Sodom and Gomorrah Event

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. O. Emery ◽  
David Neev
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Fossil Flora ◽  
Jordan Valley ◽  
River Floodplains ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Dry Climates ◽  
City States ◽  
High Yields

About 7800 B.P. after the first effects of warmings and droughts associated with the Atlantic Interval, many people of the Mideast moved into river floodplains where suitable agricultural soils and freshwater were available. Prominent examples are in Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, and along the Jordan-Dead Sea rift. The extremely dry climates occasionally improved because of small fluctuations within the Chalcolithic and a larger one during Early Bronze II, when there was a 250-year wet interval. These climatic changes explain the settling, flourishing, and abandonment by the Ghassulians about 6000 B.C. and of the city of Arad, 4900 to 4650 B.P. at the fringe of the desert (R. Amiran and Gophna, 1989, n. 18; D. Amiran, 1991; Gilead, 1993). During the Early Bronze ages overall the climatic conditions in the Dead Sea region were not appreciably different from those at present, as attested by fossil flora found in excavations at Bab edh-Dhr’a and Numeira (McCreery, 1980). High yields of agriculture in fertile irrigated areas were an incentive to settle in the Plain of Sodom. This settling gradually intensified within the fertile plains of the Jordan-Dead Sea region as well as in Canaan through Early Bronze I and II but weakened toward the end of Early Bronze III. This is indicated by the pattern of settlements that developed from individual villages to city-states with satellite villages—mostly because of economic and social motivations— which later were changed into fortified communities (Esse, 1989). A gradual increase in fortification of Early Bronze settlements along the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley basins and the position of some of them along the narrow elevated step-faulted strip of the east foothills (Zori, 1962;Ben-Arieh, 1965; Rast, 1987 and personal communication, 1989) indicate increased need for defense by settlers against raids and invasions. These evidences of stress probably resulted from gradual climatic drying and warming. Investments in defense facilities were worthwhile if increased productivity was tempting enough. Such areas could have been found not only along the east foothills but also at the foot of the Amazyahu fault escarpment and in the delta of Nahal Zohar north of Mount Sedom if fresh or slightly brackish water was available there during the Early Bronze age.

scholarly journals Intermediate Bronze Age in Southern Levant (4200–4000 BP) – Why Did Four Cities in Transjordan Survive Urban Collapse?

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
Michał E. Bieniada
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Littoral Zone ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Dew Point ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Southern Levant ◽  
The Dead

Abstract The first urban culture of southern Levant collapsed and the first period of urbanisation of Canaan (Early Bronze Age I-III) terminated at around 4200 yrs BP. The Canaanites abandoned their walled cities, dispersed and underwent pastoralisation. However, the urban centres of southern Canaan were not destroyed. This fact may point to responsibility of the environmental factor and makes influence influence of anthropogenic factors uncertain, along with the most popular Amorite invasion/destruction hypothesis. A tremendous climatic change occurred at that time in many regions, affecting cultures and civilisations of the Ancient Near East and resulting in abandonment of cities, migrations and great civilizational changes. In southern Levant, virtually all cities were left in ruins with a mysterious exception in Transjordan where four cities: Aroer, Ader, Khirbet Iskander and Iktanu survived and existed throughout the period. Most probably when climatic conditions in Cisjordan excluded possibility of urban life, the ones in Transjordan conditions remained unchanged or altered in a very limited scale. It is now clear that after a period with quite humid and warm climate, the precipitation greatly diminished after 4200 yrs BP in a littoral zone of eastern Mediterranean. A part of Transjordan, probably due to presence of the Dead Sea that somehow created conditions that influenced precipitation, remained a climatic niche with decent rainfall that enabled concentration of population in and around big urban centres and continuation of urban civilisation. Warming in a littoral zone changed dew point temperature preventing formations of clouds above western slopes of Judean and Samarian Hills. Moist air, prevented from condensation was transported eastwards where it could reach ascending currents appearing over the Dead Sea. Masses of air with water vapour moving upwards could form rainy clouds in Transjordan.

scholarly journals A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted E. Bunch ◽  
Malcolm A. LeCompte ◽  
A. Victor Adedeji ◽  
James H. Wittke ◽  
T. David Burleigh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Jordan Valley ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Gold Silver ◽  
Carbon Soot ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The Dead

AbstractWe present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. 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.

