Tall el-Hammam
A Bronze Age city in Jordan whose sudden destruction was blamed on a cosmic airburst in a 2021 paper later retracted.
- Location
- Southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea
- Modern country
- Jordan
- Excavated by
- Project led by Steven Collins (Trinity Southwest University), from 2005
- Destruction
- Middle Bronze Age, c. 1650 BCE
- 2021 claim
- Cosmic airburst (Bunch et al., Scientific Reports)
- Status of claim
- Paper retracted April 2025
What is Tall el-Hammam known for?
Tall el-Hammam is a large archaeological mound in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea. It was a major city in the Bronze Age and was destroyed around 1650 BCE. Excavations led by Steven Collins have run since 2005, and Collins argues that it was biblical Sodom.
In September 2021, a team of 21 authors led by Ted Bunch published a paper in Scientific Reports arguing that a fireball exploding in the air, larger than the 1908 Tunguska event, melted pottery and killed the inhabitants. They suggested the event could lie behind the Sodom story. Critics questioned the mineral evidence, the images and the reading of the human remains.
After a long investigation, Scientific Reports retracted the paper in April 2025, saying the proposed destruction mechanism was not sufficiently supported by the data; some authors disagreed. Many archaeologists think warfare and fire explain the destruction, and that the Sodom identification is not established.
Listed as a contested claim: the 2021 airburst study linking the city's destruction to Sodom.
Mentioned on these pages
- PlaceSodom
Sources
- Jerusalem Post, 'Was Sodom destroyed by a comet? Journal pulls controversial study'Reference
- SAPIENS, 'Pseudoscience About the Tall el-Hammam Site'Reference
- Retraction Watch, 'Journal investigating Sodom comet paper for data problems'Reference
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