INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, 30 March 1997
   COMET DESTROYED SODOM AND GOMORRAH
   Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed by debris from
   a comet, startling new archaeological and astronomical
   research suggests. Another bombardment from space may
   have brought on the Dark Ages.
   The research, to be presented to a special conference at
   Cambridge University this summer, provides dramatic
   evidence for an extraterrestrial cause for the wholesale
   collapse of several civilisations around 2200 BC.
   [Experts believe that the Biblical account of the
   destruction of the 'Cities of the Plain' may be an early
   description of what happened.]

   The conference, on natural catastrophes during Bronze Age
   civilisations, will bring together astronomers,
   archaeologists, geologists and other scientists to try to
   find an explanation for the near-simultaneous fall of the
   Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, the Sumerian civilisation
   in Mesopotamia and the Harrapin (sic) Civilisation of the
   Indus Valley. In all, some 40 cities are thought to have
   disappeared [about the same time] in a series of
   catastrophes.
   Astronomers calculate that the Earth is bombarded by a
   particularly dense storm of meteorites over a couple of
   centuries every 2,500 years - the last two blitzes
   occurred around 2200-2000 BC and 400-600 AD.
   [A leading] French archaeologist, Dr Marie-Agnes Courty,
   will provide powerful [corroborative] evidence [at the
   conference]: samples dating from around 2200 BC [that she
   has taken] from three [separate regions in the] Middle
   East(ern regions), all contain a [calcite] material found
   (only) in meteorites [but not on Earth].
   Tradition ascribes the destruction of Cities of the Plain
   [- thought to have been south of the Dead Sea - ] to

   destruction of the 'Cities of the Plain' may be an early
   description of what happened.]
   The conference, on natural catastrophes during Bronze Age
   civilisations, will bring together astronomers,
   archaeologists, geologists and other scientists to try to
   find an explanation for the near-simultaneous fall of the
   Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, the Sumerian civilisation
   in Mesopotamia and the Harrapin (sic) Civilisation of the
   Indus Valley. In all, some 40 cities are thought to have
   disappeared [about the same time] in a series of
   catastrophes.
   Astronomers calculate that the Earth is bombarded by a
   particularly dense storm of meteorites over a couple of
   centuries every 2,500 years - the last two blitzes
   occurred around 2200-2000 BC and 400-600 AD.


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