Prehistoric peoples might have created the world’s oldest lunisolar calendar hundreds of years in the past to mark a calamitous comet strike, in accordance with a brand new research. That conclusion is predicated on a brand new interpretation of carvings on stone pillars on the 12,000-year-old web site of Göbekli Tepe in Türkiye.
Martin Sweatman, a professor on the College of Edinburgh in Scotland, analyzed a sequence of V-shaped symbols on a pillar on the web site. Sweatman believes every of those shapes represents a single day, with one such pillar counting as much as 365.
“We will interpret these V-shaped symbols and little field symbols on the pillar to be counting the times of the yr like a calendar,” he says.
A bird-like creature on one of many pillars can be adorned with a V-symbol round its neck and will characterize the summer season solstice. In complete, the pillar recorded 12 lunar months, Sweatman, who revealed his concept earlier this yr within the journal Time & Thoughts, says. If correct, it might characterize the primary and oldest identified instance of a lunisolar calendar that notes the phases of the moon and the place of the solar within the sky, in accordance with a press release.
What Is Göbekli Tepe?
(Creidt: GC photographer/Shutterstock)
Göbekli Tepe, that means potbelly hill, is a historic web site relationship again to 9,600 and eight,200 B.C.E., in an age referred to as the Pre-pottery period. It comprises megalithic temple-like buildings and T-shaped pillars constructed by hunter-gatherers who left behind carved depictions of a multitude of untamed animals, comparable to lions, gazelles, vultures, and snakes.
As for why the calendar got here to be, Sweatman believes it might be in remembrance of a cluster of comet fragments that struck the earth 13,000 years in the past, or round 10,850 B.C.E. Earlier analysis by Sweatman instructed {that a} carved pillar, referred to as the vulture stone, is a “date stamp” and depicts some type of memorial to the comet cluster occasion. This interpretation is, nonetheless, questioned by different researchers.
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The Youthful Dryas Impression Speculation
This influence occasion, referred to as the Youthful Dryas Impression Speculation, has confirmed controversial and continues to divide scientists. The occasion, in accordance with analysis, might have triggered a 1000-year-long ice age, wiping out many massive animals, together with mammoths, and dramatically marking the expansion of human civilization. It’s believed the collision might have spurred the event of agriculture and, as Sweatman says, even faith or cult-like practices.
“The primary view is that these massive enclosures had some type of cultic function,” Sweatman says. “We’re suggesting that maybe as a result of astronomy appears to be vital, they have been observing the solstices and the equinoxes. Maybe there have been festivals associated to the solstices and equinoxes.”
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Was Göbekli Tepe a Non secular Web site or Historical Settlement?
(Credit score: Mya2019/Shutterstock)
Different researchers have theorized that Göbekli Tepe was residence to one of many world’s oldest non secular websites and acted as a spot of formality for hunter-gatherers who had but to settle. Others query this conclusion as it will primarily overturn present beliefs that the event of faith solely got here after agricultural practices and domestication of livestock grew to become widespread. Different current discoveries point out the positioning was, the truth is, way more than a temple advanced and was truly the residence to a big settlement.
Interpretations of some archaeological proof, notably human skulls, have additionally led to the idea that the settlement concerned a “cranium cult,” both as a approach to join with ancestors or to show the heads of enemies killed in battle. Amongst findings of human stays and flint instruments, researchers additionally uncovered a life-size statue of a boar crafted from limestone that confirmed proof of portray.
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Prehistoric Information of Astronomy at Göbekli Tepe
Sweatman says that his lunisolar calendar interpretation would point out prehistoric data of the precession of the equinoxes — a cyclic wobbling of Earth on its axis — hundreds of years earlier than the Greek astronomer Hipparchus first famous this in 150 B.C.E.
“It tells us a lot about what the folks again then have been able to if we’re right,” Sweatman says. “It tells us that they have been good bare eye astronomers, way more superior of their data of astronomy than typically given credit score for.”
Learn Extra: Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Astronomical Observatory?
Article Sources
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Sean Mowbray is a contract author based mostly in Scotland. He covers the setting, archaeology, and common science subjects. His work has additionally appeared in retailers comparable to Mongabay, New Scientist, Hakai Journal, Historical Historical past Journal, and others.