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00:00It's a lost city that was leaked down in legend for 1,500 years before it was rediscovered.
00:07But no one has found the Bible's most evil lost cities.
00:11It's like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
00:13Of Sodom and Gomorrah. At least not yet.
00:16Look at this stuff. It's bizarre. It's like a hailstorm or something.
00:19It says they were wiped off the face of the earth.
00:22But sealed for ages under the earth, new discoveries are finally cracking the mystery.
00:27This place is just nuts. Bone just all over the place.
00:32Bone fragments everywhere.
00:35What really happened to Sodom and Gomorrah?
00:47I'm Jeff Rose. I'm an archaeologist and an anthropologist.
00:50And I'm on a hunt for two of the most famous lost cities in the world.
00:54Sodom and Gomorrah.
00:56Behind every legend there's a compelling true story.
00:59My mission is to discover the evidence that brings this truth to life.
01:03You can call me the legend hunter.
01:05I'm here at the Dead Sea, one of the lowest points on earth, looking for two of the world's most famous lost cities, Sodom and Gomorrah.
01:12Which, according to the Bible, were destroyed by the wrath of God somewhere along these shores.
01:17It's one of the Old Testament's most famous and frightening stories.
01:26The people of Sodom and Gomorrah are punished by God for their sinful ways.
01:30God rains fire and brimstone down from the heavens and wipes the cities of the plain off the map.
01:45Some scholars believe that Sodom and Gomorrah were built near the Dead Sea during the Bronze Age around 2100 BC, 4,000 years ago.
01:58There are several Bronze Age sites in this region that are the most likely contenders.
02:03My mission is to find these cities and figure out what actually destroyed them.
02:10So here's how I'm gonna find those lost cities.
02:12I'm gonna go to Bronze Age sites in an area called the Land of the Plain, which is near the Dead Sea on the Jordan side.
02:18I'm gonna look at Bronze Age sites because it has to be from a time when there was still water in this area and people could live there.
02:24And I need to find signs of some kind of natural disaster that left destruction across the entire site.
02:37I hiked to the top of Mount Nebo to get the lay of the land.
02:40This is the same peak Moses climbed in the Bible.
02:44Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, and the Lord showed him all the land.
02:54So this is it. This is the setting of the legend of Sodom and Gomorrah.
02:58There's the land of the plain.
03:00There's the mountains where Abraham watched the fires burning from Hebron.
03:04There's the Dead Sea itself.
03:06I'm standing in one of the most geologically active places in the world.
03:11The Bible tells us Sodom and Gomorrah were located near the Dead Sea.
03:15The Dead Sea lies directly over the Jordan Rift formed millions of years ago.
03:20It's one of the most earthquake-prone places on Earth, and it's the lowest place on Earth.
03:27So was it an earthquake that brought down Sodom and Gomorrah?
03:32A terrible drought?
03:34A cataclysmic flood?
03:38A cosmic event like a meteor strike?
03:40Or did the ground actually open up and swallow these cities completely?
03:48There's a reason they call these disasters biblical.
03:52So which one was it?
03:54I want to find out.
03:56All right, gather around the campfire, folks.
03:58Let me tell you the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
04:00The story starts with Abraham and his nephew Lot.
04:05Abraham settles to the west of the Dead Sea and Lot to the east in the land of the plain.
04:11Over time, this area becomes known for their depravity and for mostly their inhospitality.
04:18And so God decides, I need to test these people because this isn't good.
04:21And if they don't pass the test, I'm going to wipe them out.
04:24So he sends two angels down and they come to the city of Sodom and they stay in the house of Lot.
04:29That evening, all the townspeople come banging on the door of Lot's house and they say,
04:34send those two new strangers out so that we may know them in the biblical sense.
04:39And Lot knows that the survival of his people depends on if they're going to be hospitable or not.
04:44So he does what any good host would do.
04:46And he says, you can't have these two men, these two angels, but you can have my daughters.
04:52The angels strike the townspeople blind and they say, that's it.
04:56It's just a lot. You have to flee.
04:58You and your wife gather up your family, gather up your belongings and get out of town because it's about to get real.
05:03So Lot takes his family and they flee the town and just as they get out,
05:07fire rains down on the city, sulfur and brimstone.
05:11But as they're fleeing, his wife does what she's told not to do.
05:15She looks behind and as she looks back, she's turned into a pillar of salt.
