Layard Tablet

[ewx]

Since it seems to be quiet today... Clay tablet identified as asteroid that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Well, sort of. Other articles suggest that geologists date the Köfels landslide to 8-9K years ago (i.e. well before the Sumerians) and the connection to the story in Genesis 19 appears to be completely speculative.

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

...and the fact that Sodom and Gomorrah were not in the Austrian Alps.

Hats off to the Sumerian astronomer who recorded it, though.

(The Telegraph also makes the erroneous claim that the Sumerians were the first known civilisation. This is incorrect; rather, they, along with the Egyptians, were the first to record themselves in writing so we know more about them than merely examining the ruins they left tells us.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The theory is that the cities destroyed were under the path of the asteroid, not that it actually hit them.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

So how come the cities destroyed were those at the lowest point on Earth, with the most protective atmosphere over them, and not, say, Jerusalem, a few tens of miles to the northwest, but up in the hills?

It doesn't hang together.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware that S+G had been located that accurately. (I'm a bit uncomfortable about defending what I still think is complete speculation so I'd like to emphasize that I'm playing devil's advocate here.)

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

They're generally accepted as having been located (if they existed) at the southern end of the Dead Sea. (I have also heard a theory that the name Qumran (located at the northern end of the Dead Sea) originated from "Gomorrah", though given Qumran was settled nearly two thousand years later, that's plenty of time for mix-ups to have happened.)

[sparrowsion]

I've read one report (which I now can't find, meh) which implies that it was the ejecta falling back to earth which was responsible.

Fits the biblical description better than the last attempted explanation I saw, which was that an earthquake triggered liquifaction and a mudslide carried all archeological evidence into the Dead Sea.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Also, perhaps it did get trashed, but the people who recorded the story had more reason to record S+G's destruction that Jerusalem's at the time.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I think we'd have noticed the destruction of Jerusalem in the archaeological record. (Rather conveniently, the location of Jerusalem shifted slightly over the centuries, so the oldest part is mostly not covered today by the Old City, or the Temple Mount.)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

It seems a bit odd that an event that squashed an equivalent area to France + Germany would be recorded in terms of a couple of cities.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Think of it as the Old Testament equivalent of The Telegraph.

"Europe Devastated, no Israelites hurt."

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Have you come across The Tabloid Bible (http://lethargic-man.livejournal.com/82959.html)?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The S+G story isn't really a report, though, is it - there could easily be many hundreds of years between the original historical events (if there were any!) and the written form that's come down to us, and it'd only take one step of that chain being more interested in S+G than any bigger picture that there might have been to narrow the scope, just as details like angels can be added.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

OK, good point.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

What's your definition of civilization? Cities an agriculture seems to be a popular one, but not necessarily the only possibility. Were you thinking of Catal Huyuk or something else?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

What's your definition of civilization? Cities an agriculture seems to be a popular one, but not necessarily the only possibility.

I hadn't actually pinned that down. I suppose things did take off in a big way from the thirty-second century BCE, when within a short period of time writing, the wheel and bronzeworking were all invented, but I was thinking more of the fact that when the Sumerian culture emerged from the mists of protohistory, there were a lot of cities in the Middle East with a history going back thousands of years, comprising cycle upon cycle of growth, trade, conquest and rebuilding.

It's not clear exactly when the Sumerian culture started; it's possible the people in Sumeria a thousand or more years before the Jemdat Nasr period (when writing was invented) were already Sumerians, but there's other cities outside the area with long histories, too: Jericho, for example, was founded 11,000 years ago. (And there's Çatal Hüyük, as you point out.)