Reverse-engineering ancient metallurgy in Israel

ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY WATCH: How Was Iron Smelted in Ancient Israel? Researchers Build Kilns to Find Out. The transition from the Copper Age to harder iron tools was a turning point for the ancient Hebrew kingdoms, but we don't know quite how they did it (Nir Hasson, Haaretz premium).

However, there are only so many ways the people in Judah and ancient Israel could have generated temperatures high enough to extract the iron from ore, and last week Dr. Adi Eliyahu of Ariel University set out to recreate the long-forgotten process.

Using the means that could have been available at the time and common sense, Eliyahu – who studied chemistry and archaeology at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot – and her colleagues set out to make iron the old way.

And it worked!

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