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00:00Of all the catastrophes in history, one stands out.
00:11The Old Testament story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
00:19In a storm of fire and brimstone, God destroyed whole cities to punish man's wickedness.
00:30Could this terrible legend be based on a real apocalypse?
00:53Out of this dark landscape, a mythical tale of divine wrath has grown.
00:59The terrifying story of Sodom and Gomorrah is set somewhere in the vicinity of the Dead Sea.
01:09It's an extraordinary place, one of the natural wonders of the world.
01:15In the heart of the ancient land of Palestine, the Dead Sea separates Israel and Jordan in the Middle East.
01:24According to the book of Genesis, Sodom and Gomorrah were two of the cities of the plain.
01:39The men of Sodom, it's written, were wicked.
01:42Such sinners against the Lord, he decided to destroy them.
01:46God allowed Lot, the one good man living there, to flee with his family.
01:51But Lot's wife disobeyed the warning not to look back and was turned into a pillar of salt.
01:57The Lord rained down fire and brimstone.
02:05He destroyed everyone living there and everything growing in the ground.
02:15Lot and his daughters were the only people to survive the apocalypse.
02:20Could a story so fantastic be grounded in truth?
02:33This man is convinced it is.
02:36Graham Harris spent a decade working as a geological engineer in the Dead Sea Valley,
02:42patiently collecting data on the natural environment.
02:45In retirement, he delved deeper into the archaeology of the region
02:50and began to see connections between the historical record and the Old Testament legend.
02:58To me, it is fascinating in that it describes in glowing detail,
03:03in a very short space in the Bible, a disaster.
03:08We've puzzled for a long time over the scale and the enormity of this disaster,
03:13but in short, Sodom and Gomorrah were there, and then they were gone.
03:19And we've been puzzling ever since, over the last 4,000 years, exactly what happened to them.
03:31With the few scattered clues in the book of Genesis as his starting point,
03:35Graham has looked at the scientific knowledge of the region.
03:38He believes he's pieced together a picture of a real disaster that befell a real place.
03:44This is a seismically active area.
03:54Earthquakes are well known.
03:55We have several minor earthquakes every year.
03:59It would have been a very massive earthquake that would have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
04:05And if they had been built on unstable ground and the earthquake had resulted in a massive landslide,
04:12that would account, I feel, for the total destruction of these cities.
04:19It's a bold theory that a landslide following an earthquake so decimated thriving cities that, to this day, nothing at all remains.
04:37Only the sparse ruins of other settlements in the area hint at what the long-lost Sodom and Gomorrah may once have looked like.
04:51Graham is convinced he's right, but to most scientists, his theory is guesswork.
05:17If he's to convince them, he has a lot to prove.
05:21That cities like these did exist in the Dead Sea Valley.
05:25That an earthquake could have struck them.
05:27And that it could have triggered a catastrophic landslide.
05:38Even if each piece of the puzzle is plausible,
05:42can Graham fit them together to show that the Old Testament apocalypse might really have happened?
05:51His home-spun theory is about to send a team of scientists on a journey of investigation
06:00that will end in this high-security lab at Cambridge University,
06:04with a dramatic experiment to reconstruct the 4,000-year-old calamity.
06:09The journey starts with two leading scientists so intrigued by Graham's theory,
06:22they want to see if it stands up to scrutiny.
06:26Jonathan Tubb from the British Museum specialises in the archaeology of the Bible lands.
06:31Professor Lynn Frostick is drawn to the extraordinary geology of the Dead Sea area.
06:37Both suspect Graham's theory might be plausible, but they need facts to support their hunch.
06:44I don't believe that we're just chasing a fairy tale with Sodom and Gomorrah.
06:50And what I'm interested in finding is the geological explanation for the catastrophe, if you like,
06:56which brought these cities to an end in such a dramatic way
06:59that they're actually written down 2,000 years later.
07:03Yes, the folk memory.
07:04The folk memory, that's what I'm after.
