Bronze Age weapons had ALIEN origin, astonishing study finds
Iron-based weapons from the Bronze Age have a high metallic content that comes from outer space, researchers have confirmed.
Previous studies have indicated that weapons in the past were made from meteoric metal. Last year it was claimed that King Tutankhamun’s dagger was forged from extraterrestrial iron.
However, the researchers wanted to find out how widespread this practice was.
Albert Jambon, from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, studied Bronze Age artefacts from Egypt, Turkey, Syria and China using X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer – X-rays that can analyse chemical compositions of objects without touching them.
King Tut's daggers were made from meteoric metals
Mr Jambon found that meteoric iron high in nickel was found throughout all of the samples, begging the questions was this used for all weapons and when did the practice first begin.
He writes in a research paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: "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.
Meteors are high in iron
"The next step will be to determine where and when terrestrial iron smelting appeared for the first time.
"The study emphasises the importance of analytical methods for properly studying the evolution of the use of metals and metal working technologies in our past cultures.”
The staggering amount of meteoric metals found in the Bronze Age weapons is no coincidence, the researcher adds, highlighting that this study could also be used to provide more information about the formation of the Earth.
The paper continues: "When large celestial bodies like our planet are forming, nearly all nickel drifts towards the molten iron core,” which were ultimately mined by forgers of weapons at the time, around 5,000 years ago.