ABU HURERYA, SYRIA — Impact from a comet around 12,800 years ago is believed to have wiped out a human settlement, according to new research published in Scientific Reports.
The study suggests that meltglass samples found at the Abu Hureyra site in Syria could be evidence that a comet destroyed the area.
The high-energy and intense heat needed to create the molten glass material could only have resulted from a cosmic impact, suggests study author and University of California Santa Barbara, Geology Professor James Kennet. He says those sorts of temperatures could melt a car in less than 60 seconds.
The findings back a theory known as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. This suggests that debris from a disintegrating comet entering Earth's atmosphere struck areas in the Americas, the Middle East and Europe some 12,800 years ago.
Kennet says that the settlement at Abu Hureyra would have been "abruptly destroyed" by such an event.
Thumbnail image via University of California, Santa Barbara.
