Ancient Stone Pillar Suggests Comet Strike On Earth 13,000 Years Ago That Changed Human History

A comet had struck Earth in approximately 10,950 B.C., supporting the theory that it triggered a mini Ice Age that saw the end of woolly mammoths, the rise of civilizations and probably also altered Earth's rotational axis. A recent research has found evidence of the comet strike by studying ancient stone pillar carvings at the world’s oldest temple in Gȍbekli Tepe, Turkey.

The study by archaeologists from U.K.’s University of Edinburgh has been published in the journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry. According to the researchers, the carvings act as further proof that a comet hit Earth around the same time as the onset of the Younger Dryas -- a period of Earth cooling that lasted for approximately 1,000 years. Prior evidence based on Greenland’s ice cores has also indicated the same.

In addition, researchers have previously suggested that the cooling period led nomadic groups of people to band together to cultivate crops. This was a turning point in human history as it led to the development of agriculture. The subsequent societal developments and technological innovations marked the onset of the Neolithic civilization.

According to a Phys.org report, the people of Gȍbekli Tepe created the pillar known as vulture stone to commemorate a devastating event, in this case a comet strike. Based on their research, which used computer simulations, the archaeologists found links between the characters on the pillars and astronomical symbols that could be seen in the sky during 10,950 B.C. The engravings on the stone pillars at the ancient Turkish temple, which experts now believe to be an ancient observatory, show the carving of a headless man that has been interpreted to have symbolized human disaster and mass scale loss of life. The researchers suggest that the time and effort devoted to creating the pillar shows something extremely important must have occurred during the same time period that the Greenland ice core indicates -- a cataclysmic comet strike around 10,890 B.C.

"By matching low-relief carvings on some of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe to star asterisms we find compelling evidence that the famous 'Vulture Stone' is a date stamp for 10950 BC ± 250 years,” the researchers stated in the study. “This corresponds closely to the proposed Younger Dryas event, estimated at 10890 BC." Study researcher Martin Sweatman further added that the day was probably the worst one in history since the end of the Ice Age.