«Their world was destroyed by a comet strike»
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest calendar in the world. Moreover, experts believe that symbols carved on a 12,000-year-old stone column in the mysterious place of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey can rewrite the history of our civilization.
The timekeeping system provides compelling evidence that ancient people had accurate ways of keeping time 10,000 years before it was documented in ancient Greece in 150 BC, the Daily Mail reports.
Another discovery that has astounded the researchers is that the ancient paintings depict a comet strike that triggered a mini-ice age that lasted 1,200 years, killing off large animals and spurring the development of agriculture and complex societies among humans.
Experts believe that this event, immortalized in the distant past, was the defining moment that caused ancient humans to shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to more permanent settlements.
Dr Martin Sweetman, from the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering, who led the study, said: 'The people of Gobekli Tepe appear to have been keen observers of the skies, as might be expected given that their world had been devastated by a comet strike. The event may have given rise to civilisation, giving rise to a new religion and encouraging the development of agriculture to cope with the cold climate. Their attempts to record what they saw may have been the first steps towards the development of writing millennia later.'The Gobekli Tepe site is the oldest man-made structure ever found, the Daily Mail reports. It was built between 9600 and 8200 BC, more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge.
There are several stone columns at the site, and after recent analysis, researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have concluded that one of the structures contains carvings of a calendar. The column featured a «V» symbol for one day, which the team found was carved 365 times. The structure also included 12 lunar months with 11 extra days. The column was divided into two sections, with rows of «V» symbols at the top and smaller rectangular symbols at the bottom main section, which depict a bird holding a circular disc over a scorpion.
According to the study, published in the journal Time and Mind, the column features a disk symbolizing the sun, while the scorpion is a representative of the Greek constellation Scorpio. The team also found a tall bird leaning over a writhing snake, which could represent the autumn constellation Ophiuchus.
The discovery suggests that people recorded dates using precession – the wobble of the Earth’s axis that affects the movement of constellations across the sky, the Daily Mail reports. The ancient Greeks were long thought to have pioneered the method in 150 BC.
But the main discovery was that the ancient inhabitants immortalized the memory of a catastrophic collision with a comet, the Daily Mail emphasizes. The team has been working at the site for a long time and in a study conducted in 2021, they determined that the comet collided with the earth about 13 thousand years ago, based on the high content of platinum and nanodiamonds that are formed during high-energy comet explosions. This celestial phenomenon occurs when the orbit of a comet crosses the Earth, causing a collision of objects that can have serious consequences.
The researchers compared the carvings on the columns with symbols found on other ancient artefacts to confirm that the newest discovery did indeed depict a solar calendar and a key comet collision. Among them, the Daily Mail reports, was a celestial disc artefact found in Germany in the second millennium BC that depicts the sun, moon and the Pleiades — a star cluster in the constellation Taurus, which is believed to determine the timing of the summer and winter solstices. However, it is the last feature at the bottom of the disc that displays a long, curved shape with parallel lines that could represent a comet, the study says.
The researchers said the newly discovered carvings depict similar symbols from comet fragments that originate from the constellations Aquarius and Pisces.
The comet fragments fell to Earth nearly 13,000 years ago — around 10,850 BC — and wiped out several large animal species, making it the biggest comet impact since the event that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the Daily Mail reports. The decimation of the animals is thought to have led to changes in agriculture, which in turn helped create more complex societies that gave rise to modern civilisation in the Fertile Crescent, a region now known as Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon.
The team also found a second pillar showing the Taurid meteor shower, which lasted 27 days and is thought to have been the source of the comet fragments.
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