3,000-year-old strange metal found in a treasure, and it doesn’t belong to Earth – Times of India

A new study has uncovered that two items from the Treasure of Villena, an ancient collection found in Spain, were made from iron that came from meteorites, not from Earth. This discovery, published in the journal Trabajos de Prehistoria, challenges what we knew about metalworking in ancient Spain. It highlights and emphasizes that the people of the Bronze Age may have been more advanced than we thought, using rare materials from the sky.
The Treasure of Villena is known to have been discovered in 1963 near the town of Villena, Spain. It includes mostly gold objects like jewelry and ceremonial items, showing the skill of Bronze Age goldsmiths. However, two items in the treasure stood out because they appeared to be made of iron. One is a bracelet, and the other is a small hollow sphere. This was confusing, creating curiosity, as iron was not used in this region until much later, around 850 BCE, while the other gold objects were dated to between 1500 and 1200 BCE.
The problem was that iron wasn’t used in the Iberian Peninsula during the time these objects were made. So, how could these two iron pieces fit into the treasure? Researchers suggested that they might not be made from regular iron but instead from a rare source- – meteorites.
Meteorite iron, which falls from space, is completely different from normal iron. It contains more nickel and has a special chemical signature. Ancient people valued meteorite iron because it was rare and came from the sky. To test if the Villena objects were made from meteorite iron, scientists used a special technique called mass spectrometry to analyze their chemical composition. Even though the objects were rusted, the tests showed high levels of nickel, which matches meteorite iron.

Image credit: Villena Museum

This discovery changes the understanding of the timeline of metal use in Spain. The two iron objects, made from meteorite iron, were most probably created between 1400 and 1200 BCE, aligning perfectly with the dates of the other items in the treasure. This shows that people in Iberia were already using rare and special materials much earlier than we thought.

Image credit: Villena Museum

The study makes these two objects- – the bracelet and the gold-decorated sphere- – the oldest known examples of meteorite iron in the Iberian Peninsula. It shows that ancient Iberian people were highly skilled in working with unique materials.
While the results are exciting, researchers want to do more tests to confirm their findings. The corrosion on the objects makes it harder to study them, so new methods may provide even clearer answers.