3200 BCE

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 meteroric 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.
• *
• 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.
• *
• 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.