# Bronze Age Iron **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 27, 2019, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145 "2019-04-27T21:30:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/21 "2019-04-28T20:58:27Z")
BTW, several years back I bought a block lot of a few kilos of unclassifed NWAs for under 10 cents per gram. Some of them were really nice but probably part of the [beautiful](https://www.meteorite-times.com/nwa-869-inclusions/) [but](http://www.meteoritemarket.com/NWA869.htm) [abundant](http://www.meteoritesusa.com/nwa-869.html) NWA 869. Some of them were very weathered and ugly and possibly fell tens of thousands of years ago. But one piece really caught my attention. It is a significantly weathered chondrite but not nearly as bad as the worst of the batch. One side is fusion-crusted and the other not, and the flat edges are considerably sharp because of the edge of that fusion crust. I can’t prove that the shape isn’t random and natural, but the size and shape are highly suggestive of something that has been deliberately shaped into a tool such as a spear-point, possibly thousands of years ago. I made [these photos and videos](https://imgur.com/a/XR8WMBi) today. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/22 "2019-04-28T21:42:45Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > IIRC, the bulk of the world’s supply of nickel comes from a single mine in Canada, on the site of an ancient asteroid impact. No. The Sudbury area hasn’t been the largest nickel producer in the world for some time, and Canada definitely doesn’t have the largest reserves. Laterite mining has overtaken sulphide mining in a big way, and that means the tropics now dominate Ni production. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/23 "2019-04-28T22:17:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > … > > IIRC, the bulk of the world’s supply of nickel comes from a single mine in Canada, on the site of an ancient asteroid impact. Nickle is mainly produced from magmatic and laterite ore deposits, and Canada is the third place producer, behind Indonesia and the Philippines: > **[Top Nickel Producing Countries](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-nickel-producing-countries.html)** > > Indonesia is the world's top producer of nickel, followed by the Philippines and Canada. If it only came from meteorites, I couldn’t imagine it being as cheap as it is. Meteorite deposits are an important source of osmium and iridium, which are considered precious metals. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/24 "2019-04-28T23:58:51Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Interesting. But how would an Egyptian smith turn that into something useful, like a knife blade, if the melting point is so high? > > Trivia: Terry Pratchett smelted his own sword from iron he found on his property, including some meteorite iron. HM graciously used the sword to dub him Sir Terry. A charcoal fire with some forced air is sufficiently hot to forge iron. The same fires used to produce and cast bronze would do the job on iron. The metal doesn’t need to be hot enough to melt, only to become plastic where it can be pounded into shape, and at that temperature it can be forge welded also. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/25 "2019-04-29T00:00:39Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Iron wasn’t available because it was combined with oxygen into rust, and other ores. It was around, just not usable by populations that didn’t know how to extract pure iron from the ores. Iron meteorites formed without all that pesky oxygen to deal with and so remain in pure state (along with lots of nickel) and remain in that state until they hit the ground on Earth and begin rusting away. > > I don’t know if ancient peoples "knew where to look for meteorites, as much as recognizing the value of them when they were found. Remnant stone-age groups were using meteoritic iron even in very recent times–the natives of Greenland were using some large ones for iron tools up until [Robert Peary stole them](https://www.meteorite-times.com/Back_Links/2002/September/colectors_corner.htm) and sold them to the American Museum of Natural History. I can’t find the reference again, but in on discussion about the iron blade in King Tut’s tomb it was mentioned (hypothesized?) that the meteorites came from the Sahara desert. Apparently even to this day people in the Sahara find meteorites and hang on to them. Mostly for tourists now, but back the day, they were a convenient source of iron. Though according to Youtube, hard to work with. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Yr_5tIPP3dM/maxresdefault.jpg "CAN YOU FORGE A METEORITE!?") