World's oldest calendar emerges from Turkey. It has THESE many days in a year

Archaeologists have made a stunning discovery of what is being understood as the oldest calendar to have existed on Earth.

The calendar is etched in a 12,000-year-old stone pillar which was found by archaeologists at the Gobekli Tepe site in Turkey and is likely to rewrite the timeline of human civilization.

According to this discovered timekeeping system, the ancient humans were following accurate ways to keep a tab of passing time before it started getting documented in AncientGreecein 150 BC.

Carving on the tablet tells tale of comet strike and ice age

The researchers also discovered that the carving on the tablet depicts a comet strike which led to a mini ice age of 1,200 years.

The University of Edinburgh's researchers counted 365 days of 12 lunar months along with 11 additional days as they suspected that every 'V' marking on the pillar represented one day.

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According to the experts, the memorialised event was the defining moment which forced the ancient people to switch to permanent settlements from leading hunter-gatherer lifestyles.

Head of the research and University of Edinburgh School of Engineering's Dr Martin Sweatman said, "It appears the inhabitants of Göbekli Tepe were keen observers of the sky, which is to be expected given their world had been devastated by a comet strike."

"This event might have triggered civilization by initiating a new religion and by motivating developments in agriculture to cope with the cold climate," he added.

"Possibly, their attempts to record what they saw are the first steps towards the development of writing millennia later," Sweatman added.

All about Gobekli Tepe site

The Gobekli Tepe site is the world's oldest man-made structure discovered so far. Humans constructed it between 9,600 and 8,200 BC and the site predates Stonehenge by more than 6,000 years.

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The site is filled with many stone pillars. The researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland carried out a recent analysis of these pillars and found that one structure was carved to be a calendar.

(With inputs from agencies)