05:21Ever since this passage in the Bible is written down, people are wondering, are there really a Sodom and Gomorrah?
05:27Can we find them?
05:29I think we can.
05:32The nice thing about the Sodom and Gomorrah story is it's very specific about the geography.
05:36According to the Bible, Lot and his two daughters left Zohar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zohar.
05:45He and his two daughters lived in a cave.
05:47I'm heading to explore a cave near Zohar that could be the actual place where Lot and his daughters hid.
05:54Jordanian archaeologist Mohamed Dejar is an expert on Bronze Age sites.
05:59I can't imagine having to do this walk.
06:02If I was Lot's family, everything has to be brought up.
06:06Wow, that is a spectacular view.
06:09This is the land or the plain, yes.
06:12Yeah, it's certainly well watered.
06:14It fits the geographic description in the story because at the end of the story, Lot and his family flee to the cave and they watch the fires burning from there.
06:23Now, what about this cave?
06:24Yeah, let's go and see it.
06:27This is the oldest part of the whole site here.
06:30This is the infamous Lot's cave.
06:32Yes, supposedly, at least people 2,000 years ago believed that this is Lot's cave.
06:41In fact, artifacts have been found here from Lot's time period about 4,000 years ago, the Bronze Age.
06:49I can imagine Lot and his daughters huddled in this dark cave, the last survivors of Sodom and Gomorrah.
06:56Is this the only cave near Biblical Zoar?
07:01Yeah, this is all you need. You need the shelter, you need the water, and you need some fields around you anyway.
07:08And it is a very safe place here.
07:11So let's go have a look at some of the other stuff outside.
07:12Yes.
07:14Water is key to survival in any harsh climate like this.
07:17If I can find evidence of a water source on the side of this dry mountain, then I'll feel more confident that Lot could have settled here.
07:23And if so, then historical Sodom and Gomorrah should be nearby.
07:28Look at this. This is all plastered. This is a little irrigation channel.
07:31So these guys really were good at manipulating water.
07:35This is really an ingenious way of directing the water down to their cisterns.
07:39Although this reservoir was built after the Bronze Age, it shows me just how much water was once coming out of the side of this mountain.
07:49Even if water was scarce on the plain, it would have still been flowing up here.
07:53So the question is, is this Lot's cave? Well, it's somebody's cave, somebody in the Bronze Age.
08:00There's a water source here, and we're right near biblical Zoar.
08:03So it certainly fits the description of the myth.
08:06And, you know, whether the guy was named Lot and whether he was fleeing a destroyed city, who knows?
08:10But everything else seems to fit.
08:13The geography makes sense, but I need to take a closer look at how destruction affects an ancient city.
08:19I'm going to Petra, a lost city that survived a cataclysmic event, to look at the ruins and to find parallels to our story.
08:27Once the glittering capital of the Nabataean Empire, even as an ancient ruin today, Petra is considered one of the new seven wonders of the world.
08:36The people that built Petra were called the Nabataeans.
08:40They started building it around 9 BC.
08:42This was their capital. This was the gem of their kingdom.
08:46In fact, the word Petra means rock.
08:51I stopped by Petra because it's a classic example of a lost city that was written down in legend for 1500 years before it was rediscovered.
08:59You have to pass through a long, narrow gorge called the Sikh just to get to the entrance of the main city.
09:07Its location inside this vast canyon with few access points provided the Nabataeans with solid protection and an impressive entrance for visitors.
09:16Petra.
09:17This incredible building behind me is called the treasury, but it's not a treasury at all. It's actually a temple.
09:32It took 20 years to carve from the rock.
09:34It was built to wow the desert traders when they came through this mile long corridor to get into the city.
09:41And even to this day, it has that effect. Your jaw just hits the ground when you see it.
09:47The amazing thing about Petra isn't just that the whole city is carved into the rock, but it's the rock itself.
09:52I mean, look at these swirling layers of red and blue. It's just unbelievable.
10:01Look at this. This is all an old aqueduct here that directs water into the city.
10:06And one thing the Nabataeans were really good at was controlling water.
10:11The legends we have of Petra tell of a very specific kind of destruction by earthquake.
10:15So I'm here to see if I can see that earthquake damage and actually have physical evidence of why it was lost.
10:22These are the signs of destruction I need to identify to find my lost cities.
