(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists have found evidence that late Bronze Age Iberians used tools made from hardened steel that allowed them to carve figures into columns of extremely hard rock.
Until recently, archaeologists believed that hardened steel spread to Western Europe only during the Roman Empire, while before that only stone, bronze and iron tools were used.
However, according to a study by an international group of scientists already at the end of the Bronze Age, the inhabitants of ancient Iberia used hardened steel chisels.
Using geochemical analysis, the researchers were able to prove that chisels and other tools made of extremely strong metal were required to create the complex engravings on the stelae of the Iberian Peninsula.
Their conclusions were confirmed by a metallographic analysis of a chisel of the same time, found in Portugal: it contained enough carbon to consider it not iron, as before, but steel.
After studying the composition of the stelae, scientists concluded that they were not made of quartzite, as was supposed, but of silicate quartz sandstone, which cannot be worked with stone or bronze tools.
And judging by the composition of the Portuguese chisel, which is made up of dissimilar but surprisingly rich in carbon steel, the ancient Iberian craftsmen had the right tools.
To confirm their findings, the researchers conducted an experiment involving a professional stonemason, blacksmith and bronze caster and tried to work the stone from which the pillars were made using chisels of different materials.
A bricklayer could not work stone with either a stone or a bronze chisel, or even an iron chisel with an unhardened point.
Good-quality iron ore outcrops are abundant in the areas adjacent to the stelae, so the tools of their engravers were most likely created on the spot, and not brought from the metallurgical centers of ancient Europe, for example, from Anatolia.
In other words, already at the end of the Bronze Age, the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula had access to technologies for the production of high-quality steel, which made it possible to process even very hard stone.
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