Ancient ritualistic village burnings could give hints regarding Earth’s

The sites were all within a region with an extremely weak magnetic field strength called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA).

The scientists were able to know about the magnetic field reversal because of the minerals, such as magnetite, found in the ancient agricultural communities in Southern Africa. The scientists accumulated their records from minerals in an ancient village of Iron Age in Southern Africa.

The data suggest that the region of the planet’s core beneath southern Africa, referred to as the African large low shear velocity province (LLSVP), may be the birthplace of some of the more recent and future Earth’s magnetic pole reversals. Earth’s magnetic field has declined by at least 16 percent since 1840, and some have speculated this means we are beginning to experience the next field reversal. A reversal was last recorded around 800,000 years ago, and an entire shift may take 15,000 years to complete.

And finally, study co-author Rory Cottrell says, “Some have postulated that the Earth’s magnetic field is leaking out the wrong way at that particular spot”. However, the research team has said that weakening fields may recover without the poles reversing.

Led by geophysicist John Tarduno of the University of Rochester (UR), scientists at Witwatersrand University and Kwa-Zulu Natal University of South Africa and others at UR recently published their findings in the journal Nature Communications. According to Tarduno, such irregularities may eventually lead to a decrease or further, a loss, in magnetic intensity, giving the region a low magnetic field strength. This region features a core that is overlain with hot, dense mantle rock that is 3000 km below the surface and 6,000 km across the region.

A reason why the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening may be because of a flow shift in the liquid iron metal that generates the field.

This fire would be so scorching hot it would burn through, erasing the old information stored in the magnetite while creating a new record of magnetic information, like field strength and direction.

These experts on ancient African rituals and practices explained the early practices of cleansing villages through burning huts and grain bins.

The researcher found that a 30% fall in magnetic field intensity was there from 1225 to 1550 A. D. This suggests the process that caused the weakening may be recurring today. “And it is also possible that the region may actually be a trigger for magnetic pole reversals, which might happen if the weak field region becomes very large”.