"Sodom and Gomorrah, a tale of two cities incinerated by a hail of fire and brimstone." "Is this a fantastic fable, or could it be a near apocalyptic disaster from space?" "Think about your worst atomic nightmare striking at just the wrong time." "Newly discovered evidence might hold the secrets to one of the Bible's greatest mysteries." "If you find an artifact that looks similar to trinitite, then we know it has to be an highly energetic event." "Science always said, "Well, you can't test the Bible."" " No, you can test the Bible." " Could a natural disaster be responsible for the destruction of Sodom and" "Gomorrah?" "Ancient mysteries shrouded in the shadows of time." "Now, can they finally be solved by looking to the heavens?" "The truth is up there, hidden among the stars, in a place we call the universe." "Sodom and Gomorrah, a chilling saga of the Sin Cities in the ancient world." "Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the most sensational stories that tells us about sex, violence, greed, and divine wrath and punishment." "According to the Old Testament's book of Genesis, the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah are said to be so wicked... that God destroys them with fire and brimstone from the heavens." "In ancient times, the skies were where the heavens are, where the gods are." "And so in a sense these were messages from the gods of some impending doom or disaster." "Is this a biblical parable about the price of sin, or might the story be based on a real-life disaster-- a literal fire from the sky?" "The Bible tells of events where we're now realizing can be matched up with historical events that we can go back and verify." "Archaeologists, astronomers, and biblical scholars have spent years trying to uncover any truth to this age-old tale." "Now modern science reveals that the story might have been an actual asteroid impact event." "If you were lucky enough, or perhaps unlucky enough to actually see a meteor entering the atmosphere, breaking into pieces, perhaps causing a wave to sweep over you, of air, as its pressure passed by, that is a story you" " would not forget." " Ancient peoples may not have connected it to our modern astronomical knowledge the way we do of a population of asteroids, but I think the idea of rocks falling from the sky is probably something I'm sure the" "ancient peoples must've been aware of." "Asteroids are chunks of rock, metals, and dust that are the leftover material from the formation of the solar system." "Many of them are no more than a few feet across..." "but some are the size of moons." "The majority of them circulate around our Sun, between Mars and" "Jupiter." "However, occasionally, they're nudged out of their orbit and head on a collision course with Earth." "A small fraction of the objects that hit the Earth are made out of iron and nickel metal, very strong, and actually make a pretty nice crater on the surface of the Earth." "The most common asteroids that fall on the Earth are the stony asteroids." "They literally have the composition of stone." "Like a-- like any rock you'd pick up here on the surface of the" "Earth." "Some of these very weak rocky objects never actually can make it to the surface of the Earth." "Weaker stony asteroids often explode when striking the Earth's atmosphere, creating a cosmic airburst." "A cosmic airburst is when an asteroid or a comet hits the atmosphere and essentially disintegrates." "It explodes, because the atmosphere feels like a brick wall to this rapidly oncoming asteroid or comet." "The atmosphere itself is enough of a block to explode this thing." "How might one of these asteroids produce the destruction of Sodom and" "Gomorrah as described in the biblical texts?" "_" "What sort of devastation would an iron asteroid produce... as opposed to a stony cosmic rock?" "To demonstrate that, we're gonna actually use two different firearms here to examine the effects of these types of impacts." "I've got a rather powerful rifle here, an M1 Garand." "And we're gonna fire a single, intact projectile that's gonna represent one of our larger, more strong asteroids." "And then, to talk about a smaller, weaker asteroid, I've got a Remington 870 shotgun here and a shotgun round with the birdshot in the shell." "And that's gonna represent one of the smaller, weaker asteroids, which has fragmented in the-- in the atmosphere." "And we're gonna see the effects then of what sort of blast that might create in our pile of sand." "The .30 caliber single projectile is loaded into the rifle and fired." " That's a good crater." " Next, the birdshot is discharged from the shotgun." "Okay, let's see what we have here." "This is perfect." "We have our rifle shot here, representing our large, strong asteroid... which made it to the surface of the ground, to make an impact crater." "We've dug out, just to show you here the typical size of the impacter." "The crater being several times larger than the asteroid itself." "To the side, here, we see the result from our shotgun blast." "Our small, weak