3,000-year-old ‘alien weapons’ found in Switzerland

‘Alien weapon’ made 3,000 years ago found in Switzerland The tip of an ancient arrow may have traveled thousands of kilometers to the point of its discovery. Scientists tested the composition of the artifact and found that it was made from an iron meteorite.

Scientists have discovered a fragment of a 3,000-year-old weapon made from “alien iron”, writes the Daily Mail.

An arrowhead made from a meteorite was found by researchers at the University of Bern at a Bronze Age site called Merigen in Switzerland.

Geologists have tested the composition of the artifact, which includes aluminum-26, a short-lived isotope once abundant in the early solar system but not found naturally on Earth.

However, at about the same time in Europe, only three meteorites with the same combination of metals fell to Earth: one in the Czech Republic, another in Spain, and a third in Estonia.

The team believes the Estonian space rock, which is more than 1,400 miles (over 2,200 km) from Switzerland, was a likely candidate.

The arrowhead is 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) long and weighs just 0.102 ounces.

The scientists used a variety of methods to test the composition, including electron microscopy imaging, X-rays, and high-energy radiation analysis.

The pointed part of the arrow was made from an iron meteorite, composed mainly of the minerals kamacite and taenite, which are found on Earth only because they fell from space.

Iron meteorites form from the cores of ancient planets that were destroyed about 4.5 billion years ago in catastrophic collisions during the formation of our solar system.

“The style of the iron arrowhead strongly resembles that of the bronze arrowheads from the same complex, although the manufacturing process was very different,” the team shared in their study. “The carbon-rich organic material likely contains resin residues, probably woody (birch?), indicating that it was attached to the arrow at some point.”

Although the arrowhead was originally found on Lake Biel sometime in the 19th century, it was lost for a long time in the Bernese Historical Museum, where it was recently rediscovered and tested.

Initially, researchers believed that the space rock used to make the weapon came from the Twanberg meteorite, which crashed in Switzerland about 160,000 years ago.

However, further analysis of meteorites with the same composition showed that this was not the case, notes the Daily Mail.

“The arrowhead from Merigen was derived from a large (at least 2 tons pre-atmospheric mass) mass of the IAB iron meteorite based on gamma ray spectrometry and elemental composition,” the study says. – Among the large IAB meteorites from Europe, three have a chemical composition corresponding to the arrowhead of Merigen: Bohumilitz (Czech Republic), Retuerte de Bullake (Spain) and Kaalijärv (Estonia).

The team believes that the arrowhead came to Switzerland from Estonia, which suggests that in ancient times people traded weapons along the same routes from the Baltics as amber.