That village near Gomorrah got too hot for Lot
September 24, 2021 6:15 AM Subscribe
The city’s destruction was associated with some unknown high-temperature event. An interdisciplinary research team claims that the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam (present-day Jordan) was destroyed by a meteor, or comet which detonated in mid-air.
It may have been the second such disaster in the area, after one at Tell Abu Hureyra (present-day Syria).
From the abstract:
The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5–10 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C. Amid city-side devastation, the airburst demolished 12+ m of the 4-to-5-story palace complex and the massive 4-m-thick mudbrick rampart, while causing extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans. An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300–600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). Tunguska-scale airbursts can devastate entire cities/regions and thus, pose a severe modern-day hazard.
It may have been the second such disaster in the area, after one at Tell Abu Hureyra (present-day Syria).
From the abstract:
The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5–10 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C. Amid city-side devastation, the airburst demolished 12+ m of the 4-to-5-story palace complex and the massive 4-m-thick mudbrick rampart, while causing extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans. An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300–600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). Tunguska-scale airbursts can devastate entire cities/regions and thus, pose a severe modern-day hazard.
The paper also suggests that this same event destroyed the city of Jericho.
posted by migurski at 7:14 AM on September 24, 2021
posted by migurski at 7:14 AM on September 24, 2021
The paper also suggests that this same event destroyed the city of Jericho.
When I first heard this theory, the claim above is what set off my BS meter; Random city nobody's heard of gets blown up? OK, maybe. Well-documented event in history at a famous site gets a revisionist view? That's a bit much.
But, if the Twitter thread link above is accurate, the guy making the claims is one of those "I'm finding proof of Biblical events EVERYWHERE" kinds of scientists.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:33 AM on September 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
When I first heard this theory, the claim above is what set off my BS meter; Random city nobody's heard of gets blown up? OK, maybe. Well-documented event in history at a famous site gets a revisionist view? That's a bit much.
But, if the Twitter thread link above is accurate, the guy making the claims is one of those "I'm finding proof of Biblical events EVERYWHERE" kinds of scientists.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:33 AM on September 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
There's a few incidents of meteor strikes like this being recorded in human history. Another is Lake Kaali in Finland.
It's thought to have been recorded in Finnish epic poetry
It's thought to have been recorded in Finnish epic poetry
The high skies opened, the whole sky brokeThe meteor crater may also have been recorded by Apollonius of Rhodes
Fire rushes through the sky, it shoots like a star shot
Bright stars fall from heaven
Flames lash against life’s support
High gorges the heat against heaven itself
...where once, smitten on the breast by the blazing bolt, Phaethon half-consumed fell from the chariot of Helios into the opening of that deep lake; and even now it belcheth up heavy steam clouds from the smouldering wound.posted by Nelson at 7:45 AM on September 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
Yeah, it's starting to look bogus. Twitter is exploding against this research. https://twitter.com/chrisstantis/status/1440404380386160646?s=21
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:48 AM on September 24, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:48 AM on September 24, 2021 [5 favorites]
The paper’s claim about Jericho is that it’s 15 miles from Tall el-Hammam putting it within the radius of effects for an Tunguska-like event and that its destruction is estimated to lie within the same time period as the evidence for this claimed airburst.
posted by migurski at 7:48 AM on September 24, 2021
posted by migurski at 7:48 AM on September 24, 2021
"The paper also suggests that this same event destroyed the city of Jericho."
Oh boy. Biblical archaeology is always fraught, and full of charlatans and nonsense. But Biblical archaeology that wants to rely on or prove ANYTHING from the Book of Joshua is going to be deadass nonsense. There's a bunch of stuff in the Torah and in Judges that are preserved folktales, snippets of stories told and retold, with layers of history that can be peeled back and sometimes, maybe, and often in indirect ways related to archaeological finds.
But Joshua is made up out of whole cloth. It's a sort of nationalistic propaganda for the Judean kingdom, written in the 7th century BCE, claiming to tell about the 13th century BCE, but clearly reflecting the theological and political needs of the 7th century authors. I mean, this was understood by Bible scholars (including John Calvin) in the 1650s. Jericho was unoccupied from the 15th century BCE to the 10th century BCE, and didn't really become an important settlement until the 7th century BCE, when our intrepid propagandists are rewriting their history. The paper knows this, and is looking at the time when Jericho was actually abandoned, not when the Bible claims it was abandoned.