asteroid, which fragmented in the atmosphere and the debris from the blast, the heat pulse, that results in some destruction." "And so it's a good illustration of the two different types of impact." "A large iron asteroid could have flattened" "Sodom and Gomorrah..." "and left a crater, while a weaker, stony asteroid would have shattered in the atmosphere..." "but might have generated enough fiery debris to incinerate the Sin Cities." "To figure out if one of these cosmic impact scenarios is correct..." "archaeologists first need to prove if and where the biblical sites actually existed." "Well, there's a very ancient belief that there were once cities down around the Dead Sea that are no longer there and that what happened to those cities was something fell out of the sky and smashed them." "Clues about Sodom and Gomorrah first appear in the book of Genesis, Chapter 13." "The biblical text tells the story of Lot, a shepherd and nephew of Abraham, the patriarch of the Bible." "Lot parts ways with his uncle in search of more land for his sheep." "Abraham and Lot stand on a mountaintop, northwest of" "Jericho, and look down at the ancient land of Canaan." "Today, it's the region surrounding the Dead Sea, the salt-laden lake separating Israel and Jordan." "When Abraham and Lot looked down to the east, into the" "Jordan Valley, they look into what is described as the "Kikar"" "of the Jordan." "Now, "Kikar" is a Hebrew word that can mean a circular disc." "And certainly from a geographical standpoint, that area of the Jordan plain just north of the dead sea does widen out into kind of a disc." "The Bible says that Lot pitches his tent toward" "Sodom, one of a cluster of five settlements called "The cities of the plain." They include Gomorrah, Adman," "Zeboim, and Zoar." "And it's said in Genesis that the plain of the Jordan was well-watered." "And to this day, that plain is still well-watered." "And so that pins it down geographically." "That's to the north." "Archaeologists scour the region northeast of the Dead Sea." "They discover the eerie remains of 14 ancient sites." "Tall El-Hammam, the largest of the ruins, most closely fits the biblical description of Sodom." "Covering nearly 100 acres, the city was once fortified with 40-foot stone walls, massive city gates, and a maze of streets lined with mud structures." "Tall El-Hammam is the largest site in that entire area, which would make one think, if it's Sodom, then being such a large" " site, it would fit that." " Tall El-Hammam was also most likely a wealthy city, which ties it to the biblical story." "According to Genesis, two angels disguised as men come to warn Lot of God's impending wrath." "Lot invites them into his home and feeds them." "But the other men of the city offer no hospitality and instead demand to have sex with the visitors." "The sin of Sodom is actually unknown in the Bible." "The story has been interpreted that it is the sin of sexuality." "Most biblical scholars, however, say the actual sin of Sodom and" "Gomorrah deals with hospitality and the lack of hospitality." "Typically, nomads were much more hospitable than people that" " lived in the cities." " The prophet Ezekiel, writing later in the Old Testament, he says the people in Sodom had too much to eat, and they were heartless, and they didn't take care of poor people." "That's what he says is wrong" " with them." " Lot, the only hospitable man in Sodom, is allowed to flee the city, along with his wife and daughters." "But they're warned to never look" " back." " "Don't look back," is saying, in other words, "Look, don't you understand you got in trouble by pitching your tents toward Sodom?" "When you get out, I don't want you looking towards Sodom."" "While Lot and his family head for the mountains... fire and brimstone rains down on Sodom." "Lot's wife disobeys the forewarning." "She stares back at the inferno and turns into a pillar of salt." "Is this passage merely a moral metaphor?" "Or might it have a literal meaning that helps connect the story to this location in the Middle East?" "All along the shores of the Dead Sea are encrusted salt formations and sculptures that actually look like people." "There is a pillar that, if you look up, you can see the figure of a woman." "This is one of the ideas for" "Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt story." "So these salt pillars provide further evidence that Sodom and Gomorrah might've been located near the Dead Sea." "But can the asteroid impact theory explain how a person could appear to turn into a pillar of salt?" "And if Tall El-Hammam is indeed the biblical city of Sodom, do the sands of time conceal evidence of a firestorm from space?" "Sodom and Gomorrah, two biblical cities destroyed by fire and brimstone." "Is this a cautionary tale, or are these actual cities that fall victim to a cosmic disaster of biblical proportions, an asteroid impact?" "Science's job is supposed to investigate reality and truth." "And they always said, "Well, you can't test the Bible."" "No, you can test the