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.
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