But desperate efforts to identify what "really" destroyed the walls of Jericho are basically always* part of an evangelical Christian effort to make the Book of Joshua factual, believing that if they can render the book factual, its theological stance will also become "factual" and therefore persuasive to non-evangelicals. What theological stances in particular? That God wants God's anointed leaders to genocide non-believers on the land God has given the believers is probably the biggest one. Another one is that everybody has to obey God's very strict rules and if they don't, it's cool to kill them. If they can "prove" that God really did destroy Jericho with a comet, then they're totally justified in banning abortions in Texas!
*There are also Jewish and Islamic Holy Land archaeology-propaganda problems, but I know a lot less about them, and this paper is evangelical Christian nonsense.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:02 AM on September 24, 2021 [51 favorites]
Oh boy. Biblical archaeology is always fraught, and full of charlatans and nonsense. But Biblical archaeology that wants to rely on or prove ANYTHING from the Book of Joshua is going to be deadass nonsense. There's a bunch of stuff in the Torah and in Judges that are preserved folktales, snippets of stories told and retold, with layers of history that can be peeled back and sometimes, maybe, and often in indirect ways related to archaeological finds.
But Joshua is made up out of whole cloth. It's a sort of nationalistic propaganda for the Judean kingdom, written in the 7th century BCE, claiming to tell about the 13th century BCE, but clearly reflecting the theological and political needs of the 7th century authors. I mean, this was understood by Bible scholars (including John Calvin) in the 1650s. Jericho was unoccupied from the 15th century BCE to the 10th century BCE, and didn't really become an important settlement until the 7th century BCE, when our intrepid propagandists are rewriting their history. The paper knows this, and is looking at the time when Jericho was actually abandoned, not when the Bible claims it was abandoned.
But desperate efforts to identify what "really" destroyed the walls of Jericho are basically always* part of an evangelical Christian effort to make the Book of Joshua factual, believing that if they can render the book factual, its theological stance will also become "factual" and therefore persuasive to non-evangelicals. What theological stances in particular? That God wants God's anointed leaders to genocide non-believers on the land God has given the believers is probably the biggest one. Another one is that everybody has to obey God's very strict rules and if they don't, it's cool to kill them. If they can "prove" that God really did destroy Jericho with a comet, then they're totally justified in banning abortions in Texas!
*There are also Jewish and Islamic Holy Land archaeology-propaganda problems, but I know a lot less about them, and this paper is evangelical Christian nonsense.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:02 AM on September 24, 2021 [51 favorites]
(Also, I'm not an archaeologist, but those "sheared off" walls look exactly like ... a bazillionty other excavated walls in the Ancient Near East where settlements were abandoned and then built back on top of over the course of 10,000 years? Where people stole building materials from abandoned sites? I don't know anything about their analysis of the materials and rocks, but they claim that "Originally, parts of the 4-story palace were ~ 12 + m tall, but afterward, only a few courses of mudbricks remain on stone foundations, labeled as “wall remnants”" as part of their evidence for this comet explosion and ... that exactly what every other Ancient Near Eastern excavation of a city with history back to the Bronze age looks like? Like, this is not an unusual state of being for Very Old Wall Bits.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:13 AM on September 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:13 AM on September 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'm always fascinated by this kind of Biblical "proof" because he's leaning so hard on capital-S Science to provide evidence that something mentioned in the Bible really did happen but in the process he's kind of forgetting that the Bible attributes what happened to divine intervention and if science provides the evidence and the explanation for that evidence, doesn't that kind of minimize the Biblical account and call it into question?
Unless God was the one who hurled the meteor which created the airburst, but that seems like it would be a bridge too far for the kind of Biblical literalists this is supposed to appeal to.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:14 AM on September 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
Unless God was the one who hurled the meteor which created the airburst, but that seems like it would be a bridge too far for the kind of Biblical literalists this is supposed to appeal to.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:14 AM on September 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
Unless God was the one who hurled the meteor which created the airburst, but that seems like it would be a bridge too far for the kind of Biblical literalists this is supposed to appeal to.That is an exact claim which I heard growing up in a Biblical literalist church. The general idea was roughly along the lines of “the Bible has been translated multiple times over centuries and is poetic, not a science textbook, but all of the major events happened” so something like God chucking a meteor or causing an on-demand earthquake is perfectly okay as long as the key parts (Israel triumphed over a superior foe, the ensuing genocide/enslavement/rape/theft had a divine waiver) happened. Accepting the idea of the person writing the book to be an imperfect human allowed them to adapt for the scientific era by saying that they didn't have the words or understanding to explain exactly what happened but that it was still a real miracle by virtue of the timing.
posted by adamsc at 8:36 AM on September 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
"I'm always fascinated by this kind of Biblical "proof" because he's leaning so hard on capital-S Science to provide evidence that something mentioned in the Bible really did happen but in the process he's kind of forgetting that the Bible attributes what happened to divine intervention and if science provides the evidence and the explanation for that evidence, doesn't that kind of minimize the Biblical account and call it into question?"
