The fall of Tel Kabri

Before the west Semitic split between Canaanite and Aramaic, a people inhabited Tel Kabri in the western Galilee. "Tel" means "artificial hill" so, it is not inhabited now. Michael Lazar, Eric H. Cline, Roey Nickelsberg, Ruth Shahack-Gross, and Assaf Yasur-Landau have a paper out explaining why not: earthquake.

The archaeological horizon is Middle Bronze Age IIB, 1700ish BC. This is the era of Hammurabi's dynasty in Babylon, and Assyrian colonies in southeast Anatolia. The main Canaani contemporary was Hazor; Lazar's paper notes Ashkelon too, which I think followed the Canaani culture then, and I should add Damascus. (Jericho's "Sultan IV" destruction, per Wiki: 1617-1530 BC. All over the place.) Second Intermediate, for Egypt; I'd add the delta fell under Dynasty XIV which was Canaani. In those days the Semites waxed mighty in the land of Tel Kabri.

The future south-Syria had just entered into a boom time; 1750-1550 BC marks increased rainfall in this area and an expansion of the Salt Sea.

It is the very lack of Egypt/Canaan conflict (or of internal reasons for strife) in this era that human violence is deemed unlikely. And indeed: no arrows, no fire, and no combat injuries on the dead. It is as if the palace simply collapsed. Figuratively and literally.

Lazar's team point to later cuneiform omen-tablets in Nuzi, admittedly in paraSemitic Akkadian, that when an earthquake occurred a certain time of the year, it would lead to civilisational collapse. The team don't count those tablets as a memory of a past specific event in Nuzi, nor even point where the earthquake damaged any contemporary Syrian site. This is more the impressionism of the west Near Eastern mind, that it should follow similar lines.

'Tis also possible the water supply dried up, but honestly this site could have carved aqueducts; as noted, this was a pleasantly moist era. I suggest instead that the site's vassals and serfs picked their moment to revolt. Either that or Hazor and/or Damascus took their chance. The cityfolk couldn't organise in time so scattered. If there was a fight it didn't take place in Tel Kabri.

BACKDATE 9/15. UPDATE 10/27/21: Occurs to me that Tall (Tel) Hammam burned around 1650 BC; they blame Jericho IV on that too. Admittedly some distance southwest, and their conflagrations aren't deemed earthquake.