A 13,000 year old comet that struck Earth changed humans forever?

In the history of the Earth, many comets have struck its surface, and some of those comets have caused absolute devastation.

One object that is probably the most famous for striking Earth is the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, dubbed Chicxulub. Now, researchers have penned a new study that explores if a comet that impacted Earth 13,000 years ago could have changed the fundamental way human civilization operated. The comet that struck Earth was the most second-most catastrophic impact since Chicxulub.

Martin Sweatman, a scientist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and his team found that the comet's time of impact correlated with significant changes in human societies. The study pointed towards preceding the Neolithic period, where humans were moving from hunter-gatherer societies to settlements where they developed agriculture, architecture, and the skills to work with stone tools.

• Read more: Scientists discover the origin of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs

Sweatman says, "This major cosmic catastrophe seems to have been memorialized on the giant stone pillars of Gobekli Tepe [in Turkey], possibly the 'World's first temple,' which is linked with the origin of civilization in the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia. Did civilization, therefore, begin with a bang?".

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