Discovery of a Bronze Age Spearhead Made from 'Extraterrestrial Metal'

Long before humans could extract iron from natural ore, artifacts made of iron have been recorded in archaeological documents. According to Forbes magazine, these 'foreign objects' actually have extraterrestrial origins, even if ancient aliens did not visit Earth. They are made from iron pieces that fell to Earth in the form of meteorites. Meteoric iron was used by early peoples in many parts of the world. Artifacts such as various daggers, statues, or jewelry made from meteoric iron have been found in Iran, Turkey, Greece, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Canada, Greenland, Russia, China, and North Africa. A collection of iron beads found in a 6,000-year-old tomb in Egypt dates back to 2,000 years before the Iron Age. In Central and Western Europe, only two ancient artifacts - a bracelet and a spearhead from Poland - have been identified with meteoric origins. Now, a team of archaeologists and geologists has discovered a spearhead in Switzerland that is likely made from materials that came from a meteorite. This team, using electron microscope images, X-rays, and analysis with high-energy radiation, identified the chemical composition of the materials used in this spearhead, which is an alloy of iron, nickel, and aluminum, and compared the results with known meteorite samples. The analyzed spearhead is part of a collection of bronze spearheads that were found over 100 years ago at the archaeological site of Morigen in Switzerland and are now housed in the Bern Historical Museum. The Morigen site, a settlement of early people in the late Bronze Age that was once located near the shores of a lake, has attracted researchers' attention because there is evidence of a known meteorite impact nearby. The Tonberg iron meteorite, which consists of three pieces, is the largest meteorite ever found in Switzerland. It appeared that smaller pieces of this meteorite might have been discovered in prehistoric times and used in the adjacent settlement to make spearheads. However, the chemical properties of the discovered spearhead did not match those of this meteorite. With further and more extensive investigations, researchers found that the concentration of nickel and germanium for the spearhead found in Morigen resembles that of the Kalli meteorite in Estonia. This meteorite fell about 3,500 years ago during the Bronze Age and produced many small pieces. The possibility of discovering and collecting such small iron pieces seems much greater than that of large buried meteorites. The connection between Estonia and Switzerland also supports the existence of a network in prehistoric Europe that was used for trading goods such as amber as gemstones, flint for tool production, and meteoric iron. Researchers now hope to find more artifacts with similar origins in other archaeological collections. This study titled 'A Spearhead Made from Meteoric Iron from a Late Bronze Age Settlement in Morigen, Switzerland and Its Possible Source' was published in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences 2023.