10:27I'm meeting Ahmed, a Petra historian.
10:30Assalamu alaikum, Ahmed.
10:32Nice to meet you in person.
10:33Nice to meet you too.
10:34Let's see some of the earthquake damage.
10:36Yeah.
10:38Ahmed and I hike up to a spot where we can see the big picture of the city
10:41and what destruction looks like on a grand scale.
10:47Wow.
10:48So then this is the extent of the site where people were actually living?
10:51Yeah.
10:53Down there you can see remains of their houses, the foundation of their buildings,
10:56which were destroyed by earthquakes.
10:59Ahmed takes me to a place where I can see earthquake damage up close.
11:04So then this is the royal tomb.
11:07This is one of the royal tomb.
11:08One of them.
11:09Oh yeah, you said there were 13 kings.
11:10Yeah.
11:11Look at the crack up there at the ceiling.
11:13Yeah, this one.
11:14Those cracks because of the earthquakes had Petra.
11:16How do we know that's earthquake and not some sort of other geological process?
11:19Yeah.
11:20This is sandstone.
11:21So it would take an earthquake to crack sandstone.
11:23Yeah.
11:24Like in that way.
11:25It's not just the Old Testament that tells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
11:29The Quran describes the destruction quite vividly.
11:31We turn the cities upside down and rain down on them brimstones hard as baked clay.
11:38Behold.
11:39The city is lifted up and lifted up and thrown back down to the ground.
11:42You know, we believe that the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah are still now under water of the Dead Sea.
11:49Huh.
11:50We need some scuba gear.
11:51Oh sure.
11:52Thank you so much.
11:53You're awesome.
11:54You're welcome.
11:55Bye.
11:56Ahmed and others believe Sodom and Gomorrah lie under the Dead Sea.
11:59Even though diving expeditions have documented unusual formations, no actual evidence of a lost city has been found.
12:07The Dead Sea is extremely deep, hazardous for divers.
12:11The salt is so corrosive that it would probably destroy any evidence of a lost city.
12:17As I leave Petra, I realize the size of the challenge ahead of me.
12:22Petra was completely leveled to the ground by those earthquakes, but it was bound to be found sooner or later because it was made of stone.
12:28Sodom and Gomorrah are an entirely different matter.
12:31They're Bronze Age cities made of mud brick.
12:34Mud brick doesn't preserve, and in the Bible it says they were wiped off the face of the earth.
12:38It's going to be much harder to find them.
12:49Sodom and Gomorrah were punished in part for their lack of hospitality to strangers.
12:54As the Bible tells us, Sodom's sins were pride, gluttony and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door.
13:03God was pretty disappointed.
13:06As I search for the lost cities, I need to understand how hospitality works in this part of the world.
13:12So while the rest of Petra was abandoned and lost to the west, the Bedouin here still knew about it.
13:18In fact, where we're going tonight is a place called Little Petra, which is where they've been coming and going for a couple thousand years since the city was abandoned.
13:25This Bedouin camp is off the grid. The road is dark and deserted, but if I can find my way, it'll be worth it.
13:34The Bedouin, nomads of the desert, have guarded the secret of Petra for centuries.
13:40Maybe they're hiding a clue about Sodom and Gomorrah.
13:44As-salamu alaykum.
13:46You're welcome, my friend.
13:47Fadal.
13:48Shukran.
13:49I'm having dinner with Haider al-Musaid and his family, who have lived around Petra for centuries.
13:54Haider and his family embody the sacred Bedouin code of hospitality that goes all the way back to biblical times.
14:01Ah, shukran.
14:03Yes, this is my wife.
14:05As-salamu alaykum.
14:06As-Khalid.
14:07As-salamu alaykum.
14:08Stay over there.
14:10The meal's been cooking all day in an underground oven called a zarb.
14:17It's basically the Bedouin version of a slow cooker.
14:23That's a lot of meat in front of me here.
14:26Mahabad, Mahabad.
14:27Mahabad, Mahabad.
14:28Okay, we're gonna eat together.
14:30And the lavish meal is served.
14:32Its centerpiece, piles of succulent lamb and chicken.
14:36So I'm here in Jordan to investigate lost cities.
14:39Petra was lost for 1,500 years.
14:42You guys, Bedouin, knew it was here the whole time.
14:45How important is hospitality in the Bedouin culture?
14:48This is the experience of our parents and our brothers.