07:05What sort of hard-line sort of facts would you go after to be able to nail this thing down?
07:13What we need to do is to look for evidence of seismic activity
07:17during the period of time when Sodom and Gomorrah might have been there and might have been destroyed.
07:22And the second thing we need to do is to look for evidence of unstable ground,
07:26ground which could be shaken and become unstable as it was shaken.
07:29So there are really two lines of evidence that we need to look at.
07:32Yes.
07:33Lin will seek out fellow Earth scientists to explore whether the geological record fits Graham's theory.
07:41Jonathan is going to delve into the archaeological evidence
07:44to see what light it sheds on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
08:03Jonathan has worked on digs in the Holy Land for over 30 years.
08:08He's a world expert on the people who lived during the time of Genesis, the Canaanites.
08:16His research has convinced him that many Old Testament stories are inspired by actual events.
08:23Genesis, like the other early books of the Bible, was, in my opinion, written many years,
08:36thousands of years after the events depicted.
08:39The stories weren't created out of the blue.
08:43In many cases, they used folk stories, folk traditions, which were based on real events.
08:51For example, folk memories of the Black Sea bursting its banks may have inspired Noah's great flood.
09:11The Exodus story may echo the real exodus of a foreign dynasty from Egypt.
09:17And here, in Jericho, Jonathan can see the roots of another incredible tale.
09:22These mounds are all that is left of the oldest city on earth.
09:33The Bible says it was here that Joshua and his army marched round and round,
09:39blowing trumpets and bringing the city walls tumbling down.
09:43Excavations found ancient walls had been repeatedly rebuilt because of earthquake damage.
09:52Jonathan believes it was this constant destruction that passed into folklore.
10:02I think the situation with regards to Jericho may well be something like this.
10:08When the Bible writers were putting together the story of Joshua's conquest of the land of Canaan,
10:14they reached Jericho.
10:16And somebody said, hang on a second, Jericho, Jericho.
10:20Ah, that's where all the walls came falling down.
10:23All you've got to do then, throw in a few trumpets and you've got a great story.
10:30So, in effect, what you've done, you've taken a kernel of historical reality,
10:37which may actually have happened 5,000 years ago,
10:41and you've transplanted it into a new time frame.
10:48We may be dealing with a similar situation with regards to Sodom and Gomorrah.
10:54If the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is grounded in reality,
10:59when could it have happened?
11:00The clues are in the Bible.
11:07The Old Testament story begins by describing Lot's journey,
11:12east out of Egypt to the land of Canaan,
11:16to find good grazing for his livestock.
11:23He settled amongst the cities of the plain
11:26and pitched his tents near Sodom.
11:32By analysing the ruins found in the region,
11:36archaeologists can narrow down the date of the story.
11:42The Bible specifically refers to the cities of the plain.
11:45And in the whole history of Palestine,
11:50there was only really one period
11:51when there were cities of the plain
11:54in the region of the Dead Sea.
11:57And that period is precisely the early Bronze Age,
12:01from about 2800 BC down to about 2300 BC,
12:05the early Bronze Age.
12:10But are the Bronze Age settlements found here
12:13large enough to fit the Old Testament's description
12:16of thriving cities.
12:19To answer that,
12:21Jonathan has returned to his own excavation site,
12:25Telus Sa'dir,
12:26north of the Dead Sea.
12:28Here he uncovered room after room
12:31of a massive building,
12:33far too big to be a simple dwelling.
12:34Inside, he came upon an extraordinary range of pottery,
12:45some of which he'd never seen before.
12:48The question was,
12:49what was it made for?
12:51The answer would convince him
12:53he'd found the site of an ancient city.
12:55The secret as to what was happening
13:03in this early Bronze Age complex
13:05was given by this one room here,
13:07because the whole of the floor surface
13:09was covered with sherds of very large store jars.
13:13Amidst all of these sherds, however,
13:15was something even more interesting,
13:17a layer about two centimetres thick
13:19of olive stones.
