(September 24, 2021 at 11:12 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: well, on the face of it, the odds of a major bolide air burst of the magnitude described occurring over a given spot during historic times is extremely small. The two largest event of this nature to happen during the 20th century didn’t come close to causing any conflagration on the ground. AFAIK there is no record of such an occurrence within reliable historic records, which tend to suggest its frequency of occurrence over the land surface of the earth is at most once every few centuries. So the chance of one of these occurrences having visited a particular spot in the last 5000 years must be almost infinitesimal.
There were fires ignited due to the Tunguska event. And, according to the paper in Nature (I haven't followed up on the reference), there is another case of a settlement being destroyed by a likely air burst dated to about 12,600 years ago.
Most meteors would hit over the ocean. Those that hit over land would have likely been over unpopulated regions until pretty recently. So it isn't impossible that something like this happened. The question is whether the paper interprets the evidence correctly or not. It certainly does NOT try to play up the Sodom connection, mainly focusing on shocked quartz and directionality of destruction patterns.
In any case, it is an intriguing possibility. Just like a flood in the Tigris Euphrates valley that destroyed several cities is intriguing as an origin for the Gilgamesh flood. Conclusive? Not even close. But interesting if the interpretation of the evidence is upheld.