Evidence reveals that a Paleolithic hamlet was devastated by comet fragments 12,800 years ago. Syria has a rich history of historical artifacts for archaeologists and other academics to excavate and explore since human settlements have existed in the nation for thousands of years. One of its most important sites, Abu Hureyra, which is currently beneath Lake Assad, was discovered in 1972 and 1973 before the region was inundated for the Tabqa Dam project.
Those digs told scholars a lot about the Paleolithic Age civilizations that lived there more than 12,500 years ago. Archaeologists think they have discovered evidence that one of the towns there is the only one of its kind to have been devastated by tiny parts of a comet that fell to Earth more than 12,800 years ago.
Archaeologists discovered the site over 50 years ago and discovered it told a lot about agricultural practices at the time. They also discovered evidence of two towns, one “below” an agricultural town with more advanced buildings and one “above” a hunter-gatherer community.
However, recent research suggests that the initial colony was affected by remnants of a descending comet that struck it some 12,800 years ago. After studying soil samples retained at the site during the original excavation, researchers came to this conclusion. The archaeologists, one of whom was part of the team that explored the site in the 1970s, published a fresh report of their results in Nature under the title Scientific Reports.
Andrew Moore is a coauthor of the paper and a founding member of the Abu Hureyra excavation team. Moore, an archaeologist, and professor at New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology, recently told Smithsonian Magazine that it wasn’t until they studied microscopic samples of soil that the researchers discovered the comet’s influence on the hamlet. When the site was first explored, Moore found charred spots, but they didn’t associate them with interplanetary phenomena.
Current research on the charred samples indicates that the whole location was devastated by fire caused by the disintegrating comet’s airbursts. He went on to explain that an airburst is a minor explosion in the air triggered by a comet; little is a relative term because each airburst was equivalent to a nuclear bomb. The majority of the airbursts missed Earth. This one, on the other hand, as proved by the melted glass, melted and swiftly solidified sand, and it nearly destroyed the settlement in the blink of an eye.
This cosmic event and the ensuing change in temperature near the end of the Pleistocene Age influenced various locations throughout the world, including the Americas and Europe. The entire region is known as the Younger Dryas Boundary. Moore noted that all other conceivable causes of the Abu Hureyra fire were carefully investigated and ruled out.
He has little doubt, using current technology and procedures, that the comet was the origin of the melted glass and the extinction of the community; fires or even volcanic ash would not have reached the requisite temperatures to raze the hamlet to the ground, leaving only charred traces in the earth.
According to Moore, after the occurrence of the comet and the paleolithic town, people in the Middle East began to shift from hunting and gathering to farming. Because the earth had changed as a result of the comet’s impact, people began cultivating rye and other cereals. Some of this was known to archaeologists and other scientists, but the facts concerning soil alteration and its connection to a comet are novel.o
According to a Nature article, it is well known that the transition from hunting to farming as a principal employment corresponded with climatic change; nevertheless, the link to this comet impact and its influence on the region is a novel notion. As a result, Abu Hureyra became a significant location, and it is the oldest known site that demonstrates the structured establishment of agriculture as a way of life.