Prehistory Decoded (häftad, eng)

An extinction-level cosmic catastrophe engulfed Earth around 13,000 years ago, plunging the world into darkness and a new ice-ageIt was more than a thousand years before the climate, and mankind, recovered. 

The people of Göbekli Tepe in present-day southern Turkey, whose ancestors had witnessed this cataclysm, built a megalithic monument formed of many hammer-shaped pillars decorated with symbols as a memorial to this terrible eventTheir community watched the skies for several thousand years, recording their observations in stone. Before abandoning Göbekli Tepe, they covered it with rubble to preserve the greatest and most important story ever told for future generations. 

Archaeological excavations began at the site in 1994, and now we are able to read their story again for the first time in over 10 thousand yearsIt is a story of survival that allows one of the world’s greatest scientific puzzles – the meaning of ancient artworks, from the 40,000 year-old Lion-man figurine of Stadel cave in Germany to the Great Sphinx of Giza – to be solved. It is also a story that affects us – as some of the cometary debris we collided with that caused these disasters, known as the Taurid meteor stream, continues to threaten us today.