My experience of this sort of person is that they don't actually believe in science-qua-science, as in the scientific method or as in a method of coming to understand the world or as in a way of acquiring or testing knowledge. They believe in the authority and persuasive power of science because they know that in the modern era, science is the premier method of understanding and explaining the world.
They don't want the knowledge or explanatory power of science -- they're not interested in that at all. All they want is the authority science has, because they understand its persuasive power. So they engage in these cargo-cult versions of scientific disciplines that mimic the trappings of science -- charts! graphs! "data"! degrees from fake universities! words like "interdisciplinary"! Convoluted sentence structure! -- to attempt to claim its authority.
They don't actually have any interest in knowing why Jericho was abandoned for five centuries (although that's a really interesting question!). They're interested in proving that something mentioned in the Bible actually happened, so they can claim the authority of science for (their theological interpretation of) the Bible.
This is why, incidentally, they get so hurt and offended when they present their SCIENCE! to the world and the world is like, "Uh, this is not persuasive." They're like, "BUT WE TOOK THE BIBLE AND MADE IT SCIENCE, ISN'T THAT HOW WE WIN?" Like, they took their authoritative text and put it into the form and language of modern scientific authority; that should work! Because fundamentally they think science is a rhetorical enterprise used to convince people of things, not a search for knowledge and understanding. And if you think science is just a rhetorical enterprise, and there's no underlying facts or knowledge or theory or method, why wouldn't a sciency-looking paper convince just as many people as any other sciency-looking paper? Why wouldn't a Museum of Creation be just as respected as a Natural History Museum? It's a museum! We had exhibits made! There are things under glass! It tells our preferred story! We're doing it just like you did! We have fulfilled the proper rhetorical form; therefore, you must be persuaded, or else you're lying about trusting science. It's a cargo cult theory of knowledge.
It's why you can't really argue with evangelical anti-vaxxers, and why explanations and information have no power to change their minds -- they view science as a purely rhetorical enterprise. You're not telling them vaccines work because vaccines actually work; you're telling them that to try to persuade them of the rightness of your point of view. You're not telling them that women can get pregnant when they're raped because it's actually true; you're just saying that because you support abortion and are trying to persuade them to support it too. To them, science is just political rhetoric for liberals. Therefore, rhetoric is the same as science. (And therefore, "do your own research!" as if that isn't self-evidently ridiculous for someone who failed high school biology to say to a Ph.D. in immunology. To them, it's not! Science is just rhetoric for lefties!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:41 AM on September 24, 2021 [126 favorites]
My experience of this sort of person is that they don't actually believe in science-qua-science, as in the scientific method or as in a method of coming to understand the world or as in a way of acquiring or testing knowledge. They believe in the authority and persuasive power of science because they know that in the modern era, science is the premier method of understanding and explaining the world.
They don't want the knowledge or explanatory power of science -- they're not interested in that at all. All they want is the authority science has, because they understand its persuasive power. So they engage in these cargo-cult versions of scientific disciplines that mimic the trappings of science -- charts! graphs! "data"! degrees from fake universities! words like "interdisciplinary"! Convoluted sentence structure! -- to attempt to claim its authority.
They don't actually have any interest in knowing why Jericho was abandoned for five centuries (although that's a really interesting question!). They're interested in proving that something mentioned in the Bible actually happened, so they can claim the authority of science for (their theological interpretation of) the Bible.
