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” NPR reports
Taken from this full article at this link the paper notes, among MANY other findings, a carved bone with notches that correspond very closely to the natural lunar cycle.
“The upper row appears to count 14 while the lower row appears to count 15. Together, these marks can be read as a complete synodic lunar month of either 29 or 30 days as follows. Counting left-to-right and back along the lower row gives 30 days, while counting left-to-right along the lower row and back along the upper row, on the other hand, gives 29 days. Of course, the synodic lunar month is very close to 29.5 days which means that counting the days of successive lunar months will usually give alternating counts of 29 or 30 days.”
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Enjoy exploring what archaeology is bringing to light…