14:51Good, good, good, good, good.
14:54So Haider is just saying to me that we've learned hospitality from our ancestors,
14:58and it's absolutely essential when a guest shows up at your door.
15:01You have to feed them.
15:02You have to attend to their needs.
15:04Which is really just like that story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
15:07As the book of Genesis describes,
15:09The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening,
15:12and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city.
15:15He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate.
15:19Except in Sodom and Gomorrah, they didn't take care of them.
15:22They were inhospitable, and that was the crime.
15:25So maybe you could just tell me a little bit about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah,
15:29about the people of Lot in the Koran.
15:32Haider's version of the story comes from the oral tradition of his ancestors.
15:37It describes these towns as being turned upside down,
15:41just like in the Bible and the Koran.
15:44If Petra could be lost and rediscovered and have these folk tales about it,
15:48and all these legends in the Koran, maybe Sodom really existed too.
15:54Haider tells me that there were settlements around the Dead Sea,
15:58near where the story places the prophet Lot.
16:01He believes Sodom and Gomorrah can be rediscovered.
16:04And like others, he thinks Sodom and Gomorrah are near the Dead Sea.
16:09But where?
16:10I'm turning to one of the oldest maps in the world for clues.
16:14Recently, archaeologists have said that these two cities are Sodom and Gomorrah.
16:19I'm on my way now to a place called Madaba to look at a mosaic,
16:29which may be a treasure map to help me find Sodom.
16:36The mosaic map is located inside St. George's Orthodox Church.
16:40It's one of the oldest maps of the biblical world from the 6th century AD.
16:45So here it is, the famous Madaba map.
16:47Now just to orient you, this is north, this is south, this is east, and that's west.
16:53So where I'm standing here is in Jordan, and this is the Jordan River.
16:57So on this other side is the Holy Land.
16:59There's two areas that I'm really interested in.
17:01The first is up here, which is the north side of the Dead Sea.
17:04And then the other one is over here, which is the south side of the Dead Sea.
17:08And those are the two contenders for the cities of the plain.
17:11Zoar is in the south.
17:13I think that area is promising because its location and description match the story.
17:17So if Lot was in the cave I explored, Sodom would have to be nearby.
17:22The other location is to the north, and that's caught my interest
17:25because the map shows two cities close together.
17:30These two cities are the million-dollar question
17:33because we don't know the names of the cities.
17:35We don't know which ones they are.
17:36They're half cut off.
17:38Some scholars suggest these two cities are Sodom and Gomorrah.
17:42And one of them is in the exact spot where archaeologists discovered an ancient site.
17:51So now I'm off to Tel Al-Hammam, which some people think may correlate
17:55with that unknown city on the Madaba map.
17:58And the excavator of the site thinks that this may actually be Sodom.
18:02Archaeologist Stephen Collins believes Tel Al-Hammam was wiped out by a cosmic event called an airburst,
18:10a comet of flaming space debris.
18:14Collins has been digging here since 2005.
18:17He's convinced he's found Sodom.
18:20But I need to see the evidence first.
18:22So there's Tel Al-Hammam, that beige lump rising off the plain,
18:26and then way in back is the Dead Sea itself.
18:29So it certainly fits the biblical description of the well-watered plain of the Jordan.
18:34So let's go down to the site and have a look.
18:36It is blistering hot right now, and the humidity is by 100%, so I'm constantly soaked.
18:53A meeting up with Adiv Abushmais, a Jordanian archaeologist who excavates here with Stephen Collins.
18:59You're welcome.
19:01So in terms of what we're looking at here, which area of the site are we in now?
19:06We are in the site here, we call it the gate.
19:08The gate is from the Iron Age, but they're also finding evidence of massive Bronze Age walls here.
19:14So the city wall would have been from here all the way out to here, almost 10 feet.
19:22To build something like this, to build this kind of a fortification,
19:26you need strong centralized authority, you need specialized builders.
19:30These are not small villages or pastoral people coming and settling down in tents.
19:35This is a massive city-state.
19:37So let's go find out if it's Sodom, though.
19:42Not only is it built on a high, fertile plain with access to water,
19:46it's heavily fortified with a gate, another clue from the biblical story.
19:51The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city.
19:56When Lot saw them, he rose to greet them.
19:59Just come down into here.
20:02This is the kind of profile an archaeologist dreams about.
