Before the Iron Age, Most Iron Came from Space

> “The main contribution of Jambon’s approach is that he has developed a method that allows us to test this hypothesis nondestructively,” says Martinón-Torres. Jambon was particularly interested in searching these artifacts for nickel, which is not found in smelted iron. By contrast, meteoritic iron is usually high in nickel and cobalt.

In the article, the author said archeologists:

> Humans didn’t really master the process and produce iron at a large scale until around 1200 B.C

and then she went to note

> Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, who died in 1324 B.C., for example, was buried with an iron headrest....

> Egyptian hieroglyphics referred to iron as being “from the sky,”

So was headrest made out of an iron from a meteorite, or was it extracted from an ore on Earth (through smelting)?

Okay... that seems fair. But when was that Egytian reference made? Before 1200BC or before 1324BC?

To add more confusion, later in the article:

> It has been thought, for example, that the iron used by the Egyptians came from an early smelting industry in Anatolia, where the Hittites may have started to work iron as early as 1500 B.C.

To summarize based on my understanding:

1. Extracting iron from an ore did not happen at large scale until 1200BC

2. But some smelting started as early as 1500BC

3. Iron artifacts were recovered from pharaoh Tutankhamun who died in 1324BC had.

4. Numerous references to “falling from rhe sky” from numerous civilizations, including some “iron hunting” trading.

5. So were some of the early iron artifacts made out of iron meteorite or were they made out of an iron ore?

While the main objective seems “clear” to me, the whole article is too confusing and hard to follow through. If my summary is right, ugh, I advise everyone to writr the outline in bullet points.

(Incidentally, just noticed there’s a submission on writing essays on HN right now)

“Some archaeologists were skeptical, as they thought that the amount of nickel found in Bronze Age iron tools was too low to consider them of meteoritic origin,” he says. “But I’m a trained cosmochemist, so I knew the problem was just corrosion. And I was able to show—partly thanks to Morasko meteorite data—that nickel was leached away during corrosion.”

So there were probably multiple issues.

It's true arctic peoples used found iron which came from meteorites. Another item rare in the arctic and even more useful than iron was wood. Driftwood was prized for building since trees don't exist above the arctic circle.

published in a book 1400 years old

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