Metals and Metallurgy
METALS AND METALLURGY. Archaic, nonliterate peoples, as well as prehistoric populations, worked meteoric iron long before they learned to use the ferrous ores occurring on the earth's surface. They treated certain ores like stones, that is, they regarded them as raw material for the manufacture of lithic tools. A similar technique was applied until recently by certain peoples having no knowledge of metallurgy: they worked meteorites with silex (flint) hammers and fashioned objects whose shapes resembled their stone models in all respects. This was how the Greenland Inuit (Eskimo) made their knives out of meteoric iron (Andrée, 1984, pp. 121ff.). When Cortés asked the Aztec chieftains where they had gotten their knives, they pointed to the sky. Like the Maya of Yucatan and the Inca of Peru, the Aztec used only meteoric iron, which they valued more highly than gold. In fact, excavations have revealed no trace of terrestrial iron in the prehistoric deposits of the New World (Forbes, 1950, pp. 401ff.).
Paleo-Oriental peoples presumably held similar ideas. The Sumerian word an-bar, the earliest vocable designating iron, is written with the signs for "sky" and "fire." Campbell Thompson renders it "celestial lightning (or meteorite)," but it is usually translated "celestial metal" or "star-metal" (Eliade, 1978, p.
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