the ultimate proof on whether whole towns could have been destroyed.
Asphalt towns
The dwellings of Sodom slide towards the Dead Sea during the liquefaction event © Jonathan Tubb started by working out whether Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed. The whole reparto around the Dead Sea is now parched and barren, and the image of thriving towns is incongruous. But there was one point per the history of the region when verso wetter climate meant the entire sezione could well have thrived – in the early Bronze Age, between 1800 BC and 2300 BC.
Tubb excavated verso site called Tell es-Sa’idiyeh, north of the Dead Sea. He found evidence of an early olive oil factory, showing how sophisticated life had become, even sopra these ancient times. Tubb believes the early Bronze Age was the only time that towns matching the descriptions of Sodom and Gomorrah could have existed at all.
So were there big earthquakes sopra the early Bronze Age? According esatto American forensic anthropologist Professor Mike Finnegan, the answer is yes. He has examined the skeletons of three men discovered at the early Bronze Age site of Numeira near the Dead Sea. From the way their bones were broken, he concluded that they were crushed puro death – possibly because an earthquake brought down a stone tower on vertice of them. Carbon dating put the date of the tower’s beams at 2350 BC – the early Bronze Age.