Bible." "Archaeologists dig for the truth among the ruins of" "Tall El-Hammam, located over eight miles northeast of the" "Dead Sea." "The ancient city appears to fit the biblical description of Sodom." "Excavators dig down through the layers of dirt to what some believe is the approximate time period of Abraham and Lot, between 1750 and 1650 BC, the Middle Bronze Age." "A spade suddenly hits a four-foot layer of spongy ash." "It's evidence that the city experienced some sort of sudden, fiery catastrophe." "The archaeologist who comes up with a nice, sulfur-laden burn level is beginning to convince me that he's dealing with the right place... if it's down in the area where Sodom and Gomorrah might've been." "Within the sooty layer, archaeologists unearth a few human bones, violently mixed among smashed mud bricks and stones." "There were a few bones." "The bones were jumbled and hyperextended and twisted." "It looked kind of ghastly." "And the bones were charred." "The dramatic thing is, after its destruction, it's not reoccupied again until the Iron Age, which" " occurs 500 years later." " What could have caused such a massive inferno that rendered the city uninhabitable for generations?" "Evidence of fire spawns new theories." "Some think the city was destroyed by a volcanic eruption." "However, there's no evidence of volcanism in the region." "Others suspect a massive earthquake might have triggered oil fires." "Or perhaps an enemy sacked the" " city and set it ablaze." " We're talking about heat that vaporizes things." "The gas fire is not gonna reach the temperatures that we're talkin' about." "While sifting through the sand, archaeologists stumble upon something else quite unexpected-- pottery shards bearing a mysterious layer of greenish glaze." "The discovery is baffling." "The glazing of pottery isn't invented until over 800 years after the alleged time period of" " Sodom." " I have looked at pottery from" "Tall El-Hammam that had a coating of greenish glaze on it, despite the fact that glazing as a surface treatment was not common in that region until the Middle Ages." "So being on such an early piece of pottery, the feeling was is that it has to come from some other cause." "The glaze on the pottery shards appears to have been produced by extreme heat at over 3,000 degrees fahrenheit and then quickly cooled." "The whole point is that it has to be a very high temperature burn." "Not just a normal fire burn here, but something stronger than that." "The glazing on the pottery bears a striking resemblance to trinitite, the glass produced by the first atomic bomb tests at the Trinity site in New Mexico in 1945." "In an airburst event, what happens is you get a fireball that makes a big bubble." "This bubble then collapses upon itself, and that's how you get the stem." "And what happens is, is all the material, all the dirt that's thrown up into that stem then gets entrapped into the fireball." "And that material just simply melts as droplets and falls back down." "And that's how you got the trinitite." "These are examples of rocks we found down at Trinity site." "Here's a standard piece of trinitite that has the nice, shiny surface on top." "And in this particular case, it has the beaded bottom." "So the-- all these little beads dropped out of the sky first, and the shiny top here is a glomeration of all the beads that were still melted." "Similar glass has been found in the Sahara desert in Libya..." "but its formation predates the atomic age by almost 30 million years." "Here's a natural example of a type of glass that was formed in the Libyan desert during an airburst event, we think, some" "30 million years ago." "Think of the intense heating it took to turn desert sand into" " this glassy material." " There were no nuclear bombs then, so the only conclusion that can produce that kind of power and more is a cosmic impact." "No impact crater is found in the entire region of the Middle East... so the only other thing that could produce such staggeringly high temperatures would be an asteroid that explodes in the Earth's atmosphere... a cosmic airburst." "The temperatures inside the center of one of these airbursts are incredibly high." "Much more immense than, for example, the temperature of a volcano or even, like, an oil fire, which may only reach a few thousand degrees." "So could a cosmic airburst have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah?" "Let's demonstrate the power of an airburst event with a simple, homemade experiment, here." "I've just made a little vortex cannon." "It's a-- just a plastic bucket with a hole in the-- in the end here to blast some air out of." "We're gonna use this plastic diaphragm on the back to actually move the air." "And this is gonna basically show us the power of-- of moving air." "To make this a little easier to see, we're gonna fill this with a bit of smoke." "Okay, there we go." "Okay, let's see if we can blow down our wall of cups here." "Excellent." "So when I pop the back diaphragm here..." "we can actually move a lot of air