Bronze Age artifacts used meteoric iron
The Iron Age began in Anatolia and the Caucasus around 1200 BCE. But nearly 2,000 years earlier, various cultures were already fashioning objects out of iron. These items were extremely rare and always greatly treasured. Iron ore abounds on the Earth's surface. So what made these artifacts so valuable? Initial research had shown that some were made with iron from meteorites, which led scientists to wonder how many others were. Albert Jambon gathered the available data and conducted his own nondestructive chemical analyses of samples using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. His collection of iron artifacts includes beads from Gerzeh (Egypt, −3200 BCE); a dagger from Alaca Höyük (Turkey, −2500 BCE); a pendant from Umm el-Marra (Syria, −2300 BCE); an axe from Ugarit (Syria, −1400 BCE) and several others from the Shang dynasty civilization (China, −1400 BCE); and the dagger, bracelet, and headrest of Tutankhamen (Egypt, −1350 BCE).
Bronze Age iron: Meteoritic or not? A chemical strategy. (DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2017.09.008) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @11:23PM
N/t
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday December 10 2017, @11:44PM (11 children)
I'm not saying, but still....
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday December 10 2017, @11:51PM (9 children)
Let's just leave it at "extra-terrestial", OK?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Monday December 11 2017, @12:04AM (7 children)
You sound like you don't think our brothers in space didn't send those meteorites into specific places at specific times to help the needy.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 11 2017, @12:22AM (6 children)
That would be because I do not. If you have been around to see as many religions rise and fall, some rather nastily, as I have, you would come to realize that for any particular phenomenon, there are near infinite possible theoretical explanations, and of those at least one with involve a deity, and one aliens. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJDgj2DLvc0rl0OAsdMKXIKXE4UG-EEwtwrQUUsrV9GEXqM9Nf [gstatic.com]
Probably more than one of each.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @12:42AM
Thank you for your input
Goddess Savitri Deviaristarchus(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday December 11 2017, @03:01AM (4 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 11 2017, @04:36AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday December 11 2017, @06:37AM (1 child)
Isn't religious efficiency accepting direct debit?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday December 11 2017, @03:31PM
I thought they would have direct deposit these days :D
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday December 11 2017, @04:34PM
Honestly, that idea makes more sense than the tenets of the religions where gods *aren't* aliens.
Seriously, which is more believable:
1) There's a supernatural, non-corporeal being that created the whole universe, it cares about what individual primitive humans are up to, and it sets a bush on fire with magic.
2) There's some alien beings from another star system with advanced technology, and they use some technology, perhaps an energy weapon (oh, like something we call a "laser" today...) to set a bush on fire to con some primitive goat-herder into believing they're gods and doing something they want.
Both are extremely far-fetched, but #2 is less so. You don't need magic to set bushes on fire when you have lasers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @03:02AM
I think he means the ancient black Egyptians from Ethiopia who spread agriculture, iron tools, quantum mechanics, and astrophysics all over the world.
Oh, wait...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @12:04AM
Come on Snotnose your anonymity is here is done, you are clearly Giorgio A. Tsoukalos.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @12:32AM (1 child)
Reminds me of the story of the Eskimos that had an iron meteorite and mediated access to it for important tools.
Then the Europeans came and stole it from them.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Monday December 11 2017, @12:46AM
"Out there where the huskies go, don't you eat that yellow snow." (much thanks for Frank Zappa!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @01:34AM
Which of those are from ET rocks? Don't leave us hanging.
(Score: 1) by rylyeh on Monday December 11 2017, @03:40AM (2 children)
Obviously, Excalibur was made from an iron meteoroid!
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 3, Informative) by moondrake on Monday December 11 2017, @11:04AM (1 child)
Bronze age != Arthurian period.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @07:10PM
Yeah, sure, right. It's just that in Britain, it is hard to tell the one from the other.
(And this reminds me of a howler from a University history exam: "In Iron Age England, people lived in rude huts, with rough mating on the floor." Double consonants, people, they make a difference, just like Pandas and Grandma {"pandas: eats, shoots, and leaves"; "Let's eat Grandma!"})
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday December 11 2017, @04:28PM (1 child)
I thought I had read that ALL iron on the Earth's crust was meteoric in origin. Iron that's a product of the planet's formation sank to the core ages ago, and iron and other heavy elements in the crust, over eons, do the same, so everything on the crust that's valuable and relatively heavy is meteoric in origin, it's just a question of how old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @04:41PM
There are two sources of iron: ore and metal. Ore is rock from which iron can be extracted by smelting, a process that requires some know-how and work; metallic iron comes pre-smelted (thanks, universe) and is much easier to work. That's important because metallic iron was available as a material to people who had not yet learned to smelt iron from ore.
Of the metallic iron found in the earth's crust, there are again two sources: telluric (native to Earth) and meteoric. There's only one telluric source, and it's way up in Greenland. The rest of the metallic iron available to humans is meteoric.
The word "meteoric" in the summary and headline is a bit misleading, because it's being used as a synonym for the ore vs. metal distinction. Really, the researchers just determined that iron ore smelting was not a bronze age technology, which would have been common sense to any archaeologist you might have wished to ask.