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr_5tIPP3dM) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/26 "2019-04-29T00:36:10Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > I can’t find the reference again, but in on discussion about the iron blade in King Tut’s tomb it was mentioned (hypothesized?) that the meteorites came from the Sahara desert. Tut’s knife is a match for a meteorite named [Kaharga](https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=12290), found in 2000. I just found [this](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319909499_Bronze_Age_iron_Meteoritic_or_not_A_chemical_strategy) PDF on Bronze Age meteoritic iron, which includes: > [@](#): > > Tut’s dagger is obviously the best preserved iron as discussed recently by Comelli et al. (2016) with a fresh meteoritic composition, quite high in Ni. We notice that the composition given by Comelli is quite high in Ni (10.8 %) and within error and/or variability similar to that of Ströbele et al. (2016) (12.9%), therefore unambiguously meteoritic, compared to the previous results of Helmi and Barakat (1995) giving only 2.8 % Ni (Co was not documented). This again indicates that the idea of a threshold value is meaningless. Interestingly Horus eye (on the bracelet) and the miniature headrest exhibit significantly less nickel. According to their > exceptional state of preservation we can say that, because of their significantly different compositions, that the dagger is not made from the same meteorite > as the other two objects. The dagger is homogeneous (Standard Deviation of 1.1%) in relation with its high Ni content (small size of the exsolution domains). Both the Horus eye (S.D. =4.8 %) and the headrest (S.D. =7.2 %) are far less homogeneous. This suggests that the Widmanstätten pattern is still present and coarser. The low Ni phase (kamacite) cannot be much different from 5% Ni, whereas the Ni rich phase (taenite) is less homogenous with on the average about 20% Ni. The more Ni rich metal (on average) corresponds to a larger fraction of taenite and a larger variability in the composition, at the scale of analysis (4 mm diameter). The slightly different compositions and variabilities suggest that the headreast and the > Horus eye were also made from two different meteorites. In others words Tutankamun’s treasure was the first meteorite collection ever! A set of 16 > additional iron miniature artifacts are presently investigated and may add to the list. > [@rbroome](#): > > Apparently even to this day people in the Sahara find meteorites and hang on to them. If only someone had mentioned those–several times–earlier in this thread… ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/27 "2019-04-29T05:00:32Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > A charcoal fire with some forced air is sufficiently hot to forge iron. The same fires used to produce and cast bronze would do the job on iron. The metal doesn’t need to be hot enough to melt, only to become plastic where it can be pounded into shape, and at that temperature it can be forge welded also. Yes. If you watch a blacksmith forming horseshoes - they use a fire with a bellows, and once the iron piece is red-hot, it can be hammered into shape with a bit of effort. I don’t imagine it was a stretch for those making bronze to figure out that with a bellows they could make their fire hotter; it just wasn’t that necessary until they figured out iron. I wonder whether to some working extent meteoric iron contributed to that discovery? “The hotter I make it, the easier to hammer it to shape.” (This BTW is the mistake made by conspiracy theorists over 9-11 and building collapse. “A fire with jet fuel won’t get hot enough to melt iron.” True, but iron turn to a taffy consistency far below melting point, and loses its strength.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/28 "2019-04-29T06:40:43Z")
NB the Inuit and the Dorset culture in and near Greenland didn’t have fires that were that hot (they didn’t make pottery IIRC), so their small tools were mostly made from hammering the cold iron. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/29 "2019-04-29T07:28:39Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Yes. If you watch a blacksmith forming horseshoes - they use a fire with a bellows, and once the iron piece is red-hot, it can be hammered into shape with a bit of effort. I don’t imagine it was a stretch for those making bronze to figure out that with a bellows they could make their fire hotter; it just wasn’t that necessary until they figured out iron. Actually bellows were’t invented until the 5th century BC, and then it was in China. It didn’t reach the west for a long time after that. I’m not sure what they used to get forges hotter before they had bellows. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/30 "2019-04-29T09:01:27Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Actually bellows were’t invented until the 5th century BC, and then it was in China. It didn’t reach the west for a long time after that. I’m not sure what they used to get forges hotter before they had bellows. That’s incorrect. Pot bellows in Egypt go back to at least a millennium earlier ([cite](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/007589179790211626?journalCode=ylev20)) [This painting](https://photos.smugmug.com/Features/Africa/Egypt-Luxor-tombs/i-tKCzRC6/1/376a3070/XL/29360-egypt-XL.jpg)is from the tomb of Rekhmire, circa 1450 BCE. Similarly-aged pot bellows have also been found [in Cyprus](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280727407_Blowing_the_Wind_of_Change_The_Introduction_of_Bellows_in_Late_Bronze_Age_Cyprus) There likely were also leather bag bellows, but evidence for those is lacking. Of course, before that, blowpipes were used. You can get a very hot fire with just a blowpipe. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/31 "2019-04-29T09:22:09Z")