13:20And also,
13:23scattered amongst the olive stones
13:25were groups of shells,
13:26in groups of seven or 13, interestingly,
13:30almost as if they'd been used
13:31as counters or reckoners
13:33to keep a tally of something.
13:35It then became crystal clear
13:37when we started to put all of the evidence together
13:40we were dealing with olive oil production.
13:43Jonathan is convinced
13:48he's found an ancient olive oil factory,
13:51which would have only existed in a city.
13:56The sheer scale of sites like Teles-Sadir
14:00shows that cities fitting
14:01the biblical description of Sodom did exist,
14:04but only in the 500 years up to 2300 BC.
14:10After that, they were all abandoned.
14:13If Graham's theory is right,
14:16this was the only period
14:18when there were thriving cities
14:19that could have been struck
14:21by a natural disaster.
14:22But what about the unique geology of the region?
14:47Does it support Graham's theory?
14:49One of the natural wonders of the world,
14:58the Dead Sea,
14:59is the lowest place on the face of the planet.
15:07It lies nearly half a kilometre below sea level.
15:10For Lynne Frostick, it's a scientific miracle.
15:17The landscape is very dramatic.
15:20The geology is very dramatic.
15:23It's just one of the most wonderful places,
15:25I think, for a geologist to be.
15:27The Dead Sea is a completely unique place
15:34on the surface of the Earth.
15:36It sits along a very large crack.
15:41What's happened here is that the Earth has torn apart
15:43and the bottom has dropped out of this area.
15:46It's dropped down.
15:46It's fallen down into what's known as a pull-apart basin.
15:50The Dead Sea fills the bottom of this deep hole in the ground.
15:58But it isn't actually a sea at all.
16:01It's the saltiest lake in the world.
16:03And it lies at the centre of a highly active earthquake zone.
16:17The Dead Sea separates two continents.
16:21On one side, we've got the Arabian plate,
16:24a tectonic plate, which is actually moving northwards.
16:27And on the Israeli side,
16:29we have a part of effectively what is the African plate,
16:34which is moving slightly southwards.
16:36So the two sides of this area
16:37are moving against each other all the time.
16:41The plates, as they move against each other,
16:43obviously aren't very smooth.
16:45And so they effectively stick.
16:46But the movement goes on all the time.
16:48They're stuck.
16:49And eventually they'll fail.
16:50And they fail catastrophically.
16:52And that's what causes an earthquake.
16:59There are regular earthquakes in the Dead Sea region.
17:10But is there any evidence that one struck
17:12in the 500 years that cities existed here?
17:19On the Jordanian side of the lake
17:22lies the ancient ruined village of Numera.
17:25Amongst the jumbled piles of stones,
17:29archaeologists have found something quite unexpected.
17:34Graham has come here because their discovery
17:37might be just what he needs
17:39to prove an earthquake hit the region at the right time.
17:42There are no knife wounds to the ribs or other bones.
17:59Mike Finnegan is a forensic anthropologist.
18:02He studies human remains
18:04to find out how people met their death.
18:07And when the skeletons of three men
18:10were unearthed at Numera,
18:11something immediately caught his attention.
18:16This individual has many broken bones.
18:20An example is on the tibia or shin bone,
18:24we have these diagonal breaks.
18:27When bone is alive, wet, dynamic,
18:31it typically breaks in diagonal marks.
18:35And here is such a feature.
18:37Mike believes there is only one explanation
18:41for these breaks.
18:43The men were crushed to death.
18:45And now he thinks he knows how.
18:48What we think is that an earthquake
18:51may have happened, a mild one.
18:54The people who lived in the village
18:56evacuated the village.
18:58And then we think maybe these three individuals
19:01were left behind, possibly as guards.
19:05And as another earthquake shock came along,
19:08the roof fell in.
19:11Covering these individuals, causing their death.
19:13The beams that make up the roof
19:19have been carbon dated.