This is why, incidentally, they get so hurt and offended when they present their SCIENCE! to the world and the world is like, "Uh, this is not persuasive." They're like, "BUT WE TOOK THE BIBLE AND MADE IT SCIENCE, ISN'T THAT HOW WE WIN?" Like, they took their authoritative text and put it into the form and language of modern scientific authority; that should work! Because fundamentally they think science is a rhetorical enterprise used to convince people of things, not a search for knowledge and understanding. And if you think science is just a rhetorical enterprise, and there's no underlying facts or knowledge or theory or method, why wouldn't a sciency-looking paper convince just as many people as any other sciency-looking paper? Why wouldn't a Museum of Creation be just as respected as a Natural History Museum? It's a museum! We had exhibits made! There are things under glass! It tells our preferred story! We're doing it just like you did! We have fulfilled the proper rhetorical form; therefore, you must be persuaded, or else you're lying about trusting science. It's a cargo cult theory of knowledge.
It's why you can't really argue with evangelical anti-vaxxers, and why explanations and information have no power to change their minds -- they view science as a purely rhetorical enterprise. You're not telling them vaccines work because vaccines actually work; you're telling them that to try to persuade them of the rightness of your point of view. You're not telling them that women can get pregnant when they're raped because it's actually true; you're just saying that because you support abortion and are trying to persuade them to support it too. To them, science is just political rhetoric for liberals. Therefore, rhetoric is the same as science. (And therefore, "do your own research!" as if that isn't self-evidently ridiculous for someone who failed high school biology to say to a Ph.D. in immunology. To them, it's not! Science is just rhetoric for lefties!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:41 AM on September 24, 2021 [126 favorites]
I appreciate your input on this stuff Eyebrows
posted by supermedusa at 9:06 AM on September 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 9:06 AM on September 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
so something like God chucking a meteor or causing an on-demand earthquake is perfectly okayThis is one of those places where I genuinely don't understand the motivation for the argument. Causing a really unlikely event to happen at a precise time is a miracle, by any reasonable definition. If you've got a god who can perform miracles, why bother manipulating probability in extreme ways rather than just making things happen out of nowhere? A specific one-in-a-trillion event is so close to impossible as makes no difference.
(Also, I second the above comment about Eyebrows' input.)
posted by eotvos at 10:09 AM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
If you've got a god who can perform miracles, why bother manipulating probability in extreme ways rather than just making things happen out of nowhere? A specific one-in-a-trillion event is so close to impossible as makes no difference.
Philosophers call this the Final Destination Problem: why would Death use a series of Rube Goldberg-esque events that lead to someone who was supposed to have died but didn't being decapitated on a roller coaster in a spectacular public manner when it could have just given them an embolism in their sleep or something similarly straightforward?
Answer: because it's rad.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:18 AM on September 24, 2021 [11 favorites]
Philosophers call this the Final Destination Problem: why would Death use a series of Rube Goldberg-esque events that lead to someone who was supposed to have died but didn't being decapitated on a roller coaster in a spectacular public manner when it could have just given them an embolism in their sleep or something similarly straightforward?
Answer: because it's rad.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:18 AM on September 24, 2021 [11 favorites]
Fred Clark (Slacktivist)'s take on this may be useful as he discusses both his understanding of the archaeology and the problems with the sponsors of the project.
posted by Ickster at 11:02 AM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Ickster at 11:02 AM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
I skimmed the article when it first hit the twitter buzzsaw the other day. What struck me is how the authors initially note, almost in passing, that the city might correspond to biblical Sodom and while that's a curious and interesting thing it isn't central to their research. And then they drop a bunch of sciency-looking stuff on you. A whole bunch. And then they get back to the Sodom thing and it becomes pretty clear that that was really their entire interest all along.
Anyway, thanks for the links and discussion. Crank Science is genuinely one of my very favorite subjects.
posted by sjswitzer at 12:13 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Anyway, thanks for the links and discussion. Crank Science is genuinely one of my very favorite subjects.
posted by sjswitzer at 12:13 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Yeah, this is a fascinating one. There are two things we should hold front and center:
1) This is an archeological site that has been excavated for over a decade by Christian non-scientists who believe in Biblical inerrancy. It can't be understated how much these people are not neutral scientists.
2) They believed they found a destruction layer in this site that is different from war-caused destruction layers (e.g. lack of weaponry), so they took their data to real scientists. It is these scientists who published this paper. The lead author is a legitimate scientist who has published on Meteor Crater and other sites for decades. The journal is a legitimate peer reviewed journal.
Another thing I'll note is that we should be deeply skeptical of *any* "biblical archaeologist." There's a reason there are no Epic of Gilgamesh archaeologists but there are Mesopotamian archaeologists, no Popol Vuh archaeologists but yes Ancient Maya Archaeologists, etc. -- because it is scientifically illegitimate to structure your framework around a religious text. More and more of these archeologists are now calling themselves "ancient Near East archeologists" in order to avoid this issue.
