BIRTHPLACE OF IRON

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1929, Page 13

BIRTHPLACE OF IRON

FIRST USED IN ASIA MINOR OLD CIVILISATIONS RECALLED. BRIEF HISTORY OF METALLURGY. “You must not think, from what the chairman has said, we have come here to lecture you,” said Professor J. L. Myres, vice-president of the Geographical Section of the British Association, at a meeting held by visiting scientists in Cape Town recently. “We have come to learn from you what you have in South Africa, and what you are doing to improve it.”

Professor Myres, in his lepture in the Cape Technical College Assembly Hall, on the “Discovery of Iron,” tried to show that the use of iron originated in Asia Minor. He described evidence of primitive metallurgy in all parte of the world, pointing out that evidence on the use of iron among ancient civilisations was much rarer than that on the use of copper. Two reasons could be advanced for this: First, that iron rusts, and therefore becomes disguised in its natural state and secondly, that even if iron is heated to a bright read heat, it does not look metallic until it has been subjected to further treatment to remove the clinker. The difficulty of preparing iron was graphically expressed in an epithet frequently applied to it in the Iliad and- the Odyssey, which signified “involving much labour.” Though natural occurrences of iron were far more common in America than in the old world, there were no indications of its use in the ancient civilisation of Mexico. In Greenland, where ■ there were large masses of native iron, the Eskimos had learnt to make use of it, but their knowledge had probably been derived , from Norsemen, who came in contact with them between the ninth and tenth centuries. IRON CONTAINED NICKLE. Most of the iron implements of ancient times turned out on analysis to contain nickle, indicating that the iron was probably obtained from meteorites, which are chiefly composed of iron with a percentage of nickel. Nickel makes the iron much more durable, but infinitely more difficult to work, and gives it something of the quality of stainless steel. In King Tutankhamen’s tomb a “stainless steel” dagger made of this iron had been found. The first indication of iron having been used in Egypt was a solitary iron bead. The next was the point of a pick dating from about the time of the Great Pyramid. Only a handful of instances of iron have been used were found in Egyptian history before King Tutankhamen’s time, in about 1300 B.C. Then came relics of iron work belonging to a time when Egypt was' extending her influence to Syria. A century after Tutankhamen’s reigri, evidence was found of King Rameses writing to his brother, the King of the Hittites, asking him if he had any iron to spare, the letter, on a clay tablet, being still extant. The King of the Hittites had written back to say that he was very sorry that he was out of stock. Iron a this time was being appreciated as a very valuable instrument of war. The Egyptian word for iron meant “substance of heaven,” and in ancient' poetry the ‘firmament was described as being made of iron, which seemed to show that it was regarded as coming from above, that is to say, in the form of meteorites. Tie knowledge of the Bantu on the use of iron was evidently also derived from outside sources. Professor Myres drew attention to the fact that the Bantu were a remarkable exception to -the general rule of the distribution of the cattle-owning races. EARLY BiRONZE WEAPONS. The first weapons of the inhabitants of Europe hgd been made of bronze, and the evidence showed that their first iron weapons were made for them by conquered peoples, when they invaded Asia Minor. In tracing the origin of the use of iron, Professor Myres gave interesting details of the ancient civilisation of Crete, illustrated by lantern slides of some of the examples of pottery that have been discovered in recent excavations. These pieces of pottery, he said, were remarkable for the skilful workmanship and highly developed, sense of form and design exhibited by a people that lived some three or four thousand years B.C. In spite of their high development in other respects, however, these people had known nothing of the use of iron. Professor Myres also showed a picture of the ruins of their ancient city of Gwossus, the people of which lived in houses with as many as three storeys, with modern features like drains and bathrooms. Other slides showed the traditional site of the City of Troy, the mound of seven cities, -each of which was built on the ruins of its predecessor. It was only in relics from the sixth city that' the use of iron was apparent. This seemed to show that iron had originated in Asia Minor, and that its sudden general employment in about 1300 8.C., had been due to the spread of the Hittite conquests and the conquests of land raiders in about 1250 B.C.

“It has taken me an hour and a-half,” concluded Professor Myres, “to develop an argument to prove something that was to be found in a set of tables written up on schoolroom walls for little Greek schoolboys to learn, over a thousand years ago.”