Sodom and Gomorrah may have died due to the fall of the asteroid
In 2008, British Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell published a book in which they put forward a hypothesis about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by an asteroid. As evidence, the authors relied on the ancient cuneiform script found in the middle of the XIX century in the ruins of the royal library in Nineveh and stored in the British Museum under the number K8538.
Sodom and Gomorrah are two famous biblical cities that, according to the Bible, were destroyed by God for the sins of their inhabitants. The cities were, according to the Old Testament, near the Dead Sea, but the exact place is now unknown.
According to the Bible, at the time of Abraham, Sodom was a flourishing and rich city, but since the inhabitants "were evil and very sinful" (Genesis 13:13), "the Lord shed on Sodom and Gomorrah with rain and sulfur from the Lord and the fire from heaven, and He overthrew these cities, and all the neighborhood, and all the inhabitants of these cities, and [all] the growth of the earth "(Genesis 19: 24-25).
Various versions of catastrophic deaths of cities were put forward. But the clue came from an unexpected side. In the British Museum for a century and a half there is a clay disk with the arrangement of stars and planets on it. Rather, the museum contains an Assyrian copy, also quite ancient, the Sumerian disk.
Many centuries ago the Sumerian astronomer reflected on the clay disk an interesting celestial phenomenon. All this was done on a fairly accurate map of the starry sky, at the limit of the then possibilities.
In 2008, the disk was interested in the astronomer, Ph.D. in Physics Mark Hempsell of Bristol University (Great Britain). The stars and planets depicted on it crossed an intermittent line. The scientist came to the conclusion that the Sumerian astronomer thus portrayed a bright object that crossed the sky and flew towards Europe. The span of a large meteorite was, apparently, quite impressive.
Hempsell set out to find out when and where the meteorite was flying. Having the appropriate computer programs and knowing the location of the stars in the sky at that distant time thanks to the disk, it was possible to fairly accurately determine the day when this all happened. After three months of hard work, the scientist got the first result: it happened in mid-summer 3123 BC.
The researchers were able to calculate where huge meteorite has fallen - the Austrian Alps. According to the reconstructed scientists, the meteorite, with a diameter of more than a kilometer, produced a very strong explosion. As a result, the dust column rose to a height of about 900 km. (For comparison, the International Space Station flies at an altitude of about 400 km). Flown in different directions for many kilometers and melted pieces of rock, which then began to dive down to earth, having a temperature of 500-700 degrees.
In the Alps, in the Tyrolean town of Köfels, there really is a strange landscape that has long puzzled geologists: if something has taken down a mountain.
Asteroid did that. "But he did not leave the crater." Because I crashed into the Earth at a very sharp angle - about 6 degrees. Almost on the tangent. And it exploded in the air, forming a fireball with a diameter of almost 5 kilometers. He, like a cumulative projectile, and swept a five-kilometer mountain into dust. And devastated on its way about one million square kilometers.
By the way, - says Hempsell, - the catastrophic events associated with the fall of the asteroid are noted not only in the Bible, but in many ancient myths. For example, in the most famous - about Phaeton, who could not cope with the fiery chariot of his dad Helios and collapsed from the sky.
Before dawn, until the hot summer day began, many residents of Sodom and Gomorrah rushed to their business, suddenly saw a fabulously beautiful view - thousands of bright stars flashed and poured in the sky. The amazed people froze in the streets, looking at the picture unprecedented before.
And then the red-hot "stars" began to fall on people's heads, killing in place or getting into houses and causing fires. Not many, including the legendary Lot with the children, managed to escape. In addition to Sodom and Gomorrah, at least two other cities located near the Dead Sea were burned in this way.
Glaciologists have found yet another confirmation of the cataclysm that befell our planet. Studying the cores of millennia glaciers, scientists found that almost 5200 years ago on Earth a sudden cold snap began. In the warm summer suddenly snow fell.
It was during this period that the flowering savannahs of the Sahara, where grazing herds of artiodactyls grazed, quickly turned into a desert. Apparently, the so-called effect of the nuclear winter became the fault of the incident, when as a result of powerful explosions, clouds of dust permanently closed the Earth from the Sun.
The culprit in the authors of the study is the same asteroid that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. The death of cities near the Dead Sea occurred, according to the calculations of Mark Hempsell, 5139 years ago. Independent research of astronomers, archaeologists and glaciologists confirms each other.
About the tragedy that befalls populous cities, wrote Strabo, Cornelius Tacitus, Josephus Flavius. This is what the ancient Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus wrote three thousand years after the catastrophe that destroyed the ancient cities:
"The plains are spreading, which ... were once fertile and covered with crowded cities, and after being burnt by heavenly fire. The remains of cities are still visible, the land has since been charred and can not bear fruit. Every plant planted by a person's hand or breaking through, fades, blackens and crumbles to dust. As to the death of once glorious and great cities, I am ready to believe that they were burned by heavenly fire. "
And the ancient Greek historian and geographer Strabo wrote the following: "Here and there there are destroyed houses. Therefore, it is necessary to believe the very common among local residents of the legend that there used to be 13 inhabited cities, of which the main city - Sodom - had about 60 stages (more than 10.5 kilometers) in circumference. "
The Old Testament, told the world about the terrible tragedy that occurred near the shores of the Dead Sea. But the fact that in the Old Testament the affected city is called Sodom (translated from the Hebrew as "burning") and does not include the name that he wore before the tragedy, pushes to some reflections.
If the authors of the Bible did not name the city before the catastrophe, perhaps they just did not know it. A new people came who saw terrible destruction and learned about what happened from the few survivors, and in the people's memory of the newcomers there was no self-name of the deceased city.
In the Bible, tragedy is served through the perception of Lot, the protagonist of the narrative. But all that has happened is described about 500 years after Lot's death. Hence, his memories, if they existed, could be transmitted orally from generation to generation.
At each such transfer something is lost, and something is added. And for this there are many reasons. In this way, a legend was created about Lot's petrified wife. The rock reminiscent of a human figure inspired someone to create a myth about a woman who did not listen to God and looked back at the burning city.
In the holy book of the Moslems of the Koran, a parable is given of the righteous Lutha and of the city of Sadum, mired in sin. This parable completely, almost word for word, repeats the biblical story. But there is one difference. Lut's wife was from Sadum and led a wicked lifestyle like her fellow countrymen. The angels who ordered Lutha and his family to leave the city also reported that his unrighteous wife would turn around and be punished with all the other sodomites.