out of the hole." "So that shows the power of moving air." "Imagine now an actual airburst event, where you've got megatons worth of blast energy going on, and, instead of blowing down a wall of paper cups, we could blow down an actual wall of mud bricks, uh, maybe the walls of" "a fortified city." "And so real airburst events, coupled with the intense heat from the fireball and from the hot, turbulent gases near the surface, might well be capable" " of firing pottery." " In addition to glazed pottery shards, glassy material resembling actual trinitite also has been discovered at the site of Tall El-Hammam." "The pieces need to be scientifically analyzed, but could they confirm that the city was destroyed by a cosmic airburst event?" "If you were looking anywhere in the world for either cosmic impact or airburst, you would look for material that looked similar to this, the trinitite." "This is a very nice piece that shows the really nice, deep, green structure." "These are examples of what I call taffy-like material, thrown out immediately from the blast." "So all trinitite does not look the same." "If you find an artifact that has material on it that looks similar to trinitite, then we know it has to be an highly energetic event, like an asteroid." "The atomic bomb tests of 1945 demonstrate that an asteroid airburst has the capability of generating tremendous heat and energy." "But is there any real proof that this type of cosmic event produced the devastation described in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah?" "The answer to this mystery lies in one of the most remote places on Earth." "Sodom and Gomorrah." "Did these ancient cities suffer the wrath of God or a cosmic cataclysm?" "Archaeological evidence points to 14 ruined cities northeast of the Dead Sea." "One of the sites," "Tall El-Hammam, bears the unmistakable signs of a thermal catastrophe-- a thick ash layer, charred human bones, and possibly trinitite, a glassy material only produced by extremely high temperatures, such as a nuclear blast or an asteroid that explodes in the" " atmosphere." " The airburst is basically like exploding a bomb up in the air... and you have a shockwave that propagates with huge speeds, and then can be extremely devastating." "But what are the odds that this could happen on Earth?" "Over the last 100 years, Earth experiences two major cosmic airburst events." "In 1908, a 200-foot-wide asteroid explodes in the sky above Siberia's Tunguska wilderness." "You got to think, these things are coming into the atmosphere at something like Mach 60, right?" "And that pressure was too much for that object to take." "And it detonated in the atmosphere with the explosive energy of something like two or three megatons." "Most of the rock disintegrates upon entering the" "Earth's atmosphere, so it doesn't leave a crater." "But it releases heat and shockwaves... which topple 80 million trees over an 800-square mile region." "The Tunguska event is a great example of a devastating airburst." "Something like that, traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour, when it explodes, it creates this big shockwave." "In the case of the Tunguska, it happened over a forest, and you see this tremendous impact wave that flattened these trees like" " little toothpicks." " No one is killed or injured as a result of the Tunguska event because it occurs over a desolate forest." "But this isn't the case the next time Russia experiences a cosmic attack." "On February 15th, 2013, a 50-foot asteroid explodes over the city of Chelyabinsk with almost 30 times the energy released from the Hiroshima atomic bomb." "The amazing thing about the Chelyabinsk event is that it was so beautifully documented." "There are hundreds of video cameras, dash cams, photographs, cell phones, so we're able to really analyze how destructive it truly was." "Almost two minutes after the actual sighting, a huge sonic boom was unleashed and broke windows, injured about 1,500 people, primarily from broken glass." " It was just very damaging." " The events in" "Tunguska and Chelyabinsk are tangible evidence that a cosmic airburst could have decimated Sodom and Gomorrah." "A Tunguska event occurring over a mud-and-stick city in the second millennium BC would have completely annihilated it." "The buildings back then weren't very strong." "They could easily fall apart." "All kinds of fires could erupt from the heat generated." "There would be nothing left." "Such a cosmic event can even explain the fire and brimstone mentioned in the biblical story." "Now the translation that brings us brimstone simply meant, "Yellow fire, yellow light."" "So really, at the very minimum, what we can interpret about this is that a bright yellow fire rained down upon Sodom." "That could easily be a meteor passing through the atmosphere, leaving behind a trail of smoke and fire in its wake." "When this raining down effect occurs, then you see all these particles that are just beet red from the heat until they finally coalesce and land on the ground." "From