Scientists from the University of Edinburgh believe they have identified a prehistoric calendar memorializing a comet strike at the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site in Turkey. The calendar, which is thought to be twice as old as Stonehenge, could be the world’s oldest monument of its kind.
Göbekli Tepe is a 12,000-year-old temple-like complex that contains intricate carvings depicting symbols. Researchers believe that the carvings were developed to record comet fragments that hit the Earth roughly 13,000 years ago, according to a study published in Time and Mind on July 24.
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If the V-shaped symbols carved in the pillars each represent one day, the study posits, there are enough marks to account for a solar calendar of 365 days on one of the pillars. It consists of 12 lunar months, including 11 extra days, with a special demarcation indicating the summer solstice. Other symbols with similar markings around the neck are thought by the researchers to represent deities.
Researchers are sure, however, that the engravings on the monument track both moon phases and sun cycles, making this site the world’s earliest lunisolar calendar by more than a millennium.
The comet strike brought with it a miniature Ice Age that lasted for more than a millennium and led to the extinction of many large animals. As such, early humans may have been noting this lifestyle change from hunting and gathering to agriculture and the birth of civilization in the Fertile Crescent of West Asia.
A previous study published in the journal Earth Science Reviews in 2021 indicated that these comet fragments likely spurred the growth of human civilization in modern Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Additionally, per this latest study, a pillar found near the Göbekli Tepe site seems to depict the Taurid meteor shower, which is believed to be the source of the fragments. That meteor shower rained down for 27 days.