Within the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered an arrowhead at a Bronze Age dwelling in Mörigen, Switzerland. Within the years since, the three,000-year-old artifact has been a part of the gathering on the Bern Historical Museum.
Now, a brand new evaluation reveals that the thing isn’t any odd arrowhead — it was crafted from a meteorite that crashed to Earth 3,500 years ago, based on a study published within the September issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
“On the surface it looks like a typical arrowhead coated in rust,” lead writer Beda Hofmann, head and curator of mineralogy and meteorites on the Natural History Museum of Bern, told Live Science. Their evaluation showed that “there remains to be a variety of metal preserved,” he said.
Several methods, including X-ray tomography (computerized imaging) and gamma spectrometry (a process that detects gamma-emitting radioactive materials), showed that the palm-size arrowhead not only contained aluminum-26 isotopes that do not naturally occur on Earth but in addition traces of iron and nickel alloy consistent with meteorites, based on the study.
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The evaluation also revealed grind marks left over from when the meteorite was shaped into an arrowhead, and the stays of tar, which was likely used to connect the purpose to the arrow’s shaft, based on a statement.
At first, scientists thought the artifact was linked to the 170,000-year-old Twannberg meteorite site, lower than 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the dwelling. Nevertheless, further study revealed that the concentrations of nickel and germanium (a chemical element) within the arrowhead weren’t a match, based on the statement.
“It wasn’t from the meteorite that I suspected it was from,” Hofmann said of the artifact, which weighs one-tenth of an oz (2.9 grams) and measures just over 1 inch (3 centimeters) long.
Undiscouraged, Hofmann and colleagues referenced a geological database that exposed that the Kaalijarv meteorite site in Estonia, positioned greater than 1,400 miles (2,250 km) away, contained similar metals to the artifact and that the arrowhead got here from a 2-ton (1,800 kilograms) meteorite, based on the statement.
This led scientists to conclude that the arrowhead was almost certainly traded sooner or later.
“It has been well documented that trade was well established over large distances throughout the Bronze Age,” Hofmann said. “These early people likely knew that when the impact happened there in 1500 B.C., the fabric was precious and had value to it.”
Even today, meteoritic arrowheads are exceedingly rare, with only 55 known objects present in Eurasia and Africa across 22 sites, based on the statement.
From Feb. 1, 2024, to April 25, 2025, the arrowhead shall be on display on the Bern Historical Museum.