Burnt remains from 586 BCE Jerusalem may hold key to protecting planet
A new analysis of 1st Temple-era artifacts, magnetized when Babylonians torched the city, provides a way to chart the geomagnetic field – physics’ Holy Grail – and maybe save Earth
The Bible and pure science converge in a new archaeomagnetism study of a large public structure that was razed to the ground on Tisha B’Av 586 BCE during the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. The resulting data significantly boosts geophysicists’ ability to understand the “Holy Grail” of Earth sciences — Earth’s ever-changing magnetic field.
“The magnetic field is invisible, but it plays a critical role in the life of our planet. Without the geomagnetic field, nothing on Earth would be as it is — maybe life wouldn’t have evolved without it,” Hebrew University Prof. Ron Shaar, a co-author of the study, told The Times of Israel.
In the new study published in the PLOS One scientific journal, lead author and archaeologist Yoav Vaknin harvested data from pieces of floor from a large, two-story building excavated in the City of David’s Givati parking lot. Minerals embedded in the dozens of floor chunks were heated at a temperature higher than 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius) and magnetized during the slash and burning of ancient Jerusalem, and therefore offered up geomagnetic coordinates.
“No comparable floor from the Iron Age has ever been found in Jerusalem or other sites in the southern Levant,” says the PLOS One article.
The coordinates taken from the floor give a rare “peephole” of the Earth’s magnetic field during Tisha B’Av 586 BCE, said Tel Aviv University PhD student Vaknin.
“The floor of the structure is filled with magnetized minerals that absorbed the [magnetic] field that was on Earth at the time. Since the magnetic field changes all the time we’re trying to reconstruct it. Here, we have a little peephole, accurate to the day, of the ancient magnetic field from 2,600 years ago,” said Vaknin.
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