AN IRON AGE FROM SPACE

In previous columns we have reported on the veneration of meteorites in the Americas, and the use of meteoric material in ancient Egypt. Now, the story moves towards the Arctic. In August 2014, a team of Scandinavian geologists and archæologists visited northern Greenland to examine the remains of a meteorite that impacted the area 5,000-10,000 years ago. It was a huge object that broke up in the atmosphere, the fragments being hurled across the Greenland ice sheet and the sea around the Cape York Peninsula (near present-day Thule). These gifts from space allowed the Iron Age to begin in Greenland centuries before knowledge concerning the mining and smelting of iron was brought by farmers to that land. Virtually nothing was known about the cultural effect of the meteor until the arrival of the research team. “The story of the meteorites as the whole area’s source of iron have sunk into oblivion,” explained team member Martin Appelt, an archæologist from the National Museum of Denmark.

The team found that the meteoric iron was traded over huge distances in the eastern Arctic, even well across Canada. The initial reason the meteoric source location was discovered was because of investigation of mysterious piles of basalt rocks at Cape York. (The first person to draw European attention to these strange stones was an Inuit stowaway aboard a British ship anchored in the Disko Bay in the early 19th century.) It transpired that these had been used as hammerstones to knock off pieces of the meteoric fragments and batter them into shape for harpoons, etc.

It seems that the meteoric iron was used from the mid-eighth century by the Palæo-Eskimo Dorset culture, but in the 12th century the Inuit arrived and took over the trade in meteoric iron. ScienceNordic, 13 Jan 2015, translated form Polarfronten, a Danish magazine (Videnskab.dk).