TeHEP update

In the TeHEP newsletter of 24th September 2021 [go to www.tallelhammam.com to sign up for the newletter] we learn from Stee Collins, the lead archaeologist on the project, that the article in Nature Scientific Reports [see yesterday News] on the Hammam airburst event, has not gone down too well in some quarters. The objection appears to revolve around the fact it is Biblical archaeology – and the discovery of the site of Sodom is definitely not welcome. Not wishing to name names but the biggest offender appears to be a very famous specialist in impact physics. What he doesn't know about impacts is not worth knowing – one might say. Unsurprisingly, he is prepared to wax lyrical over the Tunguska impact which occurred in a remote and largely unpopulated region in northern Siberia but when it comes to the Younger Dryas Boundary impact hypothesis he becomes almost incandescent. It seems he has taken the same line over Tall el-Hammam. The very fact it could be Sodom and therefore could potentially bring the Bible to life, leaves him fuming. That is not the kind of thing that academia, as it currently exists in the West, is willing to accept. Collins even invited him to become involved in the research into the top layer of the tell, but he declined. Presumably, because the archaeology was being done by Trinity South West. He passed him on to Marie Agnes Courty who has claimed an airburst event had occurred over the Khabur River system and plain at the end of the EB age, around 2200BC. She published some of her findings in the Proceedings of the SIS 1997 Cambridge Conference. However, although she offered advice she was unwilling to become involved. She had experienced such a negative reaction to her own research she probably felt it was just too much to go through it all again. Worth reading just to catch an idea of the sort of opposition they have received – and will continue to receive in the future. The article has touched a raw nerve in those who thought they had hammered the cellar door down on Biblical archaeology. However, the article was well received at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/09/21/bronze-age-city-destroyed-by-bolide/ … by the resident geologist, a uniformitarian. This seems to be mainly due to one of the authors, Christopher R Moore, that he admires for his incisive research and collation of evidence in various earlier papers. However, he was previously highly critical of the Younger Dryas boundary event hypothesis,  arguing online with one of the other authors of the paper, a couple of years ago. I was quite surprised by his reaction, full of praise for the depth of the evidence presented by the 20 authors. You can't win them all I suppose.