Cosmic Airburst and Genesis

Then the Lord caused to rain upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. (Genesis 19:24&25)

Welcome back. A recent study by 21 multidisciplinary investigators affiliated with 17 academic and research institutions presented evidence that Tall el-Hammam, a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley, was destroyed about 1650 BCE by a bolide--a meteor that explodes in the atmosphere.

Location of Tall el-Hammam in the Middle East, north of the Dead Sea (NASA Space Shuttle image from www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3).

Proving or disproving that the event was the source of the biblical story of Sodom was beyond the scope of the study; however, the researchers did consider whether the details recounted in Genesis matched the details of a cosmic event. Equally important, Tall el-Hammam was possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that, after being passed down through generations, was written down.

Tall el-Hammam Study
Archeological excavations at Tall el-Hammam began in 2005. After 11 seasons, the excavations reached a stratum that revealed evidence of a catastrophic high-temperature event with a consistent SW-to-NE orientation. Concurrent with the event, 15 other cities and more than 100 smaller villages across the lower Jordan Valley were also abandoned.

The site excavators speculated that the cause of the destruction may have been a cosmic impact or airburst. They enlisted the study’s researchers to determine the processes involved.

Along with field investigations, the researchers conducted a wide range of analyses using a variety of analytical approaches. Given the multidisciplinary and complex nature of the work, they presented the evidence in eight major sections:

- Evidence for high-temperature burning of the city
- Melted construction materials
- High-pressure shock metamorphism
- High-temperature melted minerals
- Human bones in the destruction layer
- Implications of high salinity for agriculture
- Coeval destruction and burning of Jericho
- Analogous destruction events

Study Conclusions
After identifying 10 possible causes of destruction, including volcanism, warfare and tectonism, the researchers assessed 14 major lines of evidence: high-pressure shocked quartz grains; pottery melted above 1500°C; mudbricks and roofing clay melted above 1400°C; high salt concentrations in sediment and melted salt crystals incorporated into melted mudbricks; diamond-like carbon (diamonoids) formed at high pressure and temperature; soot, charcoal and ash, indicative of high-temperature fires; iron- and silica-rich spherules, some of which melted above 1590°C; titanomagnetite, chromite, zircon, quartz, platinum and iridium, melted respectively from about 1550°C to 2466°C; and low remanent magnetism, a counter-indicator of lightning strikes.

Melted pottery from Tall el-Hammam: potsherd of 6-cm-wide storage jar showing (c) an unaltered inner surface and (d) the highly vesicular outer surface (from www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3).

The only two mechanisms of destruction that could account for the entire range of evidence were a crater-forming impact or a cosmic airburst. With no known or observable crater in the area, the latter was favored and estimated to be more powerful than the 22-megaton airburst at Tunguska, Siberia in 1908.

The data suggested an airburst occurred southwest of Tall el-Hammam. The airburst produced a high-temperature thermal pulse that melted exposed materials, followed by a high-temperature, hypervelocity blast wave that leveled the city and caused widespread deaths.

Effects of hypervelocity blast wave shown on excavated section of Tall el-Hammam palace wall; yellow dashed line indicates NE wind direction of blow-over; blue arrows (4) mark intense wind abrasion of wall top (from www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3).

One significant observation was that, although local sediment melts about 1300°C, that is a minimum not a maximum temperature; embedded minerals melted up to about 2500°C.

Another was that the anomalously high salt content in the debris matrix was consistent with an airburst above either high-salinity sediments near the Jordan River or the hypersaline Dead Sea. The airburst distributed salt across the region, severely limiting agricultural development for up to some 600 years.

Wrap Up
The researchers note there are no known ancient writings or books of the Bible besides Genesis that describe what could be construed as the destruction of a city by a cosmic airburst or impact.

To keep us on our toes, they add that small but devastating cosmic events are expected to recur every few thousand years. The risk is low, yet the potential destruction is high, encouraging monitoring and mitigation strategies.

Cover your head and thanks for stopping by.

P.S.
Study of Tall el-Hammam in Scientific Reports journal: www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3
Article on study on EurekAlert! website: www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/931092
Sentry: Earth Impact Monitoring: cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/

Climate, Roman and Ptolemaic History

Welcome back. A recently published study identified the cause of abrupt climate change that contributed to some of most important political transitions in the history of Western civilization--the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom and the rise of the Roman Empire. 

Map of Roman Republic in 1st century BCE (from Pinterest).

Historians had speculated that a volcanic eruption of unknown origin was the most likely cause. The study pinpointed the volcano and characterized the eruption severity.

If like me, you’re a bit shaky on that era, I’ll begin with a quickie on the affected transitions. Squeezing centuries into a handful of paragraphs and focusing on dates, I’ve omitted a wealth of important background, such as the relationship between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.

Historic Background
The Late Period of Ancient Egyptian history ended in 332 BCE, when the Greeks conquered Egypt. The Greeks formed the Ptolemaic Kingdom in 305 BCE, and the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt until the Romans took control in 30 BCE, with the death of Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen. Despite controlling Egypt for nearly three centuries, the Ptolemaic dynasty never became Egyptian, instead, isolating themselves in Alexandria. 