20:05This is incredible.
20:07So this is the base of the wall, the foundation, and then there's some little bit of mud brick preserved,
20:13and these would have been huge mud brick walls.
20:14That's it.
20:15Okay.
20:16Remember that Sodom and Gomorrah were made of mud brick.
20:22I'm feeling good about the age and location of the site, but we have to check another major box.
20:27We need to find evidence that the site was destroyed completely by a massive fire event.
20:33So there should be an ancient burn layer throughout the site.
20:45Now, I'm seeing a lower burning level over here in this section.
20:50Let's go have a look at that.
20:52It's the right timeframe for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but the burnt layer so far is limited to this area.
21:00I can't say this is the fire and brimstone written in the Bible.
21:04Although some scholars have suggested that these destruction layers were caused by a meteor shower,
21:09it could also have been a structure fire.
21:13So this black line here is the destruction of biblical Sodom, supposedly,
21:18but that doesn't really make sense in my mind,
21:21because why would there be people coming back in the Iron Age, in the classical period?
21:25The city is described as being turned upside down,
21:28so it's not really fitting the description all that well.
21:31So I think I need to take this investigation in a different direction.
21:35Regardless, Tel al-Hammam was an extraordinary ancient city occupied on and off during ancient times.
21:42The team will continue to dig for further evidence to prove this is Sodom.
21:47I'm beginning to form my own ideas about other possibilities.
21:52I keep thinking about the Dead Sea.
21:54The Quran tells us the cities are right on the high road from Mecca to Syria,
21:59the place where the Dead Sea is now.
22:02Even if Sodom and Gomorrah were once located along these shores and fell into the Dead Sea because of some natural disaster,
22:09it's unlikely any evidence would have survived 4,000 years.
22:13Still, the Dead Sea and this harsh climate must be central to our story.
22:19So when you see those salt formations way above the Dead Sea,
22:22you really get a sense of how much fluctuation there is in the rainfall around here.
22:26If there was a drought significant enough to wipe the population out,
22:30that would add yet another natural disaster to my list of possible endings for Sodom and Gomorrah.
22:35The thing that I find so fascinating about this landscape in Jordan and also throughout all of Arabia,
22:41is that it wasn't always desert.
22:434,000 years ago, if we looked out, you'd see like green and you'd see rivers and lakes,
22:48and it was a really lush, fertile place.
22:51Only since that event, 2100 BC, 4,000 years ago, did it become this desert that we know today.
23:01Something happened here right around the time of Sodom and Gomorrah that changed the climate,
23:05and I want to know what that was.
23:07To answer that question, I need to go to the other side of the Dead Sea, to Israel,
23:11where there's some important geological clues.
23:24I'm just here outside Sorek Cave in Israel, south of Jerusalem in the hills.
23:29The cave was found completely by accident about 40, 50 years ago.
23:34They were quarrying the local rock.
23:36Somebody was about to drop dynamite into a hole until they realized the entire ground underneath was hollow.
23:42And that's where they found the cave.
23:45Mira, it is so nice to meet you.
23:47Miriam Bar-Matthews is a geologist who's been studying this cave for years.
23:54Oh, my God.
24:01This is incredible.
24:03I've seen a few caves, but this is out of this world.
24:08But it is surreal.
24:10Like a subterranean fantasy land.
24:12Yeah, it's a fantasy land.
24:15This four-million-year-old cave is a hidden repository of climate history.
24:20By analyzing the stalactites and stalagmites in the cave,
24:24Mira can pinpoint rainfall levels from different time periods.
24:27Now, this had been a stalactite hanging from the top of the ceiling.
24:31Mira, this was a stalagmite.
24:32Now, how old is this one?
24:33Mira, this started to grow about 25,000 years ago until present.
24:37So we have a complete sequence of the last 25,000 years.
24:41Mira, yeah.
24:42Okay.
24:43Mira, this is an example that we actually sliced like this.
24:48And each of these rings can be dated, so we can know precisely when each of these rings formed.
24:53Mira, yeah.
24:54And we see that the chemistry tell us that something really major happened about 4,200 years ago.
25:04A cross-section of this stalagmite indicates a severe drought around the same time Sodom and Gomorrah fell.
25:11This cave is spectacular.
25:12It's this complete sealed record of climate change.
25:16So by about 5,000, this is probably when our Sodom and Gomorrah cities were being founded,
25:22it's very wet.
