[stargazer-3]

A more interesting bit of the paper:

> It is worth speculating that a remarkable catastrophe, such as the destruction of Tall el-Hammam by a cosmic object, may have generated an oral tradition that, after being passed down through many generations, became the source of the written story of biblical Sodom in Genesis. The description in Genesis of the destruction of an urban center in the Dead Sea area is consistent with having been an eyewitness account of a cosmic airburst, e.g., (i) stones fell from the sky; (ii) fire came down from the sky; (iii) thick smoke rose from the fires; (iv) a major city was devastated; (v) city inhabitants were killed; and (vi) area crops were destroyed.

[ordu]

Somehow asteroid added to the descripition of the destruction of Sodom in Genesis makes Genesis much more real. Not just old wives stories, but -- wow, -- "kill infidels with an asteroid", it demands reverence.

[detritus]

As interesting for me are the myths of great floods across multiple cultures that can trace their history to sea level rises - particularly affecting the Persian Gulf, shifting populations ever northward to ancient Mesopotamia.

I find oral tradition fascinating and wonder how modern technology (eg. books onwards) has affected it.

[dotancohen]

One of the oldest writings still preserved contains the musings of an old man, on the proliferation of writing, complaining that the young will now no longer have to memorize their lessons because it can be now written down and read. If memory serves it is Egyptian.

[Bayart]

Hasn't the sea level "lowered" in the Persian Gulf ? Silting made the sea significantly further away from the Sumerian heartland nowadays than it was back then.

I've always thought the flood narrative archetype had to do with uncontrolled river floods, predating early state building and large irrigation projects. It's certainly that way in China.

[smoyer]

It doesn't however explain how Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt.

The Genesis story also includes a rain of burning sulphur which could have been identified by smell by the ancients. Sulphur isn't mentioned in the article but I'd be interested in knowing whether it was found in quantities above the normal background level.

[Sharlin]

I mean, it would be astonishing if all the details matched after hundreds to thousands of years of oral tradition. Embellishment and exaggeration were not unknown devices to Bronze Age storytellers, and neither was changing details to suit your agenda. And that’s besides the unintended “broken telephone” effect.

[kuschku]

Considering the impact threw up a massive amount of salt, which in turn coated the surrounding landscape and is still measurable today, the "pillar of salt" might just be a description for "so much salt fell from the sky that she was covered in it".

[dane-pgp]

Genesis chapter 19 verse 26 simply says "But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.", which maybe indicates someone being in such a state of shock that they just refused to move on, as the salt covered them.

I'm not a psychologist, but I could imagine such an event causing what we would now call PTSD, and maybe triggering catatonia or similar symptoms.

[smoyer]

That's an explanation I hadn't considered and the dead sea certainly shows how the area has collected salt.

[p_l]

The abandonment of the region for approx. 600 years is judged as caused by hypersalinity preventing growing of crops till natural leaching lowered salt content of the soil.

[rsynnott]

I mean, see the Trojan War. It's somewhat plausible that such a thing happened, but there probably wasn't a wooden horse, and no-one got turned into a pig. Things get embellished, and weaving in the mystical was pretty standard.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Curious where "no-one turned into a pig" came from? That is an episode from the Odyssey: Circe turned some of Ulysse's companions to pigs. But not the Iliad (Trojan War is in the Iliad). Is the turning-into-pigs a memory from a movie, perhaps a mash-up of the Iliad and Odyssey?

[rsynnott]

The Odyssey is about Odysseus/Ulysses returning from the Trojan War, so I think it's fair to count it as part of the general Trojan War mythos :)

[Cthulhu_]

It's oral history; I can imagine they added Lot and other characters to turn it into a more exciting story with a lesson to be learned in there. I mean the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is best known for showing what happens with sinners. Likewise that of Noah, likewise that of the tower of Babel.

[fennecfoxen]

> For most excavated squares, the newly exposed MB II surface from each day’s archeological excavation produced an obvious white salt crust overnight as humidity leached salt to the surface.

...

> we speculate that an impact into or an airburst above high-salinity surface sediments (26% of land in the southern Jordan Valley at > 1.3% salinity) and/or above the Dead Sea (with ~ 34 wt.% salt content) may have distributed hypersaline water across the lower Jordan Valley. If so, this influx of salt may have substantially increased the salinity of surface sediments within the city and in the surrounding fields. Any survivors of the blast would have been unable to grow crops and therefore likely to have been forced to abandon the area. After ~ 600 years, the high salt concentrations were sufficiently leached out of the salt-contaminated soil to allow the return of agriculture.