Âé¶¹´«Ã½

Faulty foundations

22 April 2000

THE fortress city of Megiddo, which guarded a strategic valley on the route
between Egypt and the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, was built on “the San
Andreas of the Middle East”, a geologist at Stanford University has discovered.
Amos Nur told a Seismological Society of America meeting last week in San Diego
that the town was destroyed 30 times in more than 2000 years. He thinks this may
have contributed to the collapse of the late Bronze Age civilisation.

Although invaders undoubtedly did cause some of the damage to the town,
earthquakes caused a lot more, says Nur. “Why would…

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