25:23And then 4,200 years ago, it goes dry.
25:26And they were saying that this lasted for about 600 years and would have devastated all the civilizations in this region.
25:34The Bible tells us Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed overnight.
25:38But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.
25:47If a long drought drove people away, it would have taken decades.
25:50Hardly the swift punishment of a vengeful god.
26:00What I've seen at Sorak is this was one of those green periods when it was lush and fertile.
26:04And the people of the plain were living in a really wet environment.
26:09And it was only at 2100 BC that the going got tough and things began to dry out and those cities were wiped out.
26:23The reason I'm floating here like this is because this is the most saline body of water in the world.
26:27One third of it is salt.
26:30The Dead Sea is completely landlocked, so as water evaporates, it gets saltier.
26:36The last 35 years, the sea levels dropped at least 30 meters.
26:41The more salt, the easier it is to float.
26:44My crew and I have devised a little experiment.
26:47We're going to see how much weight it takes to sink me.
26:49Rock number one.
26:51Nothing.
26:52Rock number two.
26:55Nope. Almost, but not quite.
27:00This is it, rock number three.
27:03This is what it takes to sink me.
27:07If it took all this to sink me, imagine the cataclysmic event necessary to sink a city.
27:13The drought, about 4,000 years ago, left the Dead Sea at dangerously low levels, just like today.
27:23Nizar Abu Jaber is a geologist who believes there's a link here to solving the mystery of Sodom and Gomorrah.
27:30Nizar shows me what happens when water levels drop here.
27:34Look at these salts.
27:35Right, exactly.
27:40Yeah, it's definitely salt.
27:44You're on a lot of sodium diet.
27:46Yeah, exactly. That was my sodium for the day.
27:51Look at this stuff. It's bizarre. It's like a hailstorm or something.
27:55Just these little round bottles of salt.
28:00Weird.
28:02So here we can see actually where the salt is made.
28:05And you can see the cloudiness in some places in the water.
28:09And then as it gets lower and lower, it dries out.
28:12It gets those crusts that you have there.
28:14So as the level falls, it becomes more salty.
28:18Just walking across this, it really reminds me of that story of Sodom and Gomorrah, when the landscape is destroyed and wiped out.
28:28It just feels like that. It's just crackling, dead surface.
28:34I can see why Lot's wife turns to a pillar of salt in the story.
28:37It seems like everything around here turns to salt.
28:43And all of this is linked to rainfall.
28:46So the more rainfall, the higher the Dead Sea.
28:48The less rainfall, the lower the Dead Sea.
28:50But what does all this have to do with Sodom and Gomorrah?
28:54It turns out the biggest clue of all is right beneath our feet.
28:59So you see here now we're in the middle of this collapse.
29:03So it's a kind of sinkhole.
29:04Yeah.
29:06As the Dead Sea recedes, sinkholes appear on the shore.
29:09They form quickly and can open up without warning, with the potential to swallow anything above them.
29:20This is part of the sinkhole opening up here.
29:23Right, exactly.
29:24We're essentially walking on a landscape of Swiss cheese.
29:27Right.
29:2920 years ago, this giant sinkhole swallowed up an entire cement factory.
29:34And right now, we're looking at what's left of it.
29:37It's like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
29:40It's like a movie set, it really is.
29:41Yes.
29:42And you can see the tilted buildings.
29:43Everything is just kind of messed up and uneven anymore.
29:48This place is unbelievable.
29:50This factory was just swallowed up by these sinkholes.
29:53So that all you get now are just patches of rubble and concrete.
29:57So can I climb down in there?
29:59No, I don't think that's a good idea.
30:01You can see that these can collapse at any minute.
30:03So they're actually, people are warned to stay away from them.
30:07So we should probably back up.
30:09The other day, a 20-meter tree fell into a hole.
30:12Suddenly.
30:16God, you really do have to be careful.
30:18This whole landscape is falling apart.
30:19We just had an incident the other day with the crew where one of the goats got trapped in one of these crevices and somebody had to go and rescue him.
30:29Yes.
30:30Yes.
30:31Yeah.
30:32Whoa!
30:38These are incredible.
30:40These 10 feet, 20 feet fissures in the earth just opening up.
30:45Imagine if something happened like this 4,000 years ago, what people would have thought.
30:50They might as well have believed that God was punishing them.