Rome was a small city-state in the 6th century BCE, governed by kings. The Romans managed to overthrow the monarchy and create a republican government in 509 BCE. The Roman Republic lasted five centuries, growing in strength and conquering swathes of the Mediterranean region. 

Bronze statue of Julius Caesar located
at the Roman Forum in Rome (from
cestmoi.ca/en/bronze-statue-of-julius-caesar-in-rome/).

Although the Roman Republic was a democratic society with elected magistrates, Julius Caesar was appointed and reappointed dictator, the last time in 46 BCE, as Cleopatra was attempting to restore Egypt as a major power in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BCE. His death triggered a 17-year power struggle that ultimately ended the Roman Republic and led, in 27 BCE, to the Roman Empire. The Empire would be ruled by a series of Emperors and expand its rule in Asia and Africa.

The political transitions in Rome and Egypt in the 40’s BCE were exacerbated by a period of unusually cold climate, crop failures, famine and disease in the Mediterranean region.

Documenting the Volcano
The study was conducted by an international, multidisciplinary team of 20 researchers, led by the Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nev. The team determined that the climate-related impacts were caused by eruptions of the Okmok volcano some 6,000 miles away in Alaska.

World map showing Okmok volcano in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands, Rome and Alexandria.

The researchers analyzed volcanic fallout records in six Arctic ice cores from Greenland and Russia. They were able to delineate two distinct eruptions encompassing Caesar’s death in 44 BCE: a powerful, short-lived, relatively localized event in early 45 BCE, and a much larger, more widespread event in early 43 BCE, the fallout from which continued more than two years. The geochemistry of deposited tephra (ejected rock fragments and particles) identified the Okmok volcano as the source.

Members of the team collected corroborating evidence from around the globe, including tree-ring-based climate records from Scandinavia, Austria and California, and climate records from cave formations in China.

The climate proxy records indicated that 43 and 42 BCE were among the coldest years of the recent millennia in the Northern Hemisphere at the start of one of the coldest decades. Modeling also suggested that the high-latitude eruption led to pronounced changes in hydroclimate, including seasonal temperatures in Mediterranean region as much as 7°C (13°F) below normal during the 2 years following the second eruption.

The team matched the scientific findings with written and archaeological descriptions of the eruption’s impact, including the failure of the Nile River to flood and the unrest in the region.

The Okmok volcano caldera in 2013; the summit of the cone formed during the 2008 eruption is eroding and a lake is filling the crater’s bottom (photo by J.R.G. Schaefer, from Alaska Volcano Observatory, Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys, avo.alaska.edu/images/image.php?id=54161).

Wrap Up
Many different factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom; however, the climatic effects of the 43 BCE Okmok eruption played an undeniably large role. Identifying and characterizing the volcanic source and eruption fills a knowledge gap that long puzzled archaeologists and historians.

Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.
Example sources of Roman and Ptolemaic history:
www.britannica.com/place/Roman-Republic
www.historycrunch.com/republic-vs-empire-in-ancient-rome.html#/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire
www.ancient.eu/Ptolemaic_Dynasty/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom

Study of effects of Okmok volcano eruption in Proc. of National Academy of Sciences of USA: www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/06/25/2002722117
Articles on study on EurekAlert! and Science websites:
eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/yu-cca062220.php
www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/alaskan-mega-eruption-may-have-helped-end-roman-republic

Paleo-Sculpture Photo Addendum

Writing about Neanderthals and toothpicks for last Friday’s Tooth Sleuths, I remembered the photo shoot my daughter did in 2009 for an Ithaca, N.Y., newspaper article on paleo-artist John Gurche.

Although Gurche’s Neanderthal was hidden and he sculpted neither teeth nor toothpicks, I thought you might like to see him at work and Rachel’s photos (www.rachelphilipson.com).

Paleo-artist John Gurche working in an improvised studio in the lobby of Ithaca’s Museum of the Earth.

This sculpture characterizes a Homo heidelbergensis, a likely ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans.

Gurche told the interviewer that he spends about two months sculpting the head, taking special care of the expression.

Gurche explained that the figure’s extended arm, holding a to-be-determined dead animal part, represented an age of stone tools and the beginning of the concept of sharing.

The three figures Gurche was working on were for the Smithsonian. The standing figure characterized a female Homo erectus, who would be carrying an antelope carcass. Hidden from view behind her is our Homo neanderthalensis.

P.S.

-Ithaca Times article on John Gurche:
http://www.ithaca.com/news/local_news/natural-history/article_300268f9-1700-5103-8c75-4dbd698e6e4d.html
-Gurche’s website: www.gurche.com.
-Article on Gurche in Smithsonian Magazine:
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-closer-look-at-evolutionary-faces-8369070/?c=y%3Fno-ist
-Excerpt from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gurche
Gurche's works have been on display at the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution. He has created illustrations for National Geographic, and designed a set of four dinosaur-themed stamps that were released by the US Postal Service in 1989.

Tooth Sleuths

Welcome back. As much as I admire and respect each and every dentist, I am convinced that the ADA (American Dental Association) is in cahoots with popcorn producers. I chipped another tooth on an unpopped kernel. Actually, it might be the same tooth I chipped when I described the ordeals of having teeth before fluoride, floss and present-day dentistry in Dental Check-Up Time.

