Tokyo, March 27: A piece of ironware excavated from a
Turkish archaeological site is about 4,000 years old, making
it the world's oldest steel, Japanese archaeologists said
on Thursday.
Archaeologists from the Middle Eastern Culture Center in
Japan excavated the 5-centimetre piece at the Kaman-Kalehoyuk
archaeological site in Turkey, about 100 kilometers southeast
of Ankara, in 2000.
The ironware piece is believed to be a part of a knife
from a stratum about 4,000 years old, or 2100-1950 B.C.,
according to them.
An analysis at the Iwate Prefectural Museum in Morioka
showed that the ironware piece was about 200 years older than
one that was excavated from the same site in 1994 and was
believed to be the oldest steel so far made in 20th-18th
centuries B.C.
The ironware is highly likely to have been produced near
the Kaman-Kalehoyuk site as a 2-cm-diameter slag and two
iron-containing stones have also been excavated, Kyodo news
agency quoted the archaeologists as saying.
Hideo Akanuma, an archaeologist at the Iwate Prefectural
Museum, said the fresh finding led to a change in the history
of iron and steel production, noting that such production was
earlier thought to have begun in the Hittite kingdom dating
in the 14th to 12th centuries B.C.
Bureau Report
First Published: Friday, March 27, 2009, 00:00