19:21And it suggests that 2350 B.C.
19:24was the date when this all fell in.
19:292350 B.C.
19:31Nearly 4,500 years ago.
19:35Exactly the right time
19:36and the right area.
19:38But when the Bible describes
19:49how Sodom and Gomorrah were overturned
19:51in one brutal night,
19:53it doesn't specifically lay the blame
19:55on an earthquake.
19:59Instead, it tells how the Lord
20:01rained fire and brimstone out of heaven.
20:04How the smoke of the land
20:06went up like the smoke of a furnace.
20:16Fires are a feature of modern earthquakes.
20:19But that's only because they rupture gas pipes.
20:22In 1995,
20:24the earthquake that struck Kobe in Japan
20:27snapped the city's gas supply.
20:30Stray sparks ignited infernos.
20:36Yet there were no gas pipes
20:40four and a half thousand years ago.
20:42So where did the Biblical fire come from?
20:46It turns out,
20:47the rocks around the Dead Sea
20:48conceal an explosive secret.
20:55Back in the 1980s,
20:57the Jordanians were preparing
20:59to build a road
21:00along the shore of the lake.
21:01They made some test drills
21:03just a few hundred metres
21:05down into the rock.
21:07What they found
21:07caught them completely by surprise.
21:12Flammable methane gas
21:13came rushing to the surface
21:14and a rogue spark
21:16set it on fire.
21:17An ancient earthquake
21:26could have ripped cracks in the ground,
21:29sending methane shooting into the sky.
21:32The landscape would have been engulfed.
21:34The Old Testament
21:35would have had its fire and brimstone.
21:38But would this earthquake
21:45have been big enough
21:46to make entire cities disappear?
21:49To find out,
21:51Lynn has come to a site
21:52on the Israeli side of the lake.
21:55She's here to meet geologist
21:57Shmuel Marko.
21:59He has found evidence
22:00of ancient earthquakes
22:01embedded in the rocks
22:03around the Dead Sea.
22:0470,000 years ago,
22:08the lake was much bigger
22:09and sediments left
22:11on the old lake bed
22:12are now exposed.
22:14All this startling
22:16soft white rock
22:17was formed
22:18as layer upon layer
22:20built up every year.
22:26And it is these layers
22:28that hold clues
22:29to the strength
22:30of ancient earthquakes.
22:32Ah, the layering's
22:33much clearer
22:34when you clean it off.
22:35Yes, you can see
22:36that there was
22:37two kinds of layers.
22:39Every winter,
22:41rock debris
22:41was washed down
22:42from the mountains
22:43and created
22:44a brown layer.
22:46Every summer,
22:47the lake's evaporation
22:48caused fine white particles
22:50of chalk
22:50to drift to the bottom
22:52of the lake,
22:53a white layer.
22:54This cycle
22:55was repeated each year.
22:56But in places,
23:04the delicate pattern
23:05has been interrupted.
23:08Shmuel believes
23:08this was caused
23:09by earthquakes
23:10stirring up
23:11the lake bed.
23:13We have a nice proof
23:15for this being
23:15an earthquake
23:16because these layers
23:18terminate
23:19at a fault.
23:20We see a fault here.
23:21Oh, that's brilliant.
23:24I can see that
23:25very clearly.
23:27By measuring
23:27how far the fault
23:28has slipped
23:29the displacement,
23:31Shmuel can tell
23:31the extent
23:32of earthquake activity.
23:34So quite a bit
23:35of displacement
23:35on this fault.
23:37Yes,
23:37altogether
23:381 meter
23:39and 75 centimeters
23:40of displacement.
23:42Have you got
23:43any idea
23:44of how big
23:44an earthquake
23:44would actually
23:45cause this
23:45sort of disturbance?
23:46At least
23:48magnitude 6
23:48because we know
23:51that earthquakes
23:53below magnitude 6
23:55do not tear
23:56the surface
23:57of the earth.
