Rings forged from meteorites may have been fashionable among ancient Greek elite
phys.org
phys.org
Mycenaeans are considered Greek.
Minoans generally not considered Greek.
Their script, Linear A, has never been deciphered, so we don’t actually know what language they spoke, but most linguists think it wasn’t Greek, based on how poorly Linear A’s signs map onto Greek phonetics when tested as they do successfully with Mycenaean Linear B.
Culturally the Minoans also look distinct from later Greek civilization. Different religious iconography (bull-leaping, goddess-centric imagery), different art style, no clear warrior-elite hierarchy the way Mycenaean and later Greek society had.
Once you correct for well-understood systematic gaps, though, the underlying grammar, vocabulary, and even some divine names (Poseidon, Zeus, Hera, Dionysus all show up) are recognizably continuous with classical Greek.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...
Even the cave where Zeus was allegedly born is on Crete.
As for Linear A decipherment claims, claiming decipherment isn't the same as decipherment. For example, here's a claim from 2014 that Linear A encodes spoken Japanese: https://konosos.net/2014/12/09/the-phonetic-method-in-linear... Does Linear A encode spoken Japanese? of course not.
It's fair to argue they aren't. The Assyrian people still exist [1] today. Their language and culture having been passed on-unbroken–by the living to the living for thousands of years.
The Myceneans–like the Hittites and others whom we know so little about we haven't even named them–are in a fundamentally distinct category. Like yes, they weren't nuked out of existence. But there is a permanent and irreparable break in the continuity of exchange that severs the timeline between then and now.
Modern day Assyrians also speak Aramaic (or Arabic) rather than Akkadian which was the state language of the Assyrian empire (Aramaic did replace Akkadian as the lingua franca under the Neo-Assyrian empire however). Conversely, Greek is the descendant of Mycenaean Greek just as Coptic is the descendant of the Ancient Egyptian language.
Mycenaeans really are not like the Hittites who were essentially completely forgotten until 19th and 20th century archeology discovered them.
Nobody mention it to Peter Thiel, he doesn’t need any more ideas.
To Bronze Age Greeks, lacking the ability to smelt iron, an iron weapon would have been surpassingly strong, sharp and rare.
Later, during the Iron Age, Adamantine got retconned into something else (like diamond).
So perhaps they mostly just picked weird rocks up off the ground, as the Inuit did? When you spend time outside with the herds you probably notice unusual wrongs.
Not exactly the same, but I’ve seen video of meteorite collecting on the Antarctic ice sheet near the South Pole and they just fan out in a big line and walk across the ice picking up meteorites.
Why should it cost any more than a couple of nails from the hardware store?
Composition and the physical structure of the metal. Entry through the atmosphere really affects it.
> How could you even verify that?
Composition can be tested, but really, a lot of it is visual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widmanst%C3%A4tten_pattern
tbh its just a geeky coolness thing.
Actual metals are never 100% pure any one element. There are always alloys and impurities that speak to it's origins and history.
e.g. "The significant nickel concentration and consistent occurrence of cobalt confirm the meteoritic origin of the iron blades"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S12962...
More specifically, the iron meteorites are made of an alloy composed of iron, nickel (5.7% on average), cobalt (0.28% on average) and germanium (0.017% on average), with much smaller quantities of other elements, like gallium, chromium, platinum-group elements and gold. Besides these, there is a certain group of meteorites whose iron alloy also contains up to a few percent of silicon (those come from bodies with too little oxygen, where not all the silicon was oxidized to form silicates).
The reason for why the meteorites have this composition, which must resemble the core of the Earth, is that these are the elements that remain uncombined with oxygen when there is not enough oxygen to oxidize everything, so only the elements with a greater affinity with oxygen are oxidized and form a mixture of silicate rocks, while the remainder dissolves in iron.
So this very unusual chemical composition is very easy to distinguish from terrestrial iron. Mixing iron with nickel is not enough to simulate it, because there are also the other elements present in smaller quantities, like cobalt and germanium, which show whether an iron alloy is terrestrial or meteoritic.
After Earth had formed, it was melted by many impacts and then the heavy iron alloy went to the core, while the lighter rocks floated above it forming the mantle, like the slag in a furnace, and from the mantle, the lightest rocks, i.e. the granitic rocks, raised above the mantle, forming the crust and the continents. Most of the iron remained in the core, and that must have a composition similar with the iron meteorites, while a small part of the iron was oxidized, so it mixed with the rocks. This is the iron that we can find at the surface of the Earth, and when it was oxidized it was not accompanied by the other chemical elements dissolved in the Earth's core, because those are more resistant to rusting.
I would expect that to have gone up a decent chunk in the mean time given the price of gold has skyrocketed since then.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-3000-year-old...
It proves nothing - but from just 100kg, you could put 1/2 carat bits of meteorite in 1,000,000 rings.
The "good enough" scenario I guessed at has a semi-honest treasure hunter finding a 100kg-ish fragment somewhere in those 10,000 sq. mi., then selling it to someone making rings. Lab work (isotope ratios, grain structure, etc.) could confirm that it was very likely part of the Gibeon meteorite - whether or not the ownership paperwork was legit.
Something I saw while googling is that the composition & crystal structure of this meteorite makes it very attractive for use in jewellery.
When I first read the title, it sounded to me like a classic case of Kessler syndrome.
At the time, not so much. It was called "The Bronze Age" and "The Iron age" came later. The names aren't random.
From the article:
> The use of meteoritic iron particularly stands out during the Bronze Age because of the lack of iron smelting at the time.
In other words, the main source of this special metal was when the Gods occasionally threw down a piece, in a column of fire.
See also in ancient Egypt:
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2013/09/01/23856/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S12962...
It always loads the 'Just a quick check -- We’re checking your connection to prevent automated abuse' page. Depending on my settings I may or may not load the actual Cloudflare checkbox.
And at that point I just don't want to bother with that site anymore really. Obviously I must be some 11th world country on some random sanctioned list (aka Germany). :-)