Hercules slaying the three-headed Geryon. The Pillars were said to mark the westward extent of his travels and the inhabited world. For this, Hercules had to travel to the island called Erytheia in the mythical Hesperides in the far west of the Mediterranean. The tenth was to steal the Cattle of Geryon (a giant monster with six hands and three bodies, thought to be invincible) and bring them to Eurystheus. These labours were designed to be so difficult so as to be impossible for Hercules to complete. Seeking atonement, Hercules travelled to the Oracle at Delphi who told him that to make amends for his crimes he would have to be enslaved by Hera’s champion, Eurystheus, for twelve years and complete twelve labours for him. During one such attempt, she caused Hercules to go mad and slay his wife and three children. Hera, the wife of Zeus, was appalled to discover her husband’s infidelity and that he had fathered an illegitimate child and was determined to destroy the boy. The story begins when the hero Hercules was born, the son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Alcmene. The symbols had long puzzled scientists, but Sweatman and his team of engineers discovered that they actually corresponded to astronomical constellations, and showed a swarm of comet fragments hitting the Earth.The first reference to the Pillars of Hercules appears in ancient Greek mythology, when in around 600 BCE the ancient Greek poet Peisander wrote of the twelve labours Hercules had to perform whilst condemned to serve Eurystheus of Tirynus. The carvings were found on a pillar known as the Vulture Stone (pictured below) and show different animals in specific positions around the stone. The Gobekli Tepe is thought to have been built around 9,000 BCE - roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge - but the symbols on the pillar date the event to around 2,000 years before that. "One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the Ice Age." "It appears Gobekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky," Sweatman told the Press Association. The translation of the symbols also suggests that Gobekli Tepe wasn't just another temple, as long assumed - it might have also been an ancient observatory. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change." "Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. "I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent virtually seal the case in favour of ," lead researcher Martin Sweatman told Sarah Knapton from The Telegraphat the time. The team from the University of Edinburgh in the UK say these carvings, found in what's believed to be the world's oldest known temple, Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, show further evidence that a comet triggered the Younger Dryas. A comet strike is one of the leading hypotheses, but scientists haven't been able to find physical proof of comets from around that time. The period has also been linked to the extinction of the woolly mammoth.īut although the Younger Dryas has been thoroughly studied, it's not clear exactly what triggered the period. This mini ice age, known as the Younger Dryas, lasted around 1,000 years, and it's considered a crucial period for humanity because it was around that time agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations arose - potentially in response to the new colder climates.
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