somebody way back in time, seeing this, they would think that would be an act of God." "We know today that that's probably an asteroid impact or something like that." "If a cosmic airburst destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, it might also explain another curious line from the biblical text, which says... _" "As far as the Sodom and Gomorrah story, it's entirely plausible that what they saw was essentially a mushroom cloud." "And that mushroom cloud would've looked like a big smokestack, much like what the nuclear bombs look like when they go off." "A lot of energy gets deposited in a very short amount of time." "That lifts debris from the ground." "Moreover, everything catches on fire, creating more smoke and ash." "Yeah, you would have had a huge pillar rising from these cities." "A cosmic airburst event could have destroyed Tall" "El-Hammam and the other sites northeast of the Dead Sea." "But is this the actual location of Sodom and Gomorrah?" "The fiery apocalypse of Sodom and" "Gomorrah-- fiction or factual account of a natural disaster from space?" "The charred ruins of an ancient city over eight miles northeast of the Dead Sea fit the geographical and physical description of Sodom." "The discovery of strange glazed pottery and desert glass... indicates that an asteroid might have destroyed the ancient site." "It would have been absolutely devastating, and certainly the stories of the destruction like that propagate through time, even to modern times today." "According to the biblical story, as fire and brimstone rains down on Sodom, Lot and his family flee to the mountains near Zoar, one of the five cities of the plain, that is spared God's divine destruction." "According to the biblical narrative, Zoar was not destroyed." "In fact, lot escapes to that city as a refuge." "Which would indicate that the city would have to be somewhere" " in close proximity to Sodom." " Zoar should be a relatively short distance from Tall El-Hammam, the alleged site of Sodom." "However, on the floor of a" "Byzantine church in Madaba, Jordan, is a sixth century mosaic map written in Greek." "It's the oldest surviving depiction of the Holy Land." "What's fascinating about this map is it gives us the geographical locations of major Christian pilgrimage cities." "So we can take the map as being an accurate map of the ancient" " Near East." " By comparing the mosaic map to the modern-day landscape, it places Jerusalem and Jericho in the precise locations that they are today." "Sodom and Gomorrah are oddly missing from the eroded mosaic." "However, Zoar is found on the map near the southeast region of the Dead Sea... and over 30 miles from the site of" " Tall El-Hammam." " The location of the city of" "Zoar on the Madaba map-- it is not exactly a smoking gun to tell us where the other cities are, but it gives us a general" " locale in which to look." " And the mystery deepens." "On the mosaic map near Zoar are the Greek words, "Sanctuary Of Saint L", the rest of the word is missing, but many scholars interpret it as the "Sanctuary Of Saint Lot."" "By following the mosaic map, archaeologists find the" "Sanctuary of Saint Lot perched on a mountainside." "Hidden behind the monastery is a cave." "Could this be the place where Lot and his family took refuge" " during the firestorm?" " In the cave behind the church that is associated with Saint Lot, they found Bronze Age pottery." "However, there's nothing evidence that says this is the place where Lot and his daughters stayed." "But we do have evidence of them living there at a certain time period that correlates with the" " story of Lot." " The discovery leads many to believe the real Sodom must exist nearby." "Less than ten miles from the Sanctuary of Saint Lot, archaeologists discover the ruins of Bab Edh-Dhra, a fortified early Bronze Age city, once occupied by" "1,000 inhabitants." "A short distance from Bab" "Edh-Dhra, archaeologists uncover the remains of four settlements which could be the other lost cities of the plain." "In the early Bronze Age, the third millennium BC, precisely in this area, you have five cities... whereas Tall El-Hammam is located in a cluster of middle" "Bronze Age settlements, of which there are many more than five." "So if we're speaking of five cities of the plain, then Bab" "Edh-Dhra and the associated four cities towards the south" " would really fit that very well." " Like the ruins at Tall" "El-Hammam, a thick layer of ash covers much of Bab Edh-Dhra." "It suggests the ancient city also suffered a violent end." "Eight miles to the south of Bab Edh-Dhra, archaeologists find the ruins of Numeira, which is thought to be its sister city." "They find a substantial ash layer and skeletal remains of humans who suffered severe trauma." "Could Bab Edh-Dhra and Numeira be Sodom and Gomorrah?" "The problem here is that both of the cities were destroyed at different time periods, at least 300 years apart." "The city of Numeira was destroyed in a great destruction, very rapidly." "We know that from an ash layer." "As