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The carvings at Göbekli Tepe even show the movements of the constellations. Image credit: Dr Martin Sweatman Acataclysmic comet impact 13,000 years ago may have sparked the rise of civilization, according to the authors of a new study. The event – which many scientists believe never happened – may even be documented at the world-famous site of Göbekli Tepe, forming part of a series of carvings that the researchers say represent the world’s oldest solar calendar. Located in southern Türkiye, Göbekli Tepe is a pre-pottery Neolithic complex that is estimated to be around 12,000 years old. Analyzing an intricately carved...

A huge asteroid may have hit the Earth 12,800 years ago causing global climate change and extinction, according to new evidence found in South Africa. Scientists analysed ancient soil at a site called Wonderkrater and found high levels of platinum - which they say supports the The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis that a disintegrating meteor hit Earth and caused a mini ice age. The resulting ice age is believed by many scientists to have wiped out dozens of mammals species including the Mammoth and giant wildebeest and decimated the human population. Scientists believe 'platinum spikes' found in ancient soil samples...

The settlement occupants left an abundant and continuous record of seeds, legumes and other foods...By studying these archaeological layers, Professor Kennett and colleagues were able to discern the types of plants that were being collected in the warmer, humid days before the climate changed and in the cooler, drier days after the onset of what we know now as the Younger Dryas cool period.Before the impact, the inhabitants' prehistoric diet involved wild legumes and wild-type grains, and small but significant amounts of wild fruits and berries.In the layers corresponding to the time after cooling, fruits and berries disappeared and their...

Evidence of the most powerful solar storm in history has been uncovered in an unlikely place: within the rings of a tree. This immensely powerful solar storm is thought to have been at least 10 times as powerful as the Carrington Event of 1859, which caused chaos in the rudimentary telegraph system of the time. The researchers found a strange spike in radiocarbon within the rings of subfossilized trees dating to around 14,300 years ago. "Fusa Miyake discovered a sudden and unexpected spike in radiocarbon levels in a Japanese tree from 774 AD. Initially, this was thought to have been...

Agriculture in Syria started with a bang 12,800 years ago as a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth's atmosphere. The explosion and subsequent environmental changes forced hunter-gatherers in the prehistoric settlement of Abu Hureyra to adopt agricultural practices to boost their chances for survival. That's the assertion made by an international group of scientists in one of four related research papers, all appearing in the journal Science Open: Airbursts and Cratering Impacts. The papers are the latest results in the investigation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, the idea that an anomalous cooling of the Earth almost 13 millennia ago...