Find pushes back birth of Europe's steel hardware to about 3,000 years ago
- Reference: 1677742210
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/03/02/steel_tools_spain/
- Source link:
The team, led by University of Freiburg archaeologist Ralph Araque Gonzalez, base their claims on geochemical and metallographic analyses – and some good old fashioned [1]experimental archaeology . They demonstrated that a series of engravings on stone pillars found in the region from the late Bronze Age could only have been made with tools made from proper steel, and it was most likely developed locally.
According to the team's [2]paper on the research, the final bronze age (FBA) in the Iberian peninsula lasted from around 1200–800 BCE, and the early iron age (EIA) lasted roughly 200 years after that. Despite that commonly accepted timeline, the team said a series of engraved steles identified as from the FBA/EIA and examined as part of the study were mostly made of extremely hard rock – similar to quartzite.
[3]
As part of the experimental phase of the study, the team brought in a professional stonemason. They were given various types of stone used to carve FBA/EIA steles, as well as stone, bronze and steel tools – the latter based on a metallurgical analysis of a FBA tool from the Alentejo region of Portugal.
[4]
[5]
That tool – which the paper describes as "long ignored" – was the key. Metallurgical analysis determined it contained enough carbon to be considered steel. It was also the only tool strong enough to make a mark in the hardest quartzite-like stone used to carve some FBA/EIA steles.
[6]
The Iberian steel chisel, making its experimental replica, and using it to engrave – Click to enlarge
"This is extremely hard rock that cannot be worked with bronze or stone tools, but only with tempered steel," Araque Gonzalez [7]explained .
What have the Romans ever done for us?
According to the University of Freiburg, up until recently it was believed the ability to create steel – an alloy of iron and carbon – only became widespread in Europe with the expansion of the Roman Empire.
Rome didn't extend its control to the Iberian peninsula until around [8]218 BCE – nearly 700 years after the creation of the steel chisel found in Portugal that was replicated for the study. And it likely didn't gain control of the region where the chisel was created for another century.
But evidence of steel tools in Iberia hundreds of years earlier raises a question: how did they get there? Based on where the tool was found, and the context in which it was discovered, Araque Gonzalez concluded that the Romans probably had nothing to do with it.
[9]
That's not to say these ingenious Iberians achieved a global first - the oldest discovered piece of steel is around 900 years older than the Iberian chisel and was [10]found in Turkey in 2000. India also saw the creation of its own form of high-carbon iron in the form of wootz steel, a form of crucible steel that was invented sometime in the last millennium BCE, and China was producing its own as well. Now it appears Spain discovered the technique independently too.
Regardless of who made it first, that's not the point: The bottom line is that steel was being used in Western Europe without any external influence bringing it to the region, and during the final Bronze Age, no less.
"Iron metallurgy including the production and tempering of steel were probably indigenous developments of decentralized small communities in Iberia, and not due to the influence of later colonization processes," Araque Gonzalez hypothesized.
[11]Mexican cave relics suggest humans were populating the Americas up to 17,000 years earlier than thought
[12]Light from a long time ago reaches James Webb Space Telescope
[13]Fossil brain undoes 350 million years of scientific understanding
The team's findings, Araque Gonzalez suggested, could have consequences for the study of other FBA/EIA stone carvings made on similarly hard surfaces, which he said can be found all over the world.
"The people of the Final Bronze Age in Iberia were capable of tempering steel. Otherwise they would not have been able to work the pillars," Araque Gonzalez said. And if they were doing it, who knows where else steel was being used well before the established timeline? ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.experimentalarchaeology.uni-freiburg.de/
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440323000201?via%3Dihub
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZACB1SC2YynaPvfQPnCQlAAAAEc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZACB1SC2YynaPvfQPnCQlAAAAEc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZACB1SC2YynaPvfQPnCQlAAAAEc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/03/01/iberian-steel-study-pictures.jpg
[7] https://kommunikation.uni-freiburg.de/pm-en/press-releases-2023/steel-was-already-used-in-europe-2900-years-ago
[8] https://historyofspain.es/en/video/hispania-romana/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZACB1SC2YynaPvfQPnCQlAAAAEc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20090329111924/http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200903261611.htm
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/22/first_americans_from_30000_years/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/22/james_webb_early_light/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/02/ancient_fish_fossil_brain/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Extremely!
I always find this combination extremely intersting, and probably for the researchers a lot of fun.
People move around shocker !
The key point about even a single out of place artefact is it speaks to an entire infrastructure that must - simply must - have existed. And for that infrastructure to exist, certain other key elements must have been in place.
The fact that British "dark ages" finds - quite aside from the stunning quality - that contain minerals that can only have come from India means there must have been a trading path from there to here. That was established enough for people to use regularly. Meaning overall peaceful times.
Re: People move around shocker !
Indeed. And given the global transport infrastructure steadily being revealed by such finds, with its origins dating back right back into the mesolithic, if not the palaeolothic - even Neanderthals owned traded goods from cultures hundreds of miles away - the idea that iron and steel were independently discovered over and over again is absurdly untenable.
Re: People move around shocker !
That factual information won't stop one of the Erich von Daniken types writing a whole book around this though.
Re: People move around shocker !
In the early bronze age Greek traders went north to what they knew as the "Tin Islands" to trade for the Tin needed to make bronze. The main trading port there was a settlement that later became known as Tintagel.
The trade route between Britain and at least as far south as the Mediterranean was well established 2000 years before the "Dark Ages". The "Dark Ages" are called "Dark" because of the lack of documentation as to what was going on at the time. All that means is there was no writing on durable materials that has survived, it does not mean there was nothing happening.
Nice Work
It's nice to see researchers upending established archaeological timelines like this. The past is obviously more complicated than history books would have it.
As for the Romans - it appears that people all over were happy making and using steel objects as tools, but it took the Romans to take the step of spreading steel use literally at the pont of a sword.