Deus Artefacta: Scientific Report on the destruction of Tall el-Hammam (biblical Sodom)

Articulated body excavated in the MB
destruction layer of Tall el-Hammam.
courtesy of the TeHP Michael Luddeni

Bunch, T. E., LeCompte, M.A., Adedeji, A.V. et al. "A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea." Scientific Reports 11, no 1 18632 (2021), 1-64. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97778-3 Online article link

The original version had some errors so the publishers added an addendum of all affected figures used in the article and are reproduced at this link for the record and transparency. Updated report Feb 2022. Note also that the publishers have also given it a second peer review to identify any other errors. Their changes are transparently published.

This massive paper (some 64 pages), written by over 20 contributing authors (archaeologists and scientists), provides detailed forensic evidence that a cosmic airburst (not unlike the Tunguska airburst in Russia in 1908) obliterated Tall el-Hammam, the largest city in the Dead Sea area during the time of Abraham, (ca. C14 dating 1700 +/- 50 BCE).

During the early seasons (2005-2021) of the Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project (TeHEP), we discovered an anomalous “burn layer” just below the modern surface of the artifact-filled, half-mile long cultural mound and suspected it might provide hard evidence for the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom.

In 2014, the Comet Research Group (CRG) research team was invited to assist in the examination of material evidence from within the destruction layer of Tall el-Hammam. The CRG has authored more than 40 major journal publications defining another cosmic catastrophe at the close of the last ice age 13,000 years ago, the so-called Younger Dryas Impact. They also developed most of the protocols necessary to conduct this investigation.

Recreation of the excavated Palace complex
Tall el-Hammam

Dr. Silvia reported that

Far from being apocryphal fiction, the biblical account of destruction from the sky turned out to be supported by numerous lines of geochemical and material evidence buried below the surface of the ruin-mound. A carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contained peak concentrations of shocked quartz; melted pottery and mud bricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; iron- and silicon-rich spherules; spherules from melted plaster and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures instantly exceeded 2000 °C at a time described in the Bible. How hot is that? Enough to turn an automobile into a molten pool of iron!

Dr. Allen West of the CRG says of the findings, “Among more technical evidence, we discovered human bones that had been splattered by molten glass from the event. The glass is indistinguishable from that found at ground zero after atomic explosions. These people were killed by the heat and pressure of an atomic-like explosion but without the radiation.”

Comparison of clinker from TeH and trinitite from
ground Zero of the nuclear blast at Trinity NM.

Biblical scholars have for centuries proposed other locations for the “Cities of the Plain,” ranging from Tall el-Hammam at the north end of the Dead Sea to several sites to the south, but the text of Genesis 13 clearly puts the city in the north.

The seventeen lines of evidence described and explained in this paper demonstrate that Tall el-Hammam tells the right story of how the Creator of the universe used his creation to accomplish his purpose. In this case, as summarized from Genesis 19:24-25, His purpose was to destroy Sodom and all the Cities of the Plain (Kikkar), including all the people living there and everything that grew in the ground.

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