Creep along the northern Jordan Valley section of the Dead Sea Fault

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 2494-2501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yariv Hamiel ◽  
Oksana Piatibratova ◽  
Yaakov Mizrahi
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea ◽  
Jordan Valley ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Valley Section ◽  
Northern Jordan

Dead Sea Levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Joy Kagan ◽  
Dafna Langgut ◽  
Elisabetta Boaretto ◽  
Frank Herald Neumann ◽  
Mordechai Stein
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organic Debris ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

The history of lake-level changes at the Dead Sea during the Holocene was determined mainly by radiocarbon dating of terrestrial organic debris. This article reviews the various studies that have been devoted over the past 2 decades to defining the Dead Sea levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages (≃5.5 to 2.5 ka cal BP) and adds new data and interpretation. In particular, we focus on research efforts devoted to refining the chronology of the sedimentary sequence in the Ze'elim Gully, a key site of paleoclimate investigation in the European Research Council project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel. The Bronze and Iron Ages are characterized by significant changes in human culture, reflected in archaeological records in which sharp settlement oscillations over relatively short periods of time are evident. During the Early Bronze, Intermediate Bronze, Middle Bronze, and Late Bronze Ages, the Dead Sea saw significant level fluctuations, reaching in the Middle Bronze an elevation of ≃370 m below mean sea level (bmsl), and declining in the Late Bronze to below 414 m bmsl. At the end of the Late Bronze Age and upon the transition to the Iron Age, the lake recovered slightly and rose to ≃408 m bmsl. This recovery reflected the resumption of freshwater activity in the Judean Hills, which was likely accompanied by more favorable hydrological-environmental conditions that seem to have facilitated the wave of Iron Age settlement in the region.

Environmental Data for Specific Sites within the Dead Sea Region

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. O. Emery ◽  
David Neev
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
South Basin ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The One

Discussion of Early Bronze cultural history at Bab edh-Dhr’a and Numeira sites east of the Lisan Peninsula and on the northeast flank of the Dead Sea south basin is guided mostly by Rast (1987) and Rast and Schaub (1974, 1978, 1980, and 1981). This epoch was divided by Rast and Schaub into two sections according to traditional archaeological chronology. The first section is the urban period of Bab edh-Dhr'a (4890 to 4340 B.P.) including Early Bronze I, II, and III. The second is the posturban period (4340 to 4190 B.P.), Early Bronze IV or the Intermediate Bronze age according to Kochavi (1967), Kenyon (1979), Gophna (1992), and R. Amiran and Kochavi (1985) as well as Middle Bronze I according to Albright (1962). Although no prominent cultural hiatus separates these two sections, the transition between them contains abundant indications of extensive destruction and fire events brought about by natural disasters such as earthquakes. Donahue (1980, 1981) considered that not just one but two severe earthquakes occurred, one about 4400 B.P. and the other 4350 B.P. Numeira was totally and finally abandoned after the second earthquake, whereas Bab edh-Dhr’a was reinhabited apparently as a result of conquest by seminomadic people of the same cultural background. This second earthquake probably was the one by which Sodom and Gomorrah were totally destroyed. Abrupt cultural changes also were recorded in the southeast Negev at Uvda Valley during transition from Early Bronze III to Middle Bronze I about 4300 B.P. These changes were from a gradually increasing population within a walled city having a life-style based on a combination of agriculture and animal husbandry into a more nomadic community with unfortified houses and primarily a grazing economy. According to Avner (1990, p. 133) “Subsequent to a brief climatic crisis at the end of the third millennium BC the climate improved, allowing the new culture to blossom in the desert.” This climatic crisis could have been extreme dryness. By the middle of the Intermediate Bronze age at about 4200 B.P., Bab edh-Dhr’a, the last Early Bronze site to survive was totally abandoned and the Dead Sea south basin remained basically unsettled for more than 1,500 years until Hellenistic time.

Fluctuations of Lake Lisan (the Dead Sea) during the last glacial: Implications for paleoclimatic changes of the Levant.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrazad Abu Ghazleh ◽  
Stephan Kempe
Keyword(s):  
Fresh Water ◽  
Lake Water ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Xrd Analysis ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Lake Basin ◽  
Fresh Water Input ◽  
The Dead