Actually, I was conservative, the [Tell edh Dhibai](https://www.academia.edu/4615045/The_Metal_Workers_Tools_from_Tell_edh_Dhibai)(in modern Baghdad) pot bellows date to 1800 BCE. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/32 "2019-04-29T10:11:26Z")
> [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](#): > > NB the Inuit and the Dorset culture in and near Greenland didn’t have fires that were that hot (they didn’t make pottery IIRC), so their small tools were mostly made from hammering the cold iron. So it isn’t the size of the tool, it’s the hardness of the iron? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/33 "2019-04-29T10:43:42Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > So it isn’t the size of the tool, it’s the hardness of the iron? Well, and also how you use it. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/34 "2019-04-29T11:05:50Z")
It ain’t the size of the hammer, it’s the heat of the [DEL][COLOR=“Black”]meat[/DEL][/COLOR] metal. CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/35 "2019-04-29T13:17:50Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Trivia: Terry Pratchett smelted his own sword from iron he found on his property, including some meteorite iron. HM graciously used the sword to dub him Sir Terry. [Here is the dope](https://gizmodo.com/sir-terry-pratchetts-self-made-meteorite-sword-is-the-c-5643189)on Pratchett’s sword. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/36 "2019-04-29T15:10:55Z")
I guess the point would be, the hotter the iron, the more plastic it would be; and it is can be formed all the way down to room temperature if you hammer hard enough often enough. My suggestion would be that people making bronze would have some clever ideas for blowing on fires to make them hotter. They just did not need the extreme heat that melted/smelted iron until they figured that part out. Until then, a simple fire or better would suffice for working it. In the days before twitter craftsmen had plenty of time to thing and contemplate things. I assume they had considered the fact that generally metals got softer with heat and applied it to weird metals they had found lying in the desert. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/37 "2019-04-29T15:45:19Z")
I expect that, even before Twitter, most craftsmen probably just used the same techniques their master used, and passed the same techniques on to their apprentices in turn, and scoffed at the idea of trying anything new. But the thing is, it only takes a few to figure out new things, and teach the others. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2019, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/38 "2019-04-29T15:51:01Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > BTW, several years back I bought a block lot of a few kilos of unclassifed NWAs for under 10 cents per gram. Some of them were really nice but probably part of the [beautiful](https://www.meteorite-times.com/nwa-869-inclusions/) [but](http://www.meteoritemarket.com/NWA869.htm) [abundant](http://www.meteoritesusa.com/nwa-869.html) NWA 869. Some of them were very weathered and ugly and possibly fell tens of thousands of years ago. But one piece really caught my attention. It is a significantly weathered chondrite but not nearly as bad as the worst of the batch. One side is fusion-crusted and the other not, and the flat edges are considerably sharp because of the edge of that fusion crust. I can’t prove that the shape isn’t random and natural, but the size and shape are highly suggestive of something that has been deliberately shaped into a tool such as a spear-point, possibly thousands of years ago. > I made [these photos and videos](https://imgur.com/a/XR8WMBi) today. I wonder if working it would have left any signs in the microstructure. And if there are any non-destructive analytical techniques for determining this. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2019, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/39 "2019-04-30T02:22:09Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > T\ > > If only someone had mentioned those–several times–earlier in this thread… Sorry! 🙂 I promise I thought I had read the thread up to the point where I started my entry and those posts weren’t there. I probably just missed them, but this happens to me a lot. I write a post and it ends up much further down the chain than I expected. Makes me look slow… ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2019, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145/40 "2019-04-30T03:19:47Z")
Not a problem, the same thing happens to me a lot. As for the OP, I see that you are in California–[here](http://cams.seti.org/california.html) is a page on California finds. If you really want to look for meteorites, the best bet is to look in spots where they have been found before. It would help if you had a copy of [this](https://books.google.com/books?id=OMgDhc8d7v4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false) and knew how to not die in the desert. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bronze-age-iron/833145.md?page=3)