According to a team of archaeologists, the V-shaped symbols carved onto the pillars at Gobekli Tepe — an archaeological site in southern Turkey, could be the world’s oldest lunisolar calendar.
- They say that it may serve as a memorial to a comet strike that hit Earth roughly 13,000 years ago and triggered a mini ice age.
- The findings was published in Time & Mind.
- The findings suggest that a series of V-shaped symbols carved onto the pillars at Gobekli Tepe each represents a single day. When added up, they seem to record the date a swarm of comet fragments hit earth in 10,850 BC, triggering a 1,200-year ice age that led to the extinction of many large animals, including mammoths, steppe bison and other large Pleistocene mammals.
