Arrowhead Made From Meteorite 3,000 Years Ago Found Near Lake

An arrowhead produced more than 3,000 years ago is made of iron that originated from a meteorite, researchers have found.

The arrowhead, which has been dated to the late Bronze Age (900-800 B.C.), was originally found in the 19th century at the Mörigen archaeological site, located along the shores of Lake of Biel in Switzerland.

But now scientists have discovered that the ancient artifact is extraterrestrial in origin, according to a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Before the smelting of iron from oxide ores started, meteorites containing the metal fell to Earth and were found on rare occasions by ancient peoples who used them to produce various artifacts.

The use of meteoritic iron to produce such objects in pre–Iron Age times has been documented in Eurasia and North Africa from a handful of sites in places like Turkey, Greece, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Russia and China.

Meteoritic iron artifact finds from Central and Western Europe are very rare and, to date, have been identified in only two cases.

"As far as I know, this is the only arrowhead made of meteoritic iron. Certainly for pre-Iron Age artifacts in Eurasia," Beda Hofmann, an author of the study with the Natural History Museum of Bern, told Newsweek.

"This arrowhead likely was not an object of everyday use. I guess the arrowhead was used for some special purpose, but what for can only be speculation, of course."

Meteorites are "space rocks" that survived their journey through the Earth's atmosphere and hit the ground. These objects, known as meteoroids when they are in space, range in size from dust grains to small asteroids.

Meteoroids originate from other larger bodies—primarily asteroids but also the moon and other planets like Mars. Meteoroids can be rocky, metallic or a combination of the two.

As part of the latest study, researchers investigated archaeological collections in Switzerland in an attempt to identify potential objects made of meteoritic iron originating from the Twannberg meteorite—the largest ever found in Switzerland.

Mörigen is located just a few miles southwest of where the Twannberg meteorite fell to Earth. Several fragments of the meteorite have been found.

While the researchers were not able to identify an object made from the Twannberg meteorite, they did find an arrowhead produced using iron from a clearly different meteorite.

The arrowhead from Mörigen, which was being kept at the Bern Historical Museum in Switzerland, was found in the 19th century as part of a series of arrowheads otherwise made of bronze.

While it had been previously noted that this particular arrowhead was made of iron, no further investigation had been conducted until the latest study.

The researchers examined the arrowhead using different no-destructive techniques, some of which have never been applied before to archaeological objects of meteoritic origin.

These techniques revealed the chemical makeup of the artifact, which was consistent with iron meteorites, although not the one that fell in Twannberg.

-Namely, the chemical composition was high in nickel, with some cobalt and traces of germanium and gallium—unique for iron meteorites.

The detection of the isotope aluminium-26 also proved that the material has been in space for a long time, being irradiated by cosmic rays.

Given its chemical composition, the researchers then proposed that the so-called Kaalijarv meteorite was the most likely source. This space rock fell in Estonia—a nation in the Baltic Sea region—during the Bronze Age around 1500 B.C. and produced many small fragments.

The researchers believe that fragments of this meteorite were then used and traded by 800 B.C. or even earlier in Central Europe. It is possible that the fragments may have been traded over the same routes used to export amber from the Baltic region.

Update 08/14/23, 4:44 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comments from Beda Hofmann.