A weapon as legendary as the dagger of King Tutankhamun needs an epic backstory, and last year X-ray analysis showed that the iron in the ancient blade had come from meteorites. Now, a French study has found that the artifact was far from alone as all iron tools dating back to the Bronze Age have otherworldly origins.
Beginning around 3300 BCE in the Near East and parts of South Asia, the Bronze Age was categorized by the widespread use of bronze in weapons, tools and decorations. Made by smelting copper and mixing it with tin, arsenic or other metals, bronze was durable and relatively easy to come by, and as such it remained the top choice until it was supplanted when the Iron Age began some 2,000 years later.
That's not to say that iron wasn't used during the Bronze Age – on relatively rare occasions iron artifacts have been found dating back to before the Iron Age, but it was much harder to come by and work with. The trouble was, most of the metal was locked in ore and needed to be smelted at extremely high temperatures, which was beyond the technological capabilities of the time. So where did those early iron artifacts come from?
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2 comments:
That is funny.Whenever anyone came along who could do anything exceptional they were considered sorcerers or witches.If so many gifted people had not been cast out of society our civilization would have been at it's current state thousands of years ago.Human beings are their own worse enemy.If your abilities were beyond your era you were evil.
2:54 you are so right. You still are outcast if you are ahead of your time. Look at Elon Musk being blasted for smoking a joint! The man is behind a team making rockets land from where they take off from when entire government agencies struggled to successfully launch rockets one way. Most people are not as smart as they brag to be. The smart ones are made fun of instead of idolized. Then you work for them.... Be humble and lighten up people....
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