Sodom during the time of Abraham and Lot

Hello everyone.

I decided to enter the monthly light challenge over at the Cartographer's Guild. This is my entry for a place to vacation for the summer. In my case, I wanted to go see the archaeological dig going on over in the country of Jordan. This is my map of what it is all about. This is still a Work in Progress.

Enjoy
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Comments

  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Hey Tony :)

    Keeping each other company on both forums I see!

    Watching this one with interest :)
  • Thanks Quenten and Charles. I promise I'll get back to it. Right after I started it I got really sick and now I'm just trying to keep from getting worse. But when I get a bit better I will do more work on this.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Get well soon, Tony :D
  • Thanks for the well wishes everyone.

    So I've added a bit more. It is difficult to make this map because I am relying on the archaeology to see where the buildings are, and trying to match the buildings as best I can to the real ones is difficult.

    Anyway, here is the updated map. Enjoy.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    This is coming on really well considering the nasty setback you've had, Tony :D
  • Thanks Sue. I've finally got the palace put in and some other parts of the upper city. I really need to get a wall started though.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Here's an idea.

    How about importing the photo you are working from and making it a very transparent sheet underneath the buildings and trees and things that you are adding, so that people can see just how much work you are putting into making this an accurate map of the place?
  • I would love to except I am not allowed to download it into my program. No one is legally allowed to store it in any kind of retrieval device so I can't even show a picture of it. To make matters worse, the image I'm working from is actually Isometric so making a top down view is quite difficult. The image you can view does not zoom in very well either without pixellating out so it's been quite a chore just trying to get everything right.

    But if you want to go see it, you can go to:

    tallelhammam.com

    You can see the photographs and images in many different places and in the archaeology reports.
  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    Trvial point: Trinitite was first found at the site of the Trinity atomic test in New Mexico and its defining characteristics are its glassy character and mild radioactivity with specific radioisotopes. It's not found at impact craters, although impact glass (impactite) is common from impact craters.
  • Hmm, that is interesting. I got my information from the archaeologist working at the site. I'm not sure why the archaeologist would say that they found trinitite near the site and say it came from the meteor. That is very odd.
  • There is a city in I think India or the Middle East, and some dino bones, that are higher than usual radioactive. If you go to a museum and see paint on the fossilized bones, that is metal paint to protect visitors from the radioactivity. A natural reactor was found deep in an area of west Africa a few years ago. Water level dropped, and the pitchblende deep underground went critical. These are 3 different locations, not one.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Its enough to make you shudder, really, knowing that something that died 65 million years ago is still dangerously radioactive.
  • Posted By: jslaytonTrvial point: Trinitite was first found at the site of the Trinity atomic test in New Mexico and its defining characteristics are its glassy character and mild radioactivity with specific radioisotopes. It's not found at impact craters, although impact glass (impactite) is common from impact craters.
    Posted By: TonnichiwaHmm, that is interesting. I got my information from the archaeologist working at the site. I'm not sure why the archaeologist would say that they found trinitite near the site and say it came from the meteor. That is very odd.
    Actually, it's not all that odd Tonnichiwa, it's a fairly standard mistake by a specialist in one discipline using a term from another in which they're less familiar. Given that trinitite is a melt glass (basically, any substance heated to melting point and then cooled very quickly so no definable crystals are visible in it), it's perhaps more understandable, particularly as impact glass can be somewhat similar in form to trinitite.

    Looking through some of the papers online, it's clear several objects that have had some of their near-surface layers turned into a glassy substance have been recorded from this area, and the interpretations put on them so far could be seen as favouring a high-powered meteoritic impact or airburst event (the latter is much more probable, given the lack of a definable, substantial crater). This might not be the only explanation, however.

    It may be worth considering revising the text with your map to reflect this better, and the fact it seems primarily to be Phil Silvia and his colleagues who are calling it the "Kikkar Event"; I can't seem to find any useful discussion of it by members of the impact science community so far, at least not online, which would have at least given an added degree of robustness to the case.
  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    Mohenjo Daro (and to a lesser extent, Harappa) is a fun one for destruction conspiracy theorists. Lots of melted stuff and some reported anomalous radiation readings.

    Fossils are often radioactive because the replacement process favors uranium in the groundwater.

    The natural reactor at Oklo was discovered because the fissible uranium isotope (U235) was depleted in certain parts of the ore body. A couple of billion years ago the total amount of uranium was higher and it had been concentrated via the same sorts of processes that make fossils more radioactive than you might expect.

    Fun stuff.
  • I'm always suspicious of 'findings' like this which seem to 'prove' the Bible. Is the archaeologist part of a Christian-sponsored team? Perhaps they are putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with fish?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Maybe they are fully trained and highly qualified archaeologists who also fancy that this automatically qualifies them as expert geologists ;)
  • Yes, there is often a degree of cross-specialization ignorance. Leads to erroneous conclusions
  • seycyrusseycyrus Traveler
    Why can't this piece simply be reflective of a story-line where the science is misconstrued?
  • DogtagDogtag Moderator, Betatester Traveler
    edited June 2017
    Hmm, I don't know that anyone said the science was misconstrued. Or have I misread the conversation? I think the key point made above is that an archaeologist probably mistook impactite from a meteorite impact for trinitite. Just as likely, the archaeologist meant impactite but simply used the wrong/imprecise term. Kind of like calling any old self-adhesive bandage a Band-Aid, when it's actually a specific brand name. Either way, and I could be wrong but, I think the general conclusion remains intact, that the destruction was caused by one or more meteorites.
  • Well, from my one archaeology class at university, I learned archaeologists don't study geology.
  • This is fascinating.... and i second the idea of an ideal vacation going to an archaeological dig. What fun that would be! Especially of a city with a history such as this!
  • DogtagDogtag Moderator, Betatester Traveler
    +1

    I just about spazzed during my visit to Pompeii (and Rome). Something so ancient and educational would be a real adventure.
  • I enjoyed Pompeii immensely. I've been to many ruins sites throughout europe and southern italy, mostly because of my love of history, i'm a dork, and was lucky enough to backpack europe twice with a great travelling companion back then....but wouldn't it just be grand to go and actually assist in the dig? I'm pretty sure there ARE vacations like that. I need to look into it!
  • edited June 2017
    I think it was just an honest mistake on the part of the Archaeologist. In the first video I watched about this dig, which is how I found out about it in the first place, he called it Trinitite. But I did some digging and he has a more recent video than the first one I watched. And in this video he does talk about the differences between Trinitite and Impactite, and he shows examples of both side by side. And he confirms that it definitely is Impactite that was found.

    Are we allowed to link video's on this site?

    Anyway, the whole reason I wanted to do this one was because I wanted to map an ancient city. But not just ANY city. It had to be one that everyone used to think was nothing but myth, but had been found to be real. I had thought of possibly mapping the Ancient City of Troy, or one from Meso America that had been found under the ocean. I thought about Ancient Babylon,, and even about one of the cities of the Amorites, a people who the world thought was just a myth until information about them was uncovered sometime around 2013 or 2014.

    But when I learned about Sodom, I couldn't resist. So now I'm trying to keep up on as much of it as I can.

    And Lorelei, if you are interested, his website DOES give information about how you can volunteer to be a member of the Dig when the digging season starts. Unfortunately, I wish I would have known that the season is in January before I said I wanted to go visit it sometime in summer. So for this year, the dig season is already over.
  • I've been to Pompei, the Acropolis, and a few other places in my US Navy days. I would liked to have seen Herculaneum, but it hadn't been found, or maybe not opened to the public, when I was last over there. I have a number of slides and prints... but no idea which box out of slightly over 100 they might be in.
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