Death from above? Fireball may have destroyed ancient Syrian village

[Judi Lynn]

By Nola Taylor Redd - Live Science Contributor an hour ago



An artist's image of the last seconds in the prehistoric village of Abu Hureyra, where a fireball from the sky likely destroyed the village.
(Image: © Jennifer Rice, CometResearchGroup.org)

Debris from a comet may have leveled an ancient village in Syria during a spate of several such explosions occurring around the world, according to new research.

The village of Abu Hureyra was a mound settlement in northern Syria around 13,000 years ago. The site was quickly excavated in 1972 and 1973, before the Euphrates River was dammed, flooding the site beneath Lake Assad. But the hurried excavations exposed charcoal-rich surfaces containing glass spheres formed from melting soil, melted iron- and sulfur-rich samples, and nanodiamonds. Such materials are all indicators of extremely high temperatures like those produced by a chunk of rock exploding in the air.

A team led by Andrew Moore, an archeologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York who led the emergency excavations of the site in the '70s, recently reexamined some of the excavated material in greater detail. The scientists then developed experimental methods to replicate the materials they discovered at the village.

. . .

Melting the minerals found in the soil requires temperatures over 3,630 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius), "hot enough to cause the quartz grains to boil," Moore said. That suggests something cataclysmic.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/fireball-destroyed-ancient-syrian-town.html

[Binkie The Clown]

1. The Klingons did it. nt