I'm not qualified to analyze the claims of this paper, but reading through it, there are MANY lines of evidence that they are using to support their claims. The two scientists I've seen who are countering the paper (the two linked on this thread on Twitter) are not remotely close to debunking the paper -- or even really trying to. (Which is fair! They have day jobs! It's not their job to debunk it.) Boslough is highlighting 1, and Stantis says they are overstating and misinterpreting one of the lines of evidence (human remains).
For what it's worth, there are other examples of indigenous legends being later shown to have somewhat accurately passed on natural history -- see for example, the 1700 Cascadia Earthquake.
Moreover, it's also worth noting that the hardcore Christian ideologues on this issue disagree with the excavators of this site, because their conclusions conflict with the Bible.
It seems plausible that a peer reviewed study, showing a Tunguska-style event destroyed a small Ancient Near East city, which led to local legends that have some basis in fact but misinterpreted and distorted other facts, could be accurate.
posted by lewedswiver at 12:45 PM on September 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
1) This is an archeological site that has been excavated for over a decade by Christian non-scientists who believe in Biblical inerrancy. It can't be understated how much these people are not neutral scientists.
2) They believed they found a destruction layer in this site that is different from war-caused destruction layers (e.g. lack of weaponry), so they took their data to real scientists. It is these scientists who published this paper. The lead author is a legitimate scientist who has published on Meteor Crater and other sites for decades. The journal is a legitimate peer reviewed journal.
Another thing I'll note is that we should be deeply skeptical of *any* "biblical archaeologist." There's a reason there are no Epic of Gilgamesh archaeologists but there are Mesopotamian archaeologists, no Popol Vuh archaeologists but yes Ancient Maya Archaeologists, etc. -- because it is scientifically illegitimate to structure your framework around a religious text. More and more of these archeologists are now calling themselves "ancient Near East archeologists" in order to avoid this issue.
I'm not qualified to analyze the claims of this paper, but reading through it, there are MANY lines of evidence that they are using to support their claims. The two scientists I've seen who are countering the paper (the two linked on this thread on Twitter) are not remotely close to debunking the paper -- or even really trying to. (Which is fair! They have day jobs! It's not their job to debunk it.) Boslough is highlighting 1, and Stantis says they are overstating and misinterpreting one of the lines of evidence (human remains).
For what it's worth, there are other examples of indigenous legends being later shown to have somewhat accurately passed on natural history -- see for example, the 1700 Cascadia Earthquake.
Moreover, it's also worth noting that the hardcore Christian ideologues on this issue disagree with the excavators of this site, because their conclusions conflict with the Bible.
It seems plausible that a peer reviewed study, showing a Tunguska-style event destroyed a small Ancient Near East city, which led to local legends that have some basis in fact but misinterpreted and distorted other facts, could be accurate.
posted by lewedswiver at 12:45 PM on September 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
It's been interesting going down the various rabbit holes here. I love that Boslough has taken this as an opportunity to not just present counter-arguments but to recount the story of his entire career in relation to this type of event! I learned a lot about Tunguska just scanning the threads.
As for the paper... I suspect we'll find under the scrutiny of others that these conclusions are plausible but hardly at the level of confidence claimed. People seem to be objecting to the biblical archaeology side of things but as others have pointed out the work was done by another group and the biblical types don't like the results. I look forward to hearing more about it!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:36 PM on September 24, 2021
As for the paper... I suspect we'll find under the scrutiny of others that these conclusions are plausible but hardly at the level of confidence claimed. People seem to be objecting to the biblical archaeology side of things but as others have pointed out the work was done by another group and the biblical types don't like the results. I look forward to hearing more about it!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:36 PM on September 24, 2021
This kind of thing gives me a headache. I remember headlines exclaiming "Wise men followed supernova to Bethlehem!" which sounds science-y for a second until you ask yourself how a supernova would do that; it wouldn't be parked over the manger. And shepherds wouldn't be out in the fields on the Feast of the Epiphany, and there were no such Three Kings mentioned anywhere, and there wasn't any such census mentioned anywhere, and if there was a census, why would you go back to your birthplace to be counted, instead of being counted where you actually live? The supernova explains nothing. I was whining about this on the Feast of the Epiphany one year to a technician in my lab, and one of my colleagues wandered in and said "Of course the Three Kings followed the star!" and the technician and I sadly rolled our eyes.
posted by acrasis at 2:05 PM on September 24, 2021
posted by acrasis at 2:05 PM on September 24, 2021
On reread, or TBH re-skim, the "sciency stuff" may be legit science by legit scientists, but it's assembled to frame a narrative that isn't science at all. Various things pop out as fishy:
"The project is under the aegis of the School of Archaeology, Veritas International University,..." It's not really clear what being "under the aegis of" amounts to, but we can safely assume organizational and resource support. At any rate, they just don't say. It's almost as if they were trying NOT to say "supported by."
