Gerzeh
elements
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Iron
- By mass the most common
- element on Earth,
- iron is decayed from radioactive nickel
- produced by fusion in heavy stars
- before they collapse into supernovas
- yet native iron is rarely found
- so that the earliest iron objects
- are beads from meteoric iron
- from 3200 BCE or earlier
- found in a tomb at Gerzeh, Egypt.
- Obscured by time, the beginning
- of iron smelting could have been
- in Eastern Anatolia or West Africa by 1200 BCE,
- and was well established after 1300 BCE
- as iron replaced bronze for tools and weapons.
Atomic number 26
- The Chinese made cast iron objects
- in the fifth century BCE.
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- Steel, an alloy of iron and carbon
- was produced in Anatolia from 1800 BCE.
- *
- Wootz, known as Damascus steel, was produced
- in India as early as 500 BCE.
- *
- The Iron Age followed the Bronze Age.
- *
- In the Middle Ages in Europe, from around 500 CE,
- people made wrought iron from cast iron.
- *
- The people of Greenland made tools
- around 1000 CE using hammered disks
- made of iron from the Cape York meteorite.
- *
- In both China and Europe by 1300,
- blast furnaces replaced bloomeries.
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- Modern metallurgy produces iron and steel
- in greater quantities and with more efficiency
- than were possible with ancient methods.
Stuff that rusts
- Iron can dissolve entirely into rust.
- Hydrated oxides of iron crack and flake
- so don’t form a protective layer
- like the patina on copper.
- Matthew in the Bible says
- we shouldn’t put our hopes
- in things that moths and rust corrupt,
- and that’s not the only place in the Bible
- where an understanding of insects
- and metallurgy is evident.
- This could be the beginning
- of a long treatise on stuff that rusts.
- It would treat the cultural significance
- of iron beginning with the iron in red blood cells
- that makes life possible.
- We are made from rust and to rust we return.
The earth’s magnetic field has been the result of mysterious processes involving electric currents, convection, and cooling of high-pressure iron in the earth’s core.
See also in The book of science:
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