"The temple-like enclosures at the site " also believed to be the oldest in the world " are adorned with intricately carved symbols.
Researchers who recently visited the site to take a closer look at the symbols determined that they may, in fact, be a recording of an astronomical event that triggered a momentous shift in human civilization."
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"Because the prehistoric monument depicts both the phases of the moon and the sun's cycles, archeologists concluded that the carvings could represent the world's earliest "lunisolar calendar" " predating other known calendars of this type by millennia."
"Ancient people likely created the calendar as a way to memorialize the date when a swarm of comet fragments hit Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, the researchers claimed.
Another pillar at the site appears to show the Taurid meteor stream " thought to be the source of the comet fragments that rained on the planet for 27 days.
Such a comet strike around 10,850 BC could have ushered in a mini-ice age lasting more than 1,200 years, which would have wiped out many species of large animals.
Incredibly, the comet strike would have wrought enough devastation to effectively usher in the dawn of civilization in the fertile crescent region of West Asia as people accustomed to hunter-gathering techniques increasingly turned to agriculture for food.
The researchers suspect that the monument remained important to the ancient people for millennia, suggesting the comet strike could have triggered a new religion.
"This event might have triggered civilization by initiating a new religion and by motivating developments in agriculture to cope with the cold climate," Sweatman said in a statement."
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"The find also appears to confirm that ancient people were able to record dates by studying the Earth's precession, in which the rotation in Earth's axis can alter the movement of constellations across the sky.
The researchers wrote that this suggests the ancient people had accurate ways to keep time 10,000 years before the phenomenon was documented in Ancient Greece in 150 B.C.
"Possibly, their attempts to record what they saw are the first steps towards the development of writing millennia later," Sweatman said.
The research was published Tuesday in the journal Time and Mind."
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