30:54So do you think then, we have the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
30:59Right.
31:00In the Quran, it even says, turned upside down.
31:02Right.
31:03I mean, do you think it could have been something like this with these sinkholes just opening up beneath a city?
31:07Well, we see it in front of us, so this large facility that was totally destroyed by the geological activity in this place, sure.
31:16We know that sinkholes are capable of wreaking havoc on a biblical scale.
31:21And sinkholes are often triggered by earthquakes and other seismic activity.
31:25And here we are now, in the land of biblical cataclysms.
31:29I mean, yeah, this could be, if you take away the concrete, this could be Sodom and Gomorrah.
31:33That's right.
31:43Well, Sodom and Gomorrah would have been mud brick.
31:45Yeah.
31:46And in that case, all of it would have been disintegrated and gone by now.
31:52We would have no trace of the cities left.
31:55It would only take a few decades and you wouldn't see anything.
31:59Destroyed completely.
32:01Is this the answer?
32:03Now, what about the fire and the brimstone?
32:05What's the deal? What is brimstone?
32:07I have no idea.
32:09I would guess it might be bitumen.
32:12And the bitumen, of course, was being extracted here and sold to the Egyptians who used it to make their mummies.
32:19I need to find out more about bitumen, and Nizar knows just the spot.
32:29So this is bitumen.
32:31Yeah, here it is.
32:32So this is a whole seam of bitumen in the rock.
32:34I want to do a little experiment to find out whether it could have caused the infamous fires of Sodom.
32:47Oh, that's a nice chunk that came off.
32:48It's boiling.
32:49It's boiling.
32:50I can see it melting, but not really catching fire.
32:53Right.
32:54Oh, there we go.
32:55Yeah.
32:56It demonstrates that all the elements of the story in the Bible are right here, but I'm still not sure what the final catalyst was.
33:05There's one last site to investigate just up the road.
33:08Like Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, Babaj Ra was abandoned.
33:16The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur.
33:20Nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it.
33:25Could the cities be one in the same?
33:30I'm reconnecting with Muhammad Najjar.
33:33Our meeting place is Karak Castle, a medieval stronghold built by the Crusaders.
33:38You picked a really nice spot for this.
33:39Yeah, it is actually.
33:41Stunning.
33:42So we're looking west, more or less?
33:44Yeah, we are looking northwest.
33:46If it were clear, the Dead Sea is just beyond those hills.
33:49Unfortunately, it's very hazy, but in clear weather, you could see part of the Jordan Valley.
33:54Wow.
33:56No wonder the Crusaders set their castle up here.
34:03Muhammad leads me to one last place.
34:07He's taking me to Babaj Ra because it's considered by many to be the most likely candidate for Sodom.
34:14We start at the cemetery where the site was first discovered.
34:18As I understand it, it's a big graveyard.
34:24It is a huge one.
34:25What are all these holes?
34:27These holes are tombs.
34:29How many do you think there are?
34:31They've calculated about 10,000 tombs or more.
34:3510,000 tombs.
34:36I'm going to go check it out.
34:37Good luck.
34:38I'll report back.
34:45So you see all these round, circular holes all over the place.
34:49You can tell.
34:50These aren't the graves.
34:51These are dug by looters.
34:53It's upsetting to see the amount of grave robbing here.
34:56You know they're not dug by archaeologists because we dig in straight lines and squares.
35:00Yeah, I mean, here, look.
35:02Pottery, pottery.
35:04This is just a whole field of pottery.
35:06And sure enough, the age of the pottery indicates that the place was abandoned around 2100 B.C., the time when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.
35:19This is interesting.
35:21I'm not sure what this is, but it's some huge capstone.
35:27Nature didn't put this here.
35:30Ah, wait a minute.
35:32Here's something.
35:34Okay.
35:36This is, it's cool.
35:37I've never seen a bronze age tomb before, but this is one of them.
35:41Let's see what's down here.
35:46It's a little eerie.
35:48So now I know what that stone is I just saw right there.
35:50That's one of these.
35:52And then a bunch of individuals would have been buried inside of this.
35:56I mean, it's amazing how well constructed these are.
35:59And this is, this is really impressive.
36:00So is this hauntingly beautiful place the real Sodom?
36:06To be sure, I'm heading to the main town site.
36:08So where are we here on the site?
36:09The city is to, to, to our left right there.
