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Ancient Egyptians Made Iron Jewelry From Pieces of Meteorite, Archaeologists Say
fangmcgee writes "Researchers at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London have found that a collection of ancient jewelry is out of this world. The 5,000-year-old Egyptian beads, previously thought to be made from iron from Earth have been found to be made from hammered pieces of meteorite. Strung together with gold, gemstones, and other minerals, the beads pre-date iron smelting, showcasing the metalworking mastery of fourth millennium B.C. Egyptians."
"The meteorite collided with Earth nearly 10,000 years ago. The iron masses were known to Inuit as Ahnighito (the Tent), weighing 31 metric tons (31 long tons; 34 short tons); the Woman, weighing 3 metric tons (3.0 long tons; 3.3 short tons); and the Dog, weighing 400 kilograms (880 lb). For centuries, Inuit living near the meteorites used them as a source of metal for tools and harpoons. The Inuit would work the metal using cold forging--that is by stamping and hammering it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite
This reminds me of a story from some time ago- some colored glass in Tutankhamun's jewelry may have been from meteor strikes. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5196362.stm
I bet that the Sumerian fanboys are fuming now. Suck it up, boys! Egypt forever!
Ezekiel 23:20
Is this an example of the latest we used meteoritic iron before learning to smelt it, the earliest example of melting a rock down for something better than copper, or just something in between?
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Meteoric iron has been used by 'stone age' peoples all around the world. Identifying these Egyptian beads is neat but hardly a surprise.
Stone age-bronze age-iron age was never intended to imply exclusivity, only what the dominant method of getting the work done was in a given time and place. The iron age is taken to arrive when the technology for extracting telluric iron is well understood and used, the former may have happened long before the latter in areas where a high bronze age culture had developed, and of course meteoric iron doesnt rely on that technology at all so it's completely independent of it. It wouldnt really be a surprise to see meteoric iron objects MUCH earlier than this, except that it's unlikely to be preserved for so long outside of quite rare contexts.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thine_Own_Self
Get of my lawn, youngster.
You call this news?! It happened 5000 years ago!
I haven't search the /. archives, but it is probably a dupe from 2500 years ago too!
Oh, /., you're so slow!
For years I have been telling everyone that aliens built the pyramids. Now we have proof from the extraterrestrial pieces they left behind. Who's the crazy one now?!
Yes, 'cause one part of the population wants to stick to idiotic pre-medieval religious rules invented by a pedophile and force others to comply to them, while the other ones wants to leave 2000 years behind.
I think if you did some research you'd find that this is not entirely the case. Furthermore insulting peoples beliefs achieves very little, putting religious differences aside is an important part of achieving a secular society.
null
Now you've done it. You're gonna set all the Stargate fanboys on fire with this kind of news.
yet the american-backed military junta was shooting protesters while the biggest robbery of ancient artefacts was going down last week!
end foreign expenditure, stop supporting the criminal juntas like egypt and israel!
Making the metal from ore require mastery, making non load bearing artifacts out of metal requires just muscle.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yawn. This has been known for decades. It's only news to Slashdot readers. Try turning off the computer and the TV, read some dead-tree type books once in a while. Not only will you learn things, you will also totally confuse the NSA.
Meteorite origin, I suppose it had enough nickel to qualify for Stainless and was on the Stone Age bride registry?
So does anyone know what the stat bonus was on one of those necklaces? I'm thinking it would have a defensive buff but it could also be added damage as radiation to all weapon strikes.
Insulting peoples beliefs achieves a lot more then tolerating their advancement at controlling the most aspect of our life as possible.
Just look how Christians know their place now. They hardly harass anyone now, and they use to rule the world, torturing peoples and burning witches. Thanks to heroes, like in the above video, that had the courage to challenge the religious authorities with insults and mockeries. Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, was a paedophile and a violent warlord. This is historical fact. Event the Muslim do not contest that fact. It written black on white in the fucking Quran for fuck's sake. The parent AC is factually correct and you are the bigoted and ignorant one here.
Posting as Coward because replying to troll is bad form.
We're not saying the first part was incorrect, just the second.
No, one side has the idiotic pre-medieval religious rules and the other side wants to have the country run by their fascist military junta. Ain't no good guys in this fight.
THEY'RE ALIENS!
I'm sure we'll see an episode about this on Discovery soon....
The G
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/05/30/1344227/iron-in-egyptian-relics-came-from-space
You're welcome.
Ancient Egyptians had help from aliens when they built the Pyramids... Its only natural they would make jewelry from space rocks. Duh!
This "fascist military junta" is the closest thing to democracy there is in the Arab world. The democratically-elected government they replaced had no intention of allowing anyone else to be elected under their new constitution.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.