23:58So this will
23:58come out
23:59at the surface?
23:59It will form
24:00a step
24:01at the bottom
24:02of the lake.
24:04So we know
24:05that by the
24:06modern examples
24:07that these
24:09are strong earthquakes,
24:11probably destructive
24:12earthquakes
24:12of magnitude 6.
24:16earthquakes this size
24:31would not have
24:32obliterated cities
24:33altogether.
24:35They would have
24:35left ruins.
24:37So what might have
24:38happened to the ruins
24:39of Sodom and Gomorrah?
24:46Once again,
24:51the clue
24:51is in the Old Testament
24:52where angels warned
24:54Lot,
24:55flee to the hills
24:56or you will be
24:57swept away.
24:59This is where
25:00the next part
25:01of Graham's theory
25:02comes in.
25:04He believes
25:04that the earthquake
25:05was catastrophic
25:06because of the
25:07perilous land
25:08on which the cities
25:09were built.
25:10The cities needed
25:18to be close
25:19to a source
25:20of fresh water.
25:21But the rivers
25:22here are a mixed
25:23blessing.
25:25Dry in summer,
25:26they become raging
25:27torrents
25:28when the winter rains
25:29come.
25:35These flash floods
25:37dump huge amounts
25:38of sand and gravel
25:39on the shores
25:40of the Dead Sea,
25:41creating unstable ground.
25:57With major cities
25:59sighted very close
26:01to the water's edge
26:02on relatively unstable
26:03ground,
26:05a very major
26:06earthquake could well
26:08have reached
26:09resulted in a landslide
26:11of apocalyptic proportions.
26:15When this kind
26:16of terrain
26:17is hit by an earthquake,
26:19it can do something
26:20quite extraordinary.
26:22Geologists call it
26:23liquefaction,
26:25when ground can literally
26:26turn to liquid.
26:27well, liquefaction is extremely
26:37common in earthquake zones.
26:39And the reason for this
26:40is that where you get
26:41material which is very
26:42loose, badly packed,
26:45very holy,
26:46lots of holes in it,
26:47and if that's actually
26:49filled with water,
26:50when the whole thing
26:51is shaken,
26:51all the bits move down
26:53to the bottom
26:53and the water
26:54gushes out
26:55at the surface.
26:56It's very similar
26:57to the sort of thing
26:59you see on a beach
26:59when you jump on sand,
27:01it turns to jelly
27:01and all the water
27:02comes out.
27:06The only time
27:07liquefaction has been
27:08caught on camera
27:09was after a Japanese
27:11earthquake in 1964.
27:12The gushing water
27:14looks like a burst
27:16water main,
27:17but in fact,
27:18it's being forced
27:19out of tiny pores
27:20in the ground.
27:29The sand and gravel
27:30layers at the edge
27:31of the Dead Sea
27:32are perfect
27:33for liquefaction,
27:35and along the shore,
27:37Lynn spots
27:37the telltale signs.
27:41These great swirls
27:42of sand
27:43are just what
27:44she'd expect to see
27:45in ground that liquefied
27:47thousands of years ago.
27:49Well, originally,
27:49all of this sand
27:50would have been horizontal,
27:52and it's not like
27:53that anymore.
27:54The water coming out
27:55of the sediment
27:56has changed
27:58all the layers,
27:59disrupted them,
28:00and turned them
28:00to a great swirly pattern.
28:04When ground liquefies,
28:06the effect on anything
28:08built on it
28:09is devastating.
28:12The harbor in Kobe
28:15was completely destroyed
28:16when the earthquake
28:17hit in 1995.
28:19The harbor in Kobe
28:22was destroyed.
28:26The harbor's world
28:27was destroyed,
28:28and they were
28:29the needs of the
28:30minest of dust.
28:31And the water
28:32was destroyed.
28:34The water likes
28:35the river
28:36to the sky.
28:38All of this area liquefied because it was built on loosely packed ground, the same kind of ground conditions found by the Dead Sea.
