All tools from the Bronze Age have actually been made of meteorite iron
Humans were able to create tools and jewelry long before developing other skills, so this is one of the most important activities ever undertaken by humans. Many people thought they started doing it during the Iron Age, but the first tools are actually 2,000 years older, and date back to the Bronze Age. However, what is unusual about them is the fact that they were not made from an Earth-based material.
The Bronze Age tool are made from alien iron
A team of researchers from the Institute of Mineralogy, Material Physics, and Cosmochemistry performed a chemical analysis on a series of tools coming from the Bronze Age. They discovered that none of the tools was made of bronze or of any material similar to iron. In fact, they weren’t made of anything originating on Earth.
This might sound like a science-fiction scenario, and might spice the imagination of conspiracy theorists. In fact, the explanation is quite simple. All Bronze Age tools were made of iron, but the iron didn’t come from Earth, but from meteorites which fell on our planet thousands of years ago.
To identify the composition of the tools and jewelry, the researchers used a spectrometer which used X-ray to measure the fluorescence of the objects. Among them, there was some jewelry taken from the tomb of Tutankhamun, coming from Giza, Egypt, Umm el-Marra, or artifacts that belonged to the Chinese dynasty of Shang.
Meteoritic iron is easier to handle than Earthly iron
All these objects were manufactured before 1200 BC, and all of them were made from meteorite iron. These space bodies are created when stars die off, and the main element in their composition is iron. Apart from it, they also contain cobalt and nickel. This type of iron was likely easier to manipulate than Earth iron, as it didn’t need smelting.
“Extraterrestrial iron does not need to be reduced in the furnaces of the Bronze Age, this explains why the iron objects were then all of meteoritic origin,” explain the researchers.
The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