36:19This used to be a thriving city, protected by walls nearly 20 feet thick.
36:26Massive fortification walls.
36:28It is.
36:29You can imagine the huge investment they put in building this town.
36:35They worked with the same materials used to build Sodom and Gomorrah.
36:39This is mud bread.
36:41Okay.
36:42Muhammad tells me the most important clue.
36:443500 BCE, the inhabitants of Baba Draa were nomads.
36:49Later on, they started to have settlement here.
36:53It's interesting because it kind of fits with the Sodom and Gomorrah story,
36:56how when they talk about when they settled the cities of the plain.
37:00At about 2900 BCE, people started to build the city walls, these fortifications.
37:06So let's see, Baba Draa was a big settlement for its time, just like Sodom.
37:13The building materials are right, and so is the time period.
37:17But to be sure, it really is Sodom.
37:19I need evidence of a natural disaster akin to the wrath of God in the Bible.
37:24And what about destruction?
37:25Because that's really what I'm after here.
37:31Is this massive archaeological site Sodom?
37:34If we talk about the fortification wall collapsing, yes, of course, we have evidence of destruction.
37:40No burning layers or anything that, you know, where we find ash or charcoal across the entire site.
37:47The excavators reported some ash layers in this area, but it's very difficult to explain, I mean, the cause of these ash layers.
37:58I'm going to check out the ash layer to see if it's consistent with the fiery destruction in the Bible.
38:02Did you bring that brush?
38:03Yes, I did.
38:05Can I see for a second?
38:06Sure.
38:08Yeah, there's some charcoal in the section.
38:14So there is some burning, but, you know, if you're going to make any argument to link this site with Sodom or a city that was destroyed by fire, we'd have to find this everywhere.
38:23Come on over here.
38:24So we have another section that's exposed.
38:27And here, just to give it a little brush, you don't see any of that.
38:31So this is just a meter away, or four feet away, and there is no charcoal on the same level.
38:37So I think we can immediately disprove fire brimstone did not destroy this place.
38:44It wasn't wiped out overnight with fire and brimstone, but over time by a massive drought.
38:49But where's the sign of a sudden catastrophe here?
38:53That leaves me without a solid location for Sodom and Gomorrah.
38:58Or does it?
39:00I keep thinking about the Dead Sea and those sinkholes.
39:03I want to go back and take another look.
39:06This place is unbelievable.
39:08This factory was just swallowed up by these sinkholes so that all you get now are just patches of rubble and concrete.
39:15I'm starting to think that it's the sinkholes that killed Sodom and Gomorrah.
39:23My search for the lost cities of Sodom and Gomorrah has taken me across Jordan from crumbling ruins to the barren coast of the Dead Sea.
39:30And that's where I find the most likely suspect, sinkholes.
39:36A groundbreaking new theory I hadn't even considered when I started this journey.
39:41It's like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
39:43It's like a movie set, it really is.
39:45We would have no trace whatsoever.
39:49Sinkholes form here during times of drought, and there was a severe dry period at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah's demise.
39:56So this area behind me here with all the sinkholes is an actively eroding area where new sinkholes are forming every day.
40:03So I'm dying to have a closer look, but I've got to be very careful because they could open up at any time.
40:08It's not the safest place in the world.
40:18In fact, the geologist I talked to when he came here said he sunk down to his waist immediately.
40:23I keep thinking of that line where it says, after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, the land itself was destroyed.
40:32And I look around here and it really seems to fit that description.
40:39I just want to make sure that this is stable before walking across it, because look at these holes there.
40:45Could sinkholes like these, produced by a long period of drought, have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, leaving no trace of the two lost cities?
40:53I just heard some hollow sounds while I was walking across this edge of the sinkhole, so I think we've gone far enough. Time to pack up and go.
41:06I now believe the southern coast of the Dead Sea is the setting for Sodom and Gomorrah.
41:12Literally every day there's seismic activity, which could trigger a sinkhole.
41:17Just imagine, you're living in this city and you wake up one morning, and the whole thing gets sucked into the ground.
41:23A huge cloud of smoke comes billowing up with the dust that's kicked up from this event.
41:28Abraham could see it all the way over there from the mountains of Hebron. Lot could see it from his cave near Zoar.
41:33This lines up the geography perfectly.
41:37This, to me, is the simplest, most elegant solution to the mystery of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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