It was around 66 million years ago that a doomsday asteroid hit the earth and resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs, according to scientists. This deep-space impact triggered devastation on a global scale, and experts believe that the asteroid hit resulted in the extinction of more than 70 percent of all species on the earth. Now, a new study has suggested that a similar impact had wiped out an early human settlement on a regional scale.
Abu Hureyra: The asteroid impact site
For archeologists, Abu Hureyra is an important site and excavations on this area have given hints of the human transformation from hunters to farmers around 13,000 years ago. Now researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered melt glass in an area that is now submerged by Lake Assad in Northern Syria.
It should be noted that an extremely high temperature, at least 1200 degree Celsius is required for the creation of melt glass, and ancient humans did not have that technology to achieve such scorching heat. Researchers who took part in the study speculate that such extreme heat could be the result of an asteroid impact. The study report also noted that the impact could have wiped out an entire community in the Abu Hureyra within a fraction of a second.
"To help with perspective, such high temperatures would completely melt an automobile in less than a minute. Our new discoveries represent much more powerful evidence for very high temperatures that could only be associated with a cosmic impact. The Abu Hureyra village would have been abruptly destroyed," said James Kennett, a researcher at the University of California in a recent statement.
Will a doomsday asteroid hit the earth in the future?
A few months ago, top space expert Iain McDonald had revealed that asteroid hits which may bring doomsday to the planet are not confined to the past, and he assures that such an event will happen in the future too. Popular American physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson also claims that humanity will be wiped out from the surface of the earth following an asteroid hit.