opposed to Bab Edh-Dhra, the city was destroyed over 100 years or so, so the dates don't match up." "In order to make the story work, they both have to be destroyed in the same manner at the same time." "There's not enough evidence to prove that Bab" "Edh-Dhra and Numeira are Sodom and Gomorrah." "But what about Tall El-Hammam and the other ruins northeast of the Dead Sea?" "Does the alleged location of" "Zoar on the mosaic map rule them out as the Sin Cities?" "People who make maps have to make decisions when sometimes the archaeological or the historical evidence is not conclusive." "So they did a lot of guessing, frankly." "You're not gonna find a sign that says, "This is Zoar," or," " "Welcome to Zoar."" " There's still much debate about the actual location of Sodom and Gomorrah... but science can now provide a terrifying picture of what might have actually happened to the ill-fated cities." "It can even decode the mystery behind Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt." "Sodom and Gomorrah-- myth or astronomical mega-disaster?" "In the search for the truth, archaeologists discover a cluster of ruins in two different locations along the eastern side of the Dead Sea." "They've even found undeniable evidence that a fiery catastrophe destroyed most of the ancient cities in both locations." "But is either of these sites home to the real Sodom and Gomorrah?" "All along the shores of the Dead Sea, there is a possibility that there are a number of sites that we have not yet found." "Sodom and Gomorrah could be anywhere." "Some people say the cities are under the Dead Sea." "Though we don't have any solid archaeological evidence of Sodom and Gomorrah, it had to be an important event." "21st century astronomy, combined with the biblical accounts, now offer a scientific explanation for what might have happened to the cities in their final hours." "Between 2300 and 1700 BC... an asteroid barrels down from space." "It strikes the Earth's atmosphere..." "and explodes above the ancient land of Canaan." "The force is over 200 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb." "For the airburst hypothesis for the destruction of Sodom, we're talking dozens of megatons of energy." "In modern context, we have-- you know, we have an understanding of that." "But in ancient times, that would have been literally a biblical event." "The energy from the airburst reaches the ground, creating a mushroom cloud of rock and dirt that's ejected into the atmosphere." "If it's an airburst, you're gonna have possibly either many pieces of the rock raining down." "And so you'd imagine that those things would cause tremendous devastation and many fires on the ground." "The citizens of Sodom take cover as fiery rock, or brimstone, rains down on their city." "Ancient city walls made out of mud bricks would easily have been blown flat." "Straw or thatched wood construction charred." "Literally brought to the point of spontaneous ignition by the heating of the event." "The shockwave from the impact would have flattened buildings." "This could have led to huge destruction of these ancient," " poorly-built cities." " You could have vaporization of bodies." "At the very least, they would be incinerated." "They would be cremated." "So it would be a absolutely terrifying event." "Lot and his daughters flee for the mountains..." "but his wife lags behind as she stares back at the ferocious inferno." "One of the most famous tales to come out of the Sodom and" "Gomorrah story is the story of Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt." "Could an airburst event in any way be responsible for that?" "It's kind of gruesome to think about, but that might potentially be not salt but" " maybe charred to ash." " If Lot's wife had been unprotected, not in a cave or something, then she could have been charred to a crisp." "So in a sense, metaphorically, she could have become like a pillar of salt." "It's kind of a gruesome idea, but she could have been incinerated." "The cosmic disaster does more than destroy Sodom and" "Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain." "It scorches the landscape, making it uninhabitable for" " hundreds of years." " If one of these ancient cities like Tall El-Hammam was destroyed by, let's say, an asteroid, it would be left uninhabited, perhaps as a superstition, but they couldn't possibly live there." "The science of the universe gives us a new way of" " looking at an ancient story." " If we can demonstrate, historically and scientifically, that there really was a Sodom and that these events really took place, and therefore what the Bible describes are real historical events, it gives us a greater sense of security and certainty that the rest of the" "Bible is valid." "And so I think this also plays very much into the modern interest in these two cities." "We have enough science to actually try to understand some of the historical origins of our faiths." "And this, to me, is only to enrich our culture as a species and our creativity as the real core of our humanity."