3,000-year-old ‘treasure’ made from extraterrestrial material, study finds Technical news
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In 1963, an ancient treasure was discovered on the Iberian Peninsula. Now it looks like some of it is made of material that doesn’t come from Earth.
The Treasure of Villena is so named because it is one of the largest European Bronze Age gold treasures ever discovered. It contains 59 objects made of gold, silver, iron and amber. Now a new analysis has revealed that this treasure contains metal that came from Earth.
New research published in the journal Trabajos de Prehistoria says two of the artifacts were made from metal that came from a meteorite that hit our planet a million years ago. The analysis looked at two pieces of iron – a hollow C-shaped bracelet covered with a gold plate and an open bracelet, according to Spanish newspaper El País. Both were dated to between 1,400 and 1,200 BC. Dated. Remember, this was before the Iron Age began in the region.
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“The connection between gold and iron is important as both elements have great symbolic and social value. In this case, [the artefacts] were…probably hidden treasures that could have belonged to an entire community rather than a single person. At this historical point, there were no kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula,” said study lead author Ignacio Montero Ruiz LiveScience.
The researchers used mass spectrometry on the metal and found that traces of an iron-nickel alloy were comparable to those in meteor iron. According to Ruiz, iron processing used a completely different technology than the copper-based metallurgy then used for precious metals such as gold and silver. This means that people working with meteor iron had to innovate and develop new technologies.
The study’s researchers claim that these are both the first and oldest meteor iron objects found on the Iberian Peninsula. However, they cannot yet confirm who created the objects and where they came from.
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First uploaded on: 02/08/2024 at 4:34 PM IST
