The world's oldest solar calendar may have been unearthed in Turkey

At first glance, the V-shaped symbols carved onto the pillars at Gobekli Tepe — an archaeological site in southern Turkey — don’t look like much compared to the adjacent animal shapes depicting the cycles of the sun and the moon.

But according to researchers, the markings could be evidence of two big findings: The ancient pillar could be the world’s oldest lunisolar calendar, and it may serve as a memorial to a comet strike that hit Earth roughly 13,000 years ago and triggered a mini ice age.

“It appears the inhabitants of Gobekli Tepe were keen observers of the sky, which is to be expected given their world had been devastated by a comet strike,” said Martin Sweatman, a scientist at the University of Edinburgh who led the research team that came up with the recent discovery.

The findings, published last month in Time & Mind , 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.

“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.

The possible comet strike has long been a source of fascination — and disagreement — between scientists. If the V-symbol hypothesis is correct, it could provide groundbreaking support for the hypothesis.

“Possibly, their attempts to record what they saw are the first steps towards the development of writing millennia later,” he said.

Copyright 2024 NPR