"The extensive, ongoing excavations at TeH have continued for fifteen consecutive seasons since 2006, involving principal investigators assisted by..." Who is actually doing the field work here and what are their methodologies? "Involving" is doing a lot of work here but it's a very safe bet the PIs weren't there in 2006. I'm no archeologist and I don't play one on TV but there's a lot of careful documentation and material management that has to be done between collection and analysis and we have absolutely nothing to suggest it was done rigorously or systematically.
Pretty much everything the paper says about salinity and hypersalinity is extremely sus, even when framed as speculation. Sure, it can help "explain" the long abandonment of the site, but that wasn't really begging to be explained in the first place. But it sure fits into the Biblical narrative.
I mean, I get where some guys could say, "these weirdos want to fund us to do some cool science, why not?" But then write your article in a way that frames your science--however good it may be--around the funder's narrative is kinda out there and it's just weird to me that it ever got published in its current form.
But I have doubts that the science was even very good because however good their lab methods and analysis may be--it sure looks pretty impressive!--for all I can tell they started with a bunch of samples collected by a bunch of biased amateurs and just basically assumed their field work was sound. Absolutely nothing in this paper dispels that suspicion.
Credulous scientists were among the late James Randi's favorite marks. And for good reason.
posted by sjswitzer at 4:51 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
"The project is under the aegis of the School of Archaeology, Veritas International University,..." It's not really clear what being "under the aegis of" amounts to, but we can safely assume organizational and resource support. At any rate, they just don't say. It's almost as if they were trying NOT to say "supported by."
"The extensive, ongoing excavations at TeH have continued for fifteen consecutive seasons since 2006, involving principal investigators assisted by..." Who is actually doing the field work here and what are their methodologies? "Involving" is doing a lot of work here but it's a very safe bet the PIs weren't there in 2006. I'm no archeologist and I don't play one on TV but there's a lot of careful documentation and material management that has to be done between collection and analysis and we have absolutely nothing to suggest it was done rigorously or systematically.
Pretty much everything the paper says about salinity and hypersalinity is extremely sus, even when framed as speculation. Sure, it can help "explain" the long abandonment of the site, but that wasn't really begging to be explained in the first place. But it sure fits into the Biblical narrative.
I mean, I get where some guys could say, "these weirdos want to fund us to do some cool science, why not?" But then write your article in a way that frames your science--however good it may be--around the funder's narrative is kinda out there and it's just weird to me that it ever got published in its current form.
But I have doubts that the science was even very good because however good their lab methods and analysis may be--it sure looks pretty impressive!--for all I can tell they started with a bunch of samples collected by a bunch of biased amateurs and just basically assumed their field work was sound. Absolutely nothing in this paper dispels that suspicion.
Credulous scientists were among the late James Randi's favorite marks. And for good reason.
posted by sjswitzer at 4:51 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'll add that among the authors, most of whom were in the earth sciences, materials, and instrumentation/sensing fields were just two clearly-identified archaeologists. One of whom is affiliated with this university.
Never send a Geologist to to do an Archaeologist's job. (I mean even if you actually send them and don't just, for all we know, give them some bags of rocks and minerals to look at with their fancy instruments.)
posted by sjswitzer at 5:13 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Never send a Geologist to to do an Archaeologist's job. (I mean even if you actually send them and don't just, for all we know, give them some bags of rocks and minerals to look at with their fancy instruments.)
posted by sjswitzer at 5:13 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
One section in particular really stands out. It's short, so I'll quote it in its entirety.
Ethics declarationsposted by sjswitzer at 5:22 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Shocked quartz is a strong indicator of a huge explosion. It's often associated with meteor impacts. It doesn't happen if, say, a rival tribe sets your city on fire. Regardless of the biblical angles in the story, the evidence for an extraterrestrial impact is strong.
posted by Zpt2718 at 7:14 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Zpt2718 at 7:14 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Shocked quartz is a strong indicator of a huge impact but not something that can remotely be the result of an "airburst." No shockwave in air can transfer its energy into quartz sufficient to shock it.
