WASHINGTON, D.C.—According to a statement released by George Washington University, recent excavations at the site of a Canaanite palace in northwestern Israel suggest the structure was destroyed by an earthquake some 3,700 years ago. Eric Cline of George Washington University and Assaf Yasur-Landau of the University of Haifa found that an entire section of wall and flooring had fallen into a trench that cuts through part of the palace. Both the stone foundations and the mudbrick sections of wall were recovered from the trench, which measures at least 100 feet long and may have opened up during the seismic event. The researchers also found warped plaster floors, tilted and displaced walls, mud bricks from collapsed walls and ceilings, and buried wine jars. Cline explained that the destruction at the palace is unlikely to have been caused by violence because there were no signs of fire, and no weapons or human remains that would be expected to have been left in the wake of combat. Read the original scholarly article about this research in PLOS ONE. To read about Canaanite rule in second-millennium B.C. Egypt, go to "The Rulers of Foreign Lands."
