Scientists are ending a debate over an ancient Egyptian beads found in a 5,000-year-old tomb by confirming that its components are the same of a meteorite. This means that the oldest known iron artifact in the world is not something from Earth.
The artifact was excavated in 1911 from an ancient cemetery located about 5,100 kilometers south of Cairo in the village of el-Gerzeh. It was found in a tomb of a teenage boy, whose identity is still unknown, strung together in a necklace with gemstones and gold. Scientists analyzed the beads and their early findings revealed the presence of high concentrations of nickel which is also present in iron meteorites.
The Egyptian beads were said to be crafted about 2,000 years before the Iron Age while the tomb dates back to 3200 B.C.
Thilo Rehren, lead author of the study and a professor at UCL Qatar, a Western Asian outpost of the University College London's Institute of Archaeology, and his colleagues decided to examine the beads again as the previous study failed to provide cosmic evidences to establish that it was really from a meteorite. Nickel can also be found in Earth that is why not everyone bought the idea.
The researchers used neutron and gamma rays scanners to look for other components aside from nickel. Their test showed high levels of concentrations of cobalt, phosphorous, and germanium. Such levels are only present on iron meteorites.
"It's really exciting, because we were able to detect sufficient cobalt and germanium in these beads to confirm they're meteoritic," Rehren told LiveScience. "We had assumed this was the case for 100 years, but it's nice to be able to put an exclamation mark on the label, rather than a question mark."
Further analysis revealed how the beads were made. The researchers believe that it may be heated and hammered into very thin sheets before weaving it to tube-shaped wooden sticks that are 2 cm long. It sparks another discovery that 2,000 years before the Iron age, people were already expert in blacksmithing and using iron meteorites as materials.
This study was published in the Aug. 19 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
