Bronze Age Tools and Weapons Made From Meteorites
Using “X-Ray Florescence Spectrometer” analysis of various Bronze Age artifacts, researchers have determined that the iron within them had to have come from space. On Earth, a lot of the nickel ore is buried very very deep as it sank closer to the core while the planet cooled, so extraterrestrial iron contains significantly more nickel than we might otherwise expect. And since humans would not develop smelting techniques hot enough to produce our own iron for another 2,000 years, finding a pre-smelted chuck of meteor would have been a great find for a smith of that age. They used those fortuitous finds to forge jewelry, tools and weapons including a dagger found in the tomb of King Tutenkhamen, shown above. you can read the full academic paper Bronze Age Iron: Meteoric Or Not? A Chemical Strategy in the Journal of Archeological Science though it requires a subscription, but check out Science Alert for a deeper dive.