28:49I think the chances of a major liquefaction event are very high.
28:55This material is easy to liquefy and once it does liquefy, the water has difficulty escaping, the pressure builds up and when it does go, it goes in a big way.
29:08The Dead Sea
29:19Few buildings remain standing after ground has liquefied, but Graham believes that Sodom and Gomorrah would have suffered even more than Kobe.
29:29He thinks that the gently sloping land by the Dead Sea would have been swept away in a landslide, erasing all trace of the cities.
29:44But his landslide theory is itself built on shaky ground.
29:50For it to have any credibility, Sodom and Gomorrah would have had to have stood on the very edge of the Dead Sea, the only place where the ground is liquefiable.
30:01Yet this stony landscape would have been poor farmland. Why would thousands of people have made it their home?
30:13It is indeed a very inhospitable and barren area, and undoubtedly it was just as inhospitable in days of antiquity.
30:23The only reason that I can think that people would have lived in this area is undoubtedly the large mineral resources that exist here.
30:35Graham believes there is one naturally occurring substance that would have attracted the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to settle here.
30:50Asphalt
30:52In ancient times, asphalt was a valuable commodity. Its waterproof and adhesive qualities were in great demand. Before the invention of cement, it held stone blocks in place.
31:10It was an essential part of boat building, keeping vessels dry.
31:15The Egyptians used it in a secret recipe to embalm their dead. The ancient word mumia, mummy to us, means asphalt.
31:30The Romans had a name for the Dead Sea, Lachas Asphaltitis.
31:39Strabo, the Greek geographer, describes how it was harvested in Roman times.
31:46And there is no reason to disbelieve that it wasn't harvested in a similar manner previous to that.
31:51To find out whether the Dead Sea Asphalt was used in Biblical times, Jonathan has met up with organic chemist, Ari Nissenbaum.
32:06They've come to this dry river bed that opens into the Dead Sea, because it's one of the few places where natural asphalt is still found today.
32:15Here we are looking at the face of the cliff, which is all covered with asphalt. For example, right here.
32:33Pretty messy sort of stuff.
32:35This stuff is full with sand, pebbles, other detrital material, so it needs processing to get it out of the rock.
32:45In the Dead Sea area, there are other types of asphalt which are much easier to work with.
32:52And let me show you an example.
32:54If you look at this sample here.
32:59Oh, wow.
33:00That's part of an asphalt block, which can be found occasionally and sporadically on the Dead Sea, floating on the Dead Sea itself.
33:11Very pure.
33:13Very pure. It's about 99.99% pure material.
33:17Gosh.
33:19How big do these blocks get, Ari?
33:21Well, these blocks can get pretty big.
33:24Some of them can reach a weight of several tons.
33:27For example, here you can see the size of such blocks.
33:31Good heavens, he's big.
33:32They are big, yeah.
33:34That's about a ton and a half in weight.
33:38But is there any evidence asphalt was an important trading commodity?
33:43Ari has chemically fingerprinted the asphalt in a floating block,
33:48and compared it to traces found in Egypt.
33:50Here's a sample of asphalt, which was found in Mardi, a suburb of Cairo, Egypt, which goes back to the early Bronze Age, the beginning of the early Bronze Age.
34:02And here's the same type of compound, the same type of fingerprinting, as can be found in the Dead Sea material, and they match up almost exactly.
34:10Gosh, that really is almost exact, isn't it? That's very, very clear indeed.
34:13Indicating that, indeed, material was exported almost 5,000 years ago from the Dead Sea Basin to Egypt.
34:22Very good.
34:23So the black gold given up by the salty waters would have been too tempting to ignore.
34:35It was such a valuable source of income that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah may have unwittingly built their cities on perilously unstable shores.
34:44Yes, I think there is, there is a possibility that there are other sites where we...
34:51Lynn and Jonathan have found evidence to support the ingredients for Graham's theory.
34:57Cities did exist in the time of Genesis.
