Sodom & Gomorrah Still a (Sexy) Myth

All of the headlines you will read for this story are wrong. Take the Times Online, for instance. "Clay tablet identified as asteroid that destroyed Sodom and Gamorrah." I believe it's only the piss-poor grammar that makes me think this story is about a giant clay tablet from space crushing two ancient Biblical cities. That aside, the story goes that researchers from Bristol University and a design firm called Reaction Engines, Ltd. have translated the cuneiform on the tablet and say it's a copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer who records his eye-witness account of a massive asteroid falling through the atmosphere. What does this have to do with Sodom and Gamorrah? Nothing really, which is why this story is so curious. Assuming, of course, it's not a massive April Fool's Day joke on the part of every online news outlet. Here are some of the problems: this tablet is supposedly a 700-year-old copy of an over 5,000-year-old original. The chances of it being an exact copy are slim to none. Also, only half the writing on the tablet is legible, and only half of that refers to a "white stone bowl" being "vigorously swept along". Not really definitive asteroid evidence. Further, the researchers involved claim to have located the impact of the asteroid in the Austrian Alps at Kofels, with a rain of fire falling in its wake and destroying about 386,000 square miles of land. Seems like such an event would leave a geological or archaeological record, but nothing is offered in the article other than a massive landslide at Kofels at some point in the past. Also, there's no other evidence that either Sodom or Gamorrah ever existed as anything other than a creepy story meant to scare you away from butt sex. More details (sort of) here.