Knowing this day would come, I’ve been saving accounts of dental-related research. I’ll highlight three studies to give you something to chew on while I’m at my dentist. All fall under the archaeological umbrella.

Modern man and Neanderthal skull props.
(www.bjwinslow.com/gallery/skulls)

I’ve been tuned into dental anthropology since I was a grad student with a neighbor who was finishing his doctorate in anthropology. His major professor and sometimes my neighbor traveled the world to perform assessments of teeth--sort of an ADA-produced version of the TV show, Bones. Stay alert and you may see why I chose these three studies.

Neanderthals and Toothpicks

I’ve written about the shocking Georgia Toothpick Theft, when 374,400 plastic toothpicks were stolen from a toothpick manufacturer, but this toothpick news didn’t make the front page.

Researchers from Spain’s Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and two other institutions examined three, upper jaw, Neanderthal teeth found at the archaeological site of Cova Foradà in Valencia, Spain.

Grooves between the teeth showed signs of pulling a hard, narrow object, such as a toothpick, between adjacent teeth. Cool! I thought, but I was applauding a concert at the wrong moment. It turns out the use of toothpicks has been documented from the beginning of the genus Homo. Interproximal grooves on Neanderthal teeth are common.

Although the investigators’ morphological analyses found no evidence of dental caries or calculus (tartar), abscesses or bone perforation related to a cyst, there were indications of periodontal (gum) disease. They had documented the oldest case of using toothpicks to ease the pain caused by dental disease.

Strontium Measure of Migration

Not far from St. Louis, Missouri, is a UNESCO World Heritage site: the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, the largest and earliest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. The site, over 6 square miles, dates from the Mississippian period (800-1350), has some 120 mounds, and is estimated to have had a peak population of 10,000 to 20,000.

Mound at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.
(townplannerstl.com/Attractions/place/cahokia-mounds-state-historic-site/)

To better understand the settlement’s regional and cultural interactions and population history and diversity, researchers from the University of Illinois analyzed strontium isotope ratios of teeth.

Different isotopes of the chemical element strontium are found in most rocks, and the ratio of two of those isotopes, strontium-87 to strontium-86, varies with the geology. By consuming plants and water, humans and animals absorb strontium, thus collecting a signature of the local rock.

Because the strontium ratios found in teeth and bones reflect absorption at different life stages--tooth enamel ratios from infancy and childhood and bone ratios from the most recent 7 to 10 years--the different ratios are often compared in archaeological investigations.

For the Cahokia investigation, however, the researchers measured ratios from the teeth of individuals buried at different locations within the settlement, and compared those to ratios from the teeth of small animals found at the site, the assumption being that the animals had never left the site.

The analysis estimates that at least one third of the Cahokia’s residents came to the settlement from multiple places outside of the area.

Plaque Window to the Past

The last study illustrates how your teeth can become the center of attention. Don’t care for them and don’t visit your friendly dental hygienist to remove plaque, the biofilm that sticks to your teeth and causes decay and periodontal disease. Let that soft plaque build and harden to dental calculus (tartar), mentioned above.

After, say, 1000 years, the calculus on any teeth left in your skeleton may be selected for analysis, such as that led by the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Denmark’s University of Copenhagen.

Plaque is loaded with microorganisms; the fossilized dental calculus preserves the microbiome. The study’s large group of collaborators (over 25 from 21 institutions in 4 countries!) applied genetic and protein-assessing (proteonomic) technologies to determine the DNA and proteins in ancient dental calculus.

They characterized the microbiome in a diseased state, opportunistic pathogens, ancient antibiotic-resistance genes, a genome reconstruction of a periodontal pathogen, numerous bacterial and human proteins, and DNA sequences matching dietary sources.

The analysis and those to follow permit the investigation of pathogen activity, host immunity and diet, and thereby extend direct investigation of common diseases into the human evolutionary past.

Wrap Up

And there you have it. Three studies that employed different approaches: morphological analyses, strontium determinations, and the latest genetic and protein-assessing technologies. All sought to gain insight into our past and perhaps our future. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

-Toothpick paper in PLOS One:
www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0076852
-Article on toothpick paper on Science Daily website:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131017080300.htm

-Cahokia Mounds paper in Journal of Archaeological Science:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440314000302
- National Geographic article on Cahokia Mounds research:
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140307-cahokia-native-american-archaeology-mississippian/
-Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site website: cahokiamounds.org/
-World Heritage Site description of Cahokia Mounds site: whc.unesco.org/en/list/198
-Handbook of Environmental Isotope Geochemistry (Chap 35: Applications of Sr Isotopes in Archaeology):  www.springer.com/978-3-642-10636-1

-Plaque analysis paper in Nature Genetics, Feb 2014:
www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.2906.html
-The Times of India article on plaque analysis paper:
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/1000-years-old-microbial-Pompeii-unlocked/articleshow/30957394.cms
-Video presentation (5:31 min) of plaque work by lead author at March 2012 TED: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZB29iq_Zd8#t=78