<p> </p><p>Calcareous stromatolite crusts overgrowing beach gravels and stabilising piles of rocks were observed on shoreline terraces of Lake Lisan along the eastern coast of the Dead Sea. The stromatolite crusts are thick, massive and hard, with a dark-grey or white-grey finely-laminated structure, indicating that they are mostly calcareous organic build-up of cyanobacterial origin. Samples from these stromatolites have been analyzed using Stable Isotopes (δ13C & δ18O), AAS and XRD analysis. The samples range in altitude between -350 m and -19 m, representing the time interval of Lake Lisan (~ 80-19 ka BP) according to our U/Th dating. Since stromatolites grow in shallow water, they are very sensitive to minor shifts in rainfall and evaporation and therefore an excellent tool to track small changes in hydrology, in climate and in paleoenvironmental conditions of the lake basin.</p><p> </p><p>Oxygen and carbon isotopic compositions of these stromatolites show a linear covariant trend with a strong positive correlation (r = 0.8) and large ranges of 7.85 and 6.78‰, respectively. This trend is most typical of primary carbonates formed in closed lakes. Isotopes analyses show low negative values of stromatolites from the lake highest stands at -76 m to -19 m, reflecting fresh water conditions of the lake basin at the last interglacial-glacial boundary (80-76 ka BP). The lowest values were derived from stromatolites at -103 to -119 m associated with the transgression of the lake to these high stands between 55 and 33 ka BP. The heaviest values were derived from stromatolites at -137 to -160 m indicating a change to dry climatic conditions in the Eastern Mediterranean that caused a subsequent drop of the lake level during MIS 2 (31-19 ka BP).</p><p> </p><p>The Mg/Ca ratio and the XRD analysis of the stromatolites correlate also with transgression-regression phases of the lake. Dominance of calcite in stromatolites at -76 to 0 m and inferred low Mg/Ca ratios of the lake water (i.e. ~2) imply a high fresh water input of the lake during the   highest stands period. A high Mg/Ca ratio of the lake water of >7 inferred from low-level stromatolite at -350 m and the existence of aragonite as the sole mineral reflect low fresh water input and high evaporation rates that caused a lake level regression during H6, ~ 60 ka BP.</p><p> </p><p>Inferred low Mg/Ca ratios of stromatolites at -247 to -101 m and the existence of calcite as a main mineral phase indicate wet climatic conditions of the eastern Mediterranean and lake level transgression to higher than -137 during MIS 3. The appearance of more aragonite in stromatolites at -137 to -154 m and the inferred high Mg/Ca ratio of the lake water points to a return to dry climatic conditions that caused a regression of Lake Lisan between 32 to 22 ka BP (MIS 2). However, the change in the mineral composition to pure calcite at -160 m in addition to the inferred low Mg/Ca ratio correlates well with the transgression of the lake to this level by the end of the LGM.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Characteristics and evolution of diurnal foehn events in the Dead Sea valley

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Vüllers ◽  
Georg J. Mayr ◽  
Ulrich Corsmeier ◽  
Christoph Kottmeier
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Type I ◽  
Type Ii ◽  
Aerosol Distribution ◽  
Lidar Measurements ◽  
Wind Velocities ◽  
The Dead

Abstract. This paper investigates frequently occurring foehn in the Dead Sea valley. For the first time, sophisticated, high- resolution measurements were performed to investigate the horizontal and vertical flow field. In up to 72 % of the days in summer, foehn was observed at the eastern slope of the Judean Mountains around sunset. Furthermore, the results also revealed that in approximately 10 % of the cases the foehn detached from the slope and only effected elevated layers of the valley atmosphere. Lidar measurements showed that there are two main types of foehn. Type I has a duration of approximately 2–3 h and mean maximum velocities of around 5 m s−1 and does not propagate far into the valley, whereas type II affects the whole valley, as it propagates across the valley to the eastern side. Type II reaches mean maximum wind velocities of 11 m s−1 and has a duration of about 4–5 h. A case study of a type II foehn shows that foehn is initiated by the horizontal temperature gradient across the mountain range. In the investigated case this was caused by an amplified heating and delayed cooling of the valley boundary layer in the afternoon, compared to the upstream boundary layer over the mountain ridge. The foehn was further intensified by the advection of cool maritime air masses upstream over the coastal plains leading to a transition of subcritical to supercritical flow conditions downstream and the formation of a hydraulic jump and rotor beneath. These foehn events are of particular importance for the local climatic conditions, as they modify the temperature and humidity fields in the valley and, furthermore, they are important because they enhance evaporation from the Dead Sea and influence the aerosol distribution in the valley.

II.—The Jordan-Arabah Depression and the Dead Sea

1888 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 387-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Israel C. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea ◽  
Jordan Valley ◽  
The West ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Gravel Bar ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Definite Correlation

The occurrence of numerous terraces on the mountain slopes over-looking the Dead Sea has been reported by several observers, but no accurate measurements of their elevations or definite correlation of the terraces on the opposite slopes of the depression, seem to have been attempted. In the central part of the Wady Arabah on the west flank of the promontory known as Samrat el Fedan, a terrace, or perhaps more properly a gravel bar, has been observed by Hull at an elevation of about 1300 feet above the Dead Sea. This is apparently a definite record of the surface level of the Dead Sea during a former period. On the sides of the Jordan valley the terraces range in height from a few feet to 750 feet above the river. The measurements reported show great variation due principally to an inclination of the surfaces of the terraces, towards the centre of the valley, but indicating also that they are not horizontal in the direction of drainage.

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