To be sure, the idea of an ancient city or region being destroyed by a meteor is fascinating and relevant and indeed entirely possible! Moreover, the idea that an ancient event might have echoes in lores, epics, and religious traditions is appealing and also entirely possible. I'm even intrigued by the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis, unlikely as it may be (very unlikely indeed). But this just isn't it.
But back to "airburst." Why is that even being hypothesized? Only because there's no impact crater sufficient to explain the shock. So an airburst is a nice explanation for the lack of a crater but it doesn't explain the shock at all because no airbust is capable of generating energy sufficient to shock quartz.
posted by sjswitzer at 7:51 PM on September 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
To be sure, the idea of an ancient city or region being destroyed by a meteor is fascinating and relevant and indeed entirely possible! Moreover, the idea that an ancient event might have echoes in lores, epics, and religious traditions is appealing and also entirely possible. I'm even intrigued by the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis, unlikely as it may be (very unlikely indeed). But this just isn't it.
But back to "airburst." Why is that even being hypothesized? Only because there's no impact crater sufficient to explain the shock. So an airburst is a nice explanation for the lack of a crater but it doesn't explain the shock at all because no airbust is capable of generating energy sufficient to shock quartz.
posted by sjswitzer at 7:51 PM on September 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
"The Sumerian tablet K8538 is hypothesized by Seifert as the first reliable eyewitness account of such a cosmic impact. The clay tablet was a late Babylonian copy of a much older Sumerian original, presumably from 2193 BCE. It was preserved for millennia as a direct report of God's omnipotence. K8538 may be regarded as the original source for the tales of Genesis"
posted by clavdivs at 8:27 PM on September 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 8:27 PM on September 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
Me on seeing the headline: This sounds like some biblical archaeology bullshit.
Me after clicking through and reading the paper: Hm, actually this is pretty interesting. Not my field but they seem to have multiple lines of evidence that sound compelling, I wonder what the actual experts think.
Me after clicking through to this thread and also some of the Twitter commentary by actual experts: Nope, sounds like some biblical archaeology bullshit.
posted by biogeo at 8:43 PM on September 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
Me after clicking through and reading the paper: Hm, actually this is pretty interesting. Not my field but they seem to have multiple lines of evidence that sound compelling, I wonder what the actual experts think.
Me after clicking through to this thread and also some of the Twitter commentary by actual experts: Nope, sounds like some biblical archaeology bullshit.
posted by biogeo at 8:43 PM on September 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
This is why I love MetaFilter
posted by mumimor at 12:21 AM on September 25, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by mumimor at 12:21 AM on September 25, 2021 [4 favorites]
Yeah, I think that video by Scott Manley sums up my feelings at this point pretty well. Is it plausible that an ancient city was destroyed by an astronomical impact? Unlikely but plausible, yes. Would it be a compelling explanation for the origin of an oral tradition that eventually was recorded as the biblical story of Sodom? Hell yes! Does it seem like there's a lot of red flags being raised by experts in various different fields? Yup. Should we be convinced by this? Nope, right now it looks like motivated reasoning is a better explanation for how this paper came to be than as a result of a process of observation-driven inquiry.
His point about the danger of highly interdisciplinary teams is also something I wanted to mention. A team of mediocre scientists who share a common background and can critique one another can be much greater than the sum of its parts and produce excellent work, but a team of mediocre scientists who have completely different training from one another and are forced to just assume that the others on the team are doing their work properly can be less than the sum of its parts, even assuming everyone involved is acting in good faith (which, considering the associations of some of the authors of this work, is not necessarily a given).
posted by biogeo at 10:45 PM on September 25, 2021 [4 favorites]
His point about the danger of highly interdisciplinary teams is also something I wanted to mention. A team of mediocre scientists who share a common background and can critique one another can be much greater than the sum of its parts and produce excellent work, but a team of mediocre scientists who have completely different training from one another and are forced to just assume that the others on the team are doing their work properly can be less than the sum of its parts, even assuming everyone involved is acting in good faith (which, considering the associations of some of the authors of this work, is not necessarily a given).
posted by biogeo at 10:45 PM on September 25, 2021 [4 favorites]
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posted by doctornemo at 6:22 AM on September 24, 2021 [18 favorites]