35:00There was at least one earthquake during this period, and the ground was unstable.
35:06But a crucial question remains.
35:08Could all these ingredients have combined to create a massive landslide?
35:16Now, in a unique experiment, modern science can put this ancient apocalypse to the test.
35:28Everything hangs on a machine in this building in Cambridge.
35:32The machine is so powerful, it creates forces that would crush a man in seconds.
35:49And it's only a machine this formidable that can recreate what may have happened in the Dead Sea 4,500 years ago.
35:56It's a centrifuge. It can spin round 150 times a minute.
36:16The faster a centrifuge spins, the greater the force of gravity at the end of the arm.
36:21Fighter pilots are trained on centrifuges to simulate the extreme G-force on take-off.
36:28Spinning 50 times a minute, an 80-kilo pilot feels as if he weighs 10 times more.
36:41And the huge forces also make scale models of buildings behave like the real thing.
36:47Engineers can then simulate an earthquake to test the building's strength.
36:57The Cambridge experiments are so accurate, they've even been used to determine where it's safe to build nuclear power stations.
37:04We are going to create a model village which represents the type of buildings that would have existed 4,500 years back in the villages of Sodom and Gomorrah.
37:21The idea is to see whether, if there is a medium strength earthquake, is it possible for these villages to actually have disappeared into the Dead Sea.
37:35The most important part of the model is the careful recreation of unstable ground, simulating the layers of sand and clay found by the shores of the Dead Sea.
37:47The first layer is ready, sand which has been completely saturated to represent the water table of the lake.
37:54If Sodom and Gomorrah were victims of a landslide, how the next layer behaves will be the ultimate test for Graham's theory.
38:04Made of pulverised rock, rock flower, it simulates the impermeable clay found between the layers of sand.
38:15If liquefaction occurs, water will be shaken out of the sand, but become trapped below this impermeable layer.
38:23If the water builds up enough pressure, it'll create a slippery cushion.
38:27The land above it will slide off.
38:31Once safely installed, the model is ready to be plugged into sensors.
39:00It's the sensors which will measure in minute detail the all-important build-up of water pressure.
39:07Another wire connects to an earthquake simulator.
39:12Lin has told the Cambridge team to assume a magnitude 6 earthquake.
39:23Finally, the buildings can be added.
39:26What may look like rudimentary models are in fact precisely constructed to data supplied by Jonathan.
39:33When they're spun in the centrifuge, the huge G-forces generated will make them behave like life-size buildings.
39:41Can we start the centrifuge motor, please, John?
39:56Starting the centrifuge motor?
39:58Starting the centrifuge motor.
39:59As the centrifuge picks up speed, the centrifugal force lifts the model up.
40:17Increase speed to 20G, please, John.
40:20Increasing to 20G.
40:21Now the centrifuge is spinning 65 times a minute.
40:28It's already generating 20G force, more than a human could survive.
40:33But for the model to behave as if it were real, the centrifuge has to spin even faster.
40:38We reached 50G now.
40:42Here, 50G.
40:45Now the centrifuge has reached its target speed, creating 50G.
40:51The model has 50 times the force of gravity pressing down on it.
40:55The houses will now react like life-size buildings.
40:59This is the point when the earthquake can be fired.
41:02Sam motor to speed.
41:07Here we go.
41:095, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
41:14Suddenly, the picture from the onboard camera breaks up.
41:19The experiment is completed.
41:21But for the moment, it's impossible to see what has happened.
41:25Stop the machine, John.
41:27Stopping the machine at 15.47.
41:29Only when the centrifuge comes to a safe stop, can Gopal check the result.
41:45Wow.
41:47Oh, it's done a lot.
41:49The houses have sunk by quite a bit.
41:53You can see where the seashore was before.
41:56You can see all the oil has gone pretty much.
42:00I think it must have settled by at least a meter.
42:03Remember when we made the model, we had rock flour as an impermeable layer,
42:09stopping the water pressure from getting out.
