A research squad , lead by the University of Edinburgh , recently finished translate an puzzling pad in what could be the world ’s first tabernacle in modernistic - day Turkey . Their work suggest that a tablet known as the “ Vulture Stone ” appears to not only have a date stamp on it – the equivalent of 10,950 BCE – but it also describes a catastrophic comet cloud adopt seat at the same time .
scientist have long been bewitch with this period of history , which appears to feature wildly fluctuating temperatures , regional extinction upshot , and even the demise or disappearance of several ancient human tribe . Could this tablet be what the authors mention to as the “ smoking gun ” that confirms a huge impact event took piazza back then , triggering these events ?
This particular synagogue in Turkey , Göbekli Tepe , sits atop a mountain ridge . At least 13,000 years old , the site has been interpreted by experts as being either a sanctuary , a worshipping location for a cult of the dead , or an other astronomical “ observatory ” .
It ’s clear-cut from a riches of archaeologic grounds that ancient civilizations across the world were especially safe at document skyborne phenomena , fromsupernovaetometeor shower , even if they were unaware of what they were seeing . mass of ancient sites like this – such as Stonehenge – are thought to be designed around the movement of the Sun , Moon , and champion , so the idea that Göbekli Tepe has a similar architectural intent is n’t unreasonable .
The team behind this novel report ran with this idea , and interpreted the carvings obtain around the site as being “ genius asterisms ” , which are essentially sketches of constellations .
Based on the position of certain stars , they concluded that one of the carvings – the Vulture Stone – is really a timestamp . They also take note that the carvings appear to render the Taurids , which is an annual meteoroid cascade link up with the comet Encke .
Encke is thought to have been part of a larger cometic trunk that break up around 20,000 years ago . Putting all the pieces together , the team think that this is all strong – if circumstantial – evidence that a cometary cloud impact Earth when these carvings were made , one that brought about a climatical disaster named the Younger Dryas .
Image in school text : part of the Vulture Stone . Alistair Coombs / MAA
About 13,000 year ago , the worldly concern was exit the most late gelid uttermost – the approximate - worldwide ice natural covering start out to mellow , the wooly mammoth was on its room out , and human migration start to find fault up the tread quite substantially . However , around then , for about 1,000 years , the Northern Hemisphere had a snatch of a climatic upset .
As the temperatures rose elsewhere , those in North America and share of Europe began to drop quite quickly . In some regions , the mercury fall by as much as 6 ° coke ( roughly 11 ° F ) . This unusual period has been name the Younger Dryas ( YD ) , after a prime that appear at the same metre – and importantly , the case has continue problematic to scientists ever since its discovery .
One hypothesis that has been gaining steam late is that an impact by a comet or asteroid sent so much junk and soot into the atmosphere that it darkened the sky for a millennium , get regional temperatures to dunk .
A handful ofrecent studieshave found that deposit cores from around that clock time in Greenland and North America have an unusually high denseness of platinum in them , which is a tell apart - narrative sign of an asteroid impingement . Until the crater is found , however , this surmise persist just that , not a fact .
This new bailiwick , though , tote up credence to the idea . The theory that it was literally documented at Göbekli Tepe , issue in the diary ofMediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry , certainly sounds compelling – but again , until an impact crater is encounter , it can not be conclusive . To their credit , the authors themselves pick out that .
“ Can we now confirm [ the catastrophic encroachment theory ] ? No , ” they write . “ When all this evidence is considered together , however , it makes a inviolable case for the YD event as a cometary encounter . ”
The smoke gun ? Perhaps not quite , but it ’s certainly an interesting study . Belish / Shutterstock
It should be pointedout that this survey is not without its critics .
" disputation regarding a potential astronomic tie-in and rendition of the computer architecture and the characteristic pillars in special are as sometime as the history of research regarding Göbekli Tepe , but as of yet no convincing substantiation for an actual celestial orientation or notice of such phenomena could have been put onward , " Jens Notroff , of the German Archaeological Institute , and one of the archaeologists excavating the site , pen in ablogpost .
Noting that there ’s strong grounds that the building were actually subterraneous , and pointing out that the endemic the great unwashed back then would not necessarily have had the same constellations as we do now , Notroff tot up that " it also seems a snatch arbitrary to base this reading ( and all its consequences as described in the paper ) on what seems to be some randomly choose pillars and their iconography . "
" So , with all due respectfulness for the workplace and effort the Edinburgh colleagues obviously put into their research and this publication , there still are – at least from our view as excavators of this authoritative site – some point worth a more thorough give-and-take . "
For now , then , take the newfangled report , as fascinating as it is , with a hard touch of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks .
