In Year One, Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) traipse across Biblical history after fleeing their village, narrowly escaping death, slavery, and circumcision en route to discovering their destinies.

Their final destination—where the majority of the movie takes place—is Sodom, known as the sinful city destroyed by God in “fire and brimstone.” Pop Omnivore was interested: Did Sodom really exist? To find out, we interviewed Rupert Chapman, head librarian of the Middle East department at the British Museum and co-author of the book Archaeology and the Bible, which examines how the findings of archaeology have confirmed—or refuted—the Bible.

Have you caught the movie yet?

No, I haven’t. There are posters everywhere and it looks like it might be quite funny. I’d like to see it—I’m always interested in seeing something that picks up on my archaeological work.

Given the reviews, I’m not sure how long it’ll be in theaters.

Right, right.

In Year One, Sodom plays a major part. Is there any proof that Sodom actually existed?

Well, it’s complicated. But I think it’s very likely that it did. The Biblical account tells us that Sodom and Gomorrah were two of the five cities of the plain, and that the plain is beside the Dead Sea. What has been found in archaeological research is that along the southeast side of the Dead Sea there are valleys running down from the mountains in Jordan—and in those valleys are five archaeological sites, all occupied at the same time in the early Bronze Age and destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age. They were never occupied again.

The movie, like the Bible, portrays Sodom as a city full of lust, temptation, and decadence—kind of a Bronze-Age Vegas. Is that accurate?

I really doubt it—there’s no evidence of that in the sites that have been researched. What we do have is very sophisticated, large towns surrounded by massive city walls. They appeared to have had a major industry in the processing of bitumen, or asphalt, which was very important for waterproofing and various other applications at the time. These five towns all seemed to have gone up in flames around, I would say, 2200 B.C.—some people would date it earlier.

Why do you think Sodom burned down?

The most likely thing was a natural disaster. It was an extremely active earthquake zone. If there was an earthquake, given the gasses drifting about—sulfurous gasses, for example—then the fires in the processing areas for bitumen might easily have caught the whole place alight. Certainly something happened, and this seems to be a very reasonable explanation for the archaeological remains. It might also tie into the Biblical story of “fire and brimstone.”

Any thoughts on the Bible’s characterization of Lot, who was warned by angels to flee Sodom before its destruction? That may be a better question for a theologian, of course.

Well, I think it is. As an archaeologist, I can’t say that there is ever going to be historical evidence of the figure of Lot. It’s a story to convey a message, in my view, and I don’t know that one could ever say whether or not there was such a figure in history.

I suppose you haven’t found any pillars of salt down there, either.

No, no. Well, there is the one they point out, which is of relatively recent creation—the whole region, of course, is an enormous salt deposit.

Really?

Yes, a couple million years ago the Dead Sea was much deeper than it is now. Because it has no outlet, it has gradually evaporated to reach the level it is now. It’s much lower than it was even a hundred years ago, so there’s huge, massive deposits of salt all around there. I think the story of Lot’s wife is a story made up to explain a pillar of salt that looked like a human being—in archaeological jargon, an etiological explanation.

Wow.

I should also say there’s a Byzantine monastery that has been excavated above that area build around a cave—it’s the monastery of St. Lot. In the Byzantine period, the cave was thought to be the one where Lot and his daughters hid out after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But again, there’s no reason to see that as making that whole side of things historical. The miraculous side of the accounts you can’t really take seriously as history, but the story of the destruction itself does seem to have a historical basis, since there are solid archaeological remains.

Interesting! Thanks for your help. Before you go, though, I understand you’re a reader of National Geographic?

Yes, of course! When I was ten years old I was reading National Geographic and there was an article by Louis Leakey on excavations in the Great Rift Valley, where Australopithecus remains were found—fossils of hominids, very distant ancestors of modern man. And I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

-Matthew Hill

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