The Ancient Tsunami Of Israel
The Northern coast of Israel seems to have been hit by a gigantic wave 9,600 years ago. This mega-wave could have been up to 40 meters high. The coast of the Eastern Mediterranean certainly wasn’t a boring place to live.
Image by Elias Sch. from Pixabay
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The Eastern Mediterranean is very susceptible to earthquakes and underwater landslides that create tsunamis. Geologists now have evidence that a smaller tsunami should happen in the area about once per decade. They also found out that during the two last millenniums a larger tsunami should sweep through the area about once per 160 years.
Gilad Shtienberg from the University of California San Diego and his coworkers studied samples of sediments that come from the Tel Dor area in Isreal – south of the city of Haifa. They found out that a catastrophe happened there about 9,290 to 9,910 years ago. They found sea sediments with sand and shells up to 1.5 to 3.5 kilometers from where the coast was at that time. These sediments were brought there by a gigantic wave. It was the mammoth of tsunamis as the researchers estimate its height to be somewhere between 16 to 40 meters.
At that time, Isreal was inhabited for sure. The gigantic tsunamis certainly destroyed many sea-side villages in a way that completely wiped them of the surface of the Earth. And even villages that were located on higher grounds had the soil used for agriculture damaged by seawater. But we also do know that just 8,000 years ago – just a thousand years later – the area was again densely populated by humans.
Shtienberg and his team never thought that they would find evidence of a prehistoric mega-tsunami. When they analyzed the sediment cores at the university it was obvious they hit the jackpot. In a dry neolithic area, they suddenly saw sea-sand full of shells.
The stalactites in the nearby Carmel mountain range show evidence of a strong earthquake that happened about 10,000 years ago. Mapping the seafloor near the coast of Israel shows that there were at least two massive landslides that could have also caused the mega-tsunami. But it is very hard to date landslides that took place in the sea. But at least one of them could have possibly come from the same time period.
Many of you will probably think of the flood from the Bible when reading this article. But scientists think the flood in the Bible has been most likely stolen from Mesopotamian myths. And if that’s true then the flood that inspired them certainly did not take place in Israel.
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