In an article issued last month on the British magazine “Antiquity” the Italian archaeologist Roberto Santilli states that a meteor impact in the region of Abruzzo, Italy, in the Prati del Sirente valley, may have triggered the extintion of an ethnic group called the “superaequum”, and favored the expansion of the Christianity (and the end of the Roman Empire). According to a story, during a superaquum pagan orgy it was heard a “thunder, which stroke the mountain and ripped the giant oaks apart. In the sky, a new star, bigger than any other, approached more and more and disappeared behind the mountains. The forest dried. The Sirente trembled”. The event of sirene would have shocked the social conscience of the time, which linked the pagan celebration to the cataclism, thus starting the chain of events that ultimately led to the growth of the small Christian groups scattered through Italy.

The Sirente crater was recently discovered by the team led by the Swedish astrobiologist Jens Ormö, of the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Techniques. It is the first meteoric crater identified in Italy. The material collected in the spot indicates that the impact occurred between the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian Age, and was sufficiently big to be perceived by the population (Sirente is located 50 miles from Rome)

A legend accounts that the Emperor Constantino saw a “flaming cross” in the eve of a battle against his rival, Maxentius, by the year 312. According to Ormö, Constantino may have witnessed the Sirente impact. The event may have been decisive for the adoption of the Christian religion in the Roman Empire.