A thriving town in the Jordan River valley was utterly annihilated by the explosion of a meteor 3,600 years ago, which produced a flash and shock wave that scorched and shattered buildings, animals and people.
That’s the scenario painted by a large collaboration of archaeologists, earth and space scientists who have been studying the remains of the Bronze Age town at a site called Tall el-Hammam in Jordan, not far from the Dead Sea.
Before its destruction, Tall el-Hammam was a bustling town of perhaps 8,000 people, with mud-brick buildings and a four-story palace. There is evidence that the site of the town had been occupied for several thousand years.
Archaeologists have been excavating the ruins of the town for more than 15 years, revealing a rich history during its long occupation that included ruins from fires, warfare and earthquakes.
But their excavations also revealed destruction that didn’t have any ordinary explanation: a one-and-a-half-metre-thick layer of debris the team dubbed the “destruction layer,” encompassing the whole settlement, and dated to 1650 BC. This layer showed signs of an incredibly violent event.
It included melted pottery and bricks, soot, melted plaster and metal, that only could have resulted from temperatures approaching 2,000 C. It also contained ruins of flattened buildings, including the town’s palace and four metre-thick outer wall.
“The city was built with millions of mud bricks, in the walls, the ramparts, the buildings,” space physicist Malcolm LeCompte, who was part of the research team, told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald. “Much of the mud brick was just disintegrated and blown away off the upper stories of these structures into the next valley.”
Researchers stand at the Tall el-Hammam archaeological site in Jordan. (Phil Silvia)
Most gruesomely, the debris also contained the remains of humans and animals that had been burned and torn apart.
“The human remains and bones were abundant. There’s very few total skeletal remains. Those that do remain are pretty disarticulated — just shattered,” said LeCompte. “It’s pretty horrifying, actually.”
The extreme temperatures and the widespread and violent destruction began to point the research team to a culprit. But microscopic examination of the debris also helped build the case. They found sand grains with unique cracks and fractures within them called “shocked quartz,” which are often found in the debris from super-high velocity impacts, like those generated by a meteor strike.
This led them to conclude that the best fit for what they were seeing was an “air burst” by meteor likely composed of rock and ice. The object, perhaps 50 metres across, would have hit the Earth’s atmosphere above the town travelling at perhaps 60,000 km/h. At that speed the atmosphere would have behaved as if it was almost solid, causing the meteor to explode violently.
“The evidence we have suggests that it was something like … a megaton-yield event in terms of its equivalent in atomic or nuclear bombs.” said LeCompte.
On the ground, the flash of heat from the explosion would have caused hair and textiles to burst into flame, and melted metal and brick. Moments later, a shock wave would have hit, causing winds that researchers estimate reached speeds of up to 1,200 km/h — knocking structures in the town flat and killing every living thing in the town.
“The shock wave would have come and just torn them apart,” said LeCompte.
Tall el-Hammam is located just north of the Dead Sea in the Joran River valley. (NASA)
It will happen again, LeCompte warns
The researchers point out that there are modern precedents for an event like this. In 1908 a similar-sized object is thought to have exploded in the atmosphere over Siberia, in what is known as the Tunguska event. It flattened 2,000 square kilometres of forest, and started a huge forest fire.
In 2013 a roughly 200-metre meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia, shattering windows and causing more than 1,000 injuries.
So far the team has found some material they think could be from the meteor, including tiny samples of rare metals often found in meteorites, but need to do more work to confirm their origin. LeCompte points out that excavation in the area can be difficult, particularly as much of the local landscape is currently occupied by Syrian refugees.
One intriguing, if speculative, possibility that the researchers have suggested is that the destruction of Tall el-Hammam might be the inspiration behind Biblical legends like the destruction of Sodom — in what is described as a “rain” of “fire and brimstone” — or the destruction of the walls of Jericho.
But LeCompte says those that look at Tall el-Hammam as a historical curiosity are missing the point. Instead, he said, they should look at it as a warning.
“The significance to its past pales in what it foretells for the future, because this is going to happen again,” he said. The Tunguska event shows that the Earth can still be struck by destructive objects from space, and if something similar were to happen over a city or populated region, the devastation would be enormous.
“It just took it out in an instant, so that’s a serious warning of what could happen — what will happen — in the future.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
