Carbon dating put the date of the tower's beams at 2350 BC - the early Bronze Age. From the way their bones were broken, he concluded that they were crushed to death - possibly because an earthquake brought down a stone tower on top of them. He has examined the skeletons of three men discovered at the early Bronze Age site of Numeira near the Dead Sea. So were there big earthquakes in the early Bronze Age? According to American forensic anthropologist Professor Mike Finnegan, the answer is yes. Tubb believes the early Bronze Age was the only time that towns matching the descriptions of Sodom and Gomorrah could have existed at all. He found evidence of an early olive oil factory, showing how sophisticated life had become, even in these ancient times. Tubb excavated a site called Tell es-Sa'idiyeh, north of the Dead Sea. But there was one point in the history of the region when a wetter climate meant the entire area could well have thrived - in the early Bronze Age, between 1800 BC and 2300 BC. The whole area around the Dead Sea is now parched and barren, and the image of thriving towns is incongruous. Jonathan Tubb started by working out whether Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed. The dwellings of Sodom slide towards the Dead Sea during the liquefaction event Dr Madabhushi then subjected the model to a simulated earthquake - and his data provided the ultimate proof on whether whole towns could have been destroyed. They travelled to the Middle East to pursue their research, and their findings there enabled Dr Gopal Madabhushi, at the Cambridge University Centrifuge Laboratory back in England, to build an accurate scaled-down model of the buildings in Sodom, and the ground on which they stood. So complete would be the destruction, the event would pass into folklore.Ĭould science prove that Harris's scenario might have happened? Professor Lynne Frostick, a geologist from Hull University in England, and Jonathan Tubb from the British Museum, decided to investigate just that. He became convinced the conditions there were right for a huge earthquake that would trigger a massive landslide. Harris spent a decade working in the area.
The Bible places Sodom and Gomorrah in the region of the Dead Sea, between what are now Israel and Jordan in the Middle East. Graham Harris is a retired geologist with a passion for solving ancient riddles - and the clues to this one, he says, are in the Bible itself. However, one man is convinced that Sodom and Gomorrah not only existed, but were also destroyed by a terrible natural apocalypse matching the description in the Book of Genesis. The story is certainly dramatic - but is it just fiction? There's no agreement among archaeologists, scientists and Biblical scholars that Sodom, and its sister town Gomorrah, existed at all - let alone that it came to a sudden and apocalyptic end.
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