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Archaeology & History

Ancient village was destroyed by a comet

By T.K. Randall
June 22, 2020 · Comment icon 11 comments

The village didn't stand a chance. Image Credit: RafaelMousob / Pixabay
A new study has indicated that a Syrian village was destroyed by debris from a comet 13,000 years ago.
Situated in northern Syria, the village of Abu Hureyra was originally settled by hunter-gatherers who had lived off the land until a drought forced them to switch to a primitive form of farming.

Then one day, somewhere around 13,000 years ago, a cataclysmic event suddenly wiped the village off the map and nobody has been able to agree on exactly what happened.

Evidence unearthed during an archaeological dig at the site in the 1970s indicated that the settlement was engulfed in flames, however it has remained unclear if the blaze had been started on the ground or if some sort of destructive cosmic event had occurred in the region.

Now archaeologist Andrew Moore, who had lead the team who originally excavated the site, has taken a renewed look at the evidence in an attempt to solve the mystery once and for all.
By using experimental techniques to replicate the materials found at the village, the researchers were able to determine that certain minerals found in the soil would have required temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Celsius to melt - something that could not have been achieved with a conventional fire.

"It is impossible to explain these melted minerals on meltglass by any natural process other than a cosmic impact event," said Moore.

The most likely culprit, the researchers now believe, was a cometary debris cluster.

"The largest cometary debris clusters are proposed to be capable of causing thousands of airbursts within a span of minutes across one entire hemisphere of Earth," they wrote.

"An encounter with such a million-km-wide debris cluster would be thousands of times more probable than a collision with a 100-km-wide comet or a 10-km-wide asteroid."

Source: Live Science | Comments (11)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #2 Posted by Piney 4 years ago
So debunked in 3 previous threads. It must be a slow woo year. Lemme get my notes........
Comment icon #3 Posted by Piney 4 years ago
@Swede   @Carnoferox     Andrew Moore  just popped up again. https://www.pnas.org/content/110/23/E2088.abstract?sid=2170f221-3b49-43bf-91c8-2323f8c08794 This ejecta dates from numerous impact events none in the timeframe the article suggests. The North American stuff dates from the end of the Eocene.  There is no " large areas of burnt biomass". That is a outright lie. The "changes in site usage" is because the flora and fauna changed. It was a smooth transition. George Howard "salted" sites. There are no "mass graves" of megafauna. That's a outright lie.       
Comment icon #4 Posted by Piney 4 years ago
The paper itself which I have to go through yet. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60867-w https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339746317_Evidence_of_Cosmic_Impact_at_Abu_Hureyra_Syria_at_the_Younger_Dryas_Onset_128_ka_High-temperature_melting_at_2200_C
Comment icon #5 Posted by Swede 4 years ago
Heavens. Another revamp of the Y-D Impact hypothesis. One that ignores the needed collaborative data, or, rather, the lack thereof. Edit: Typo.
Comment icon #6 Posted by Piney 4 years ago
The Saqqar impact is one of the possibilities for the debris.  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/maps.12555 There were a couple more I have to track down. 
Comment icon #7 Posted by Carnoferox 4 years ago
Frank Hibben's "mass animal graves" claim is still being touted? I thought everyone knew he was a fraud by now.
Comment icon #8 Posted by Piney 4 years ago
I see it mentioned in just about every YDI paper.  But they are also still using the Chesapeake Bay impact strewnfield and George Horward's salted Carolina Bay data so why is it surprising?   
Comment icon #9 Posted by qxcontinuum 4 years ago
So in biblical terms punished by goods through a rain of fire.
Comment icon #10 Posted by Tatetopa 4 years ago
Well, Comet is a well known cleanser, so maybe by the god of advertising.
Comment icon #11 Posted by oneshot_me 2 years ago
We've all heard of this when we went to church


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