Prehistory Decoded

In a new paper, Fitzenreiter et al. (2025) may have just located the first known surface impact feature of the Younger Dryas impact. It's near Perkins, Louisiana. The feature is a surface depression which fills with water on a seasonal basis, i.e. a seasonal lake. Clearly, it's not a crater. But that's ok, as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis suggests the event was caused by a multitude of comet fragments and not a single large and dense impactor. So the YDIH doesn't need craters, although there may well be some associated with it. The surface feature is not very large. It's suggested to have been caused by a low altitude airburst, or touch-down airburst, that provided sufficient heat and force to scar the landscape below without forming a traditional crater. Such events are thought to be more common than crater-forming impacts, but evidence for them is harder to find (due to the lack of an obvious crater). While the paper details copious geochemical evidence for...

Origin of some of the ancient Greek constellations via analysis of Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe  Martin B. Sweatman and Dimitrios Gerogiorgis School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, The King's Buildings, Sanderson Building, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JL, United Kingdom. email: martin.sweatman@ed.ac.uk   key words: Greek constellations, Göbekli Tepe, Pillar 43   ABSTRACT We re-evaluate an astronomical interpretation of Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey. Our analysis supports earlier conclusions that at least some of the animal symbols on this pillar almost certainly represent constellations related to those of the ancient Greeks. Presumably, the Greeks, Mesopotamians and other Neolithic, Bronze and Iron-age cultures towards the eastern end of the Mediterranean region were influenced in their choice of constellations and symbols by this pre-existing knowledge.   1.       Introduction This work investig...