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Almost All Bronze Age Artifacts Were Made From Meteorite Iron (sciencealert.com)
dryriver shares a report from Science Alert: According to a new study, it's possible that all iron-based weapons and tools of the Bronze Age were forged using metal salvaged from meteorites. The finding has given experts a better insight into how these tools were created before humans worked out how to produce iron from its ore. While previous studies had found specific Bronze Age objects to be made from meteoric metal -- like one of the daggers buried with King Tutankhamun -- this latest research answers the question of just how widespread the practice was. Albert Jambon, from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, studied museum artifacts from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and China, analyzing them using an X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer to discover they all shared the same off-world origins. "The present results complementing high quality analyses from the literature suggest that most or all irons from the Bronze Age are derived from meteoritic iron," writes Jambon in his published paper. "The next step will be to determine where and when terrestrial iron smelting appeared for the first time."
Iron ore requires smelting at very high temperatures to extract the iron. Meteoric iron is in its metallic form already.
I think the point being made is not where iron comes from. The interesting thing is that humans had iron tools and weapons in the Bronze Age before we knew how to get it out of the ground. Apparently, it wasn't really clear how that happened. The Bronze Age is so named because we knew how to cast bronze, the Iron Age came after. So where did we get the iron? Meteorites.
Pretty cool.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
People discovered how to work metal by finding "native" forms. Hunks of pure or nearly pure copper, silver and gold. Iron doesn't form these, you need to know how to smelt it. By the bronze age, they had learned to smelt copper and tin, but iron requires higher and more consistent heat than they had the ability to make. But, if you find native iron in the form of meteorites, you can skip that process and create tools.
New studies suggest that all the ancient weaponry actually came from loot boxes that the alien cult named Activision spread all over the inhabited world in order to extract revenue from planet Earth. Not content with microtransactions in the form of animal teeth and leather, it taught their subjects how to make shiny coins from metallic stones.
Just saying.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
You are very confused and not understanding the issue at all. Meteoric iron is elemental iron, already smelted as it were. Mined iron is ore, terrestrial deposits of oxidized iron, not from meteors that worked their way into the eartch.
This ore needs to be mined, then heated very hot (relative to making bronze) to extract the elemental iron from the ore to a usable elemental metal. So this finding explains how humans could have a limited quantity of iron weapons/tools before the discovery/invention of mining and smelting iron ore. The latter is what gave us the Iron Age.
Two very different processes, two very different technologies. Yes, it all ultimately came from the same place. So did every f-ing thing. Why do we bother to talk about anything?
You can't make a knife out of "Fe"
Sure you can, just put "Kni" in front of it.
Depends on the iron. The earliest iron age weapon were inferior to bronze weapons, but were just much much cheaper as iron is significantly more abundant.
But meteoritic iron isn't exactly pig iron. It's mostly quite strong nickel alloys, stronger than iron or unhardened steel. Combined with its extreme rarity it would be the stuff of legends.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Bronze is a harder metal than pure iron. That means that it keeps a better edge and is less likely to bend. (Both written and archaeological shows that iron swords bending in battle was an actual problem - one of the Roman historians even wrote about how their enemies had to stop mid-battle and straighten their swords!)
The thinking is that the bronze age didn't end because iron was better for weapons, but the bronze age ended because tin and copper were relatively rare compared to iron and frequently needed to be traded long distance. When the bronze age saw the collapse of its trading networks, people turned to local resources, which meant iron.
It was only much later, when we developed better metallurgy, that we could consistently make iron alloys that were better than bronze.
So were these iron weapons more ceremonial? Prized because they are rare? Or indicative of regional trade issues?