42:12Now, what we have here is the incredible water pressures that built up following the earthquake,
42:18have actually pushed this fine material with it and brought it to the ground surface.
42:25And once this appears, it can be virtually guaranteed that the ground below has liquefied fully.
42:32The houses have sunk into the liquefied ground by the equivalent of a full meter, but they seem to have barely moved sideways.
42:44What we have seen here in the model is a clear sign of liquefaction.
42:51Now, the landslide, in this case, is being stopped by the end wall of the box.
42:58Without the end wall of the box, the landslide would have continued for much longer.
43:03But we cannot confirm this until we look carefully at the data.
43:14From thousands of measurements picked up by the sensors, Gopal has found an extraordinary result.
43:20Water, shaken out of the sand layer, did become trapped by the impermeable rock flour and did create a slippery cushion.
43:30What amazed Gopal was how long it was trapped for and how far the buildings would have slid.
43:39What would have happened is that the buildings and the landmass at the top would have slid on the top of this water for about 15 minutes
43:48and would have moved many, many kilometers.
43:51In real terms, what this would have meant is that all the houses would have ended up at the bottom of the Dead Sea.
44:10The experiment points to a scene of utter calamity.
44:13Moments after the earthquake struck, fires would have broken out.
44:19The ground underneath the cities would have turned to quicksand.
44:23The buildings wouldn't have stood a chance as they started their relentless slide towards the Dead Sea.
44:28Total devastation. All the people would have perished and total and complete destruction of the entire city in a matter of 15-20 minutes.
44:41Total devastation.
44:42Total devastation. All the people would have perished and total and complete destruction of the entire city in a matter of 15-20 minutes.
44:54Here we go. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
44:55Here we go. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
44:56Here we go. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
45:01Gopal has no doubt that the experiment supports Graham's theory. Now it's the turn of the rest of the team to see the results. For Graham in particular, the experiment supports Graham's theory.
45:08It's a nervous moment as he's homeriers, it's a nervous moment. It's a nervous moment. Let's subjective.
45:25Now it's the turn of the rest of the team to see the results. For Graham in particular, it's a nervous moment as he sees his cherished idea put to the test.
45:38And once this appears, it can be virtually guaranteed that the ground below has liquefied fully.
45:48To be quite honest, I am absolutely delighted.
45:51In fact, I'm ecstatic if, you know, that word could be applied to someone of such a doer personality as myself.
45:58But what it has done is widened the whole area of search now because we have produced potential areas underwater,
46:07you know, that perhaps need to be evaluated.
46:11Graham is now convinced Sodom and Gomorrah are underwater.
46:17Jonathan believes that liquefaction could have inspired the Bible story,
46:21but that the ruins may remain on dry land.
46:24The experiment has persuaded him of one thing, though.
46:27Because it would have produced a cataclysmic event,
46:32so memorable that people would have remembered it
46:37and put it into folk tradition for a long time afterwards.
46:40It has tested out the feasibility of there being, first of all, major liquefaction,
46:47and secondly, major failure.
46:50And what it's come out with is it said both of those are possible.
46:53Both of those could have happened.
46:55So although the Old Testament legend cannot be taken literally,
47:05the devastating landslide it hints at may well have been inspired by a real catastrophe.
47:10Graham is thrilled his theory stands up to scientific scrutiny.
47:30His greatest hope now is that geologists and archaeologists will follow his lead
47:35and embark on an underwater search for the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah.
47:43He believes it could lead to a momentous discovery.
47:50The ultimate goal is to obtain organic remains,
47:56whether they be people or whether it be wood that was used at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah.
48:02Once we have got that, we can radiocarbon date them
48:05and then we have got a fixed date on a very, very early biblical episode.
48:10We will be pushing back the frontiers of knowledge of the Bible.
48:13The Federal Reserve
48:19THE ZERVILLE
48:20The Political
48:32The Lion
48:33Transcription by CastingWords
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