Older Than the Pyramids: 12,800-Year-Old Settlement Destroyed by Massive Cosmic Impact

A group of researchers has discovered conclusive evidence of a cosmic impact that most likely destroyed one of the earliest human settlements in history: Abu Hureyra.

The ancient settlement is believed to have existed over 12,800 years ago, marking an important step in human history as hunter-gatherers and nomads decided to settle down, creating one of the first “towns” in history.

Predating Egypt’s pyramids by thousands of years, the settlement of Abu Hureyra bears witness to the historic moment ancient nomadic people settled down in present-day Syria and started cultivating crops, forever changing their way of life.

Today, no more than a large mound is evidence of one of the oldest settlements on Earth. The mound, in turn, now lies covered in the water of Lake Assad.

Located on a plateau near the south bank of the Euphrates, around 120 kilometers (75 mi) east of Aleppo, one of the oldest cities in the world, Tell Abu Hureyra is today no more than a massive accumulation of collapsed houses, debris, and lost objects that have become accumulated over the course of the habitation of the ancient village.

The mound is nearly 500 metres (1,600 ft) across 8 metres (26 ft) deep, and contained over 1,000,000 cubic metres (35,000,000 cu ft) of archaeological deposits.

Even though the ancient settlement now lies beneath the lake, archaeologists were able to carefully recover and describe what lay beneath the surface, including numerous remnants of ancient houses, food, and tools.

What they documented turned out to be conclusive evidence that allowed researchers to finally identify the transition to agriculture from a nomadic way of life, some 12,800 years ago, a timeline in Earth’s history that coincides with the last Ice Age.

But there is more to Abu Hureyra than meets the eye. This ancient settlement, which predates the ancient Egyptian pyramids by over 8,300 years, has another compelling story to tell.

Among the cereals and grains and the remnants of the ancient settlement, the group of scientists found melt glass, some features that point to the fact that it probably formed at extremely high temperatures, far higher than ancient humans could have achieved at that time.

“To help with perspective, such high temperatures would completely melt an automobile in less than a minute,” revealed James Bennett, a UC Santa Barbara emeritus professor of geology.

Such intensity, Bennet revealed, could only have resulted from an extremely violent, high-energy, high-velocity event, something on the order of a cosmic impact.

Before the site was flooded beneath Lake Assad’s water, the researchers collected a significant amount of data about the settlement. This information suggests that Abu Hurayra is the first ancient site that bears evidence of a fragmented comet strike’s direct effects on a human settlement. Read the free article.