A team of researchers with the University of Edinburgh has found what they describe as evidence of a comet striking the Earth at approximately the same time as the onset of the Younger Dryas in carvings on an ancient stone pillar of Göbekli Tepe.
The findings were published in the journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry. The team of researchers have interpreted much of the symbolism of Göbekli Tepe in terms of astronomical events. By matching low-relief carvings on some of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe to star asterisms they have found compelling evidence that the famous ‘Vulture Stone’ is a date stamp for 10,950 BC ± 250 years, which corresponds closely to the proposed Younger Dryas event, estimated at 10,890 BC. The team of researchers also found evidence that a key function of Göbekli Tepe was to observe meteor showers and record cometary encounters. Indeed, the people of Göbekli Tepe appear to have had a special interest in the Taurid meteor stream, the same meteor stream that is proposed as responsible for the Younger-Dryas Event. Prior evidence based on ice cores taken from Greenland has suggested that a strike by a comet may have led to the onset of the Younger Dryas—a period of Earth cooling that lasted for approximately 1,000 years.
In this new effort, the researchers describe evidence they found on a stone pillar at Göbekli Tepe —that aligns with the ice core findings—that a comet struck the Earth in approximately 10,950BC. The pillar was created by the people of Göbekli Tepe and now appears to have served as a means of commemorating a devastating event—perhaps a comet breaking up and its remnants crashing into the Earth, causing an immediate environmental impact around the globe and possible loss of life (one of the characters on the pillar was of a headless human).
The team fed likenesses of the images carved onto the pillar (known as the vulture stone) into a computer to determine if they might be linked with constellations. Doing so revealed associations between characters on the pillar and astronomical symbols in the sky for the year 10,950 BC. The researchers have concluded that the carvings on the pillar were likely meant to document the cataclysmic event and suggest that the temple may have been an observatory. They also report that they found evidence of changes to the Earth’s rotational axis because of the comet strike.
Is Göbekli Tepe the ‘smoking gun’ for the Younger-Dryas cometary encounter, and hence for coherent catastrophism?
One Response