Rush for iron spurred Inuit ancestors to sprint across Arctic, book contends

[Adsos Letter]

Source: The Vancouver Sun
By Randy Boswell,
Canwest News Service

One of Canada's top archeologists argues in a new book that the prehistoric ancestors of this country's 55,000 Inuit probably migrated rapidly from Alaska clear across the Canadian North in just a few years — not gradually over centuries as traditionally assumed — after they learned about a rich supply of iron from a massive meteorite strike on Greenland's west coast.


The startling theory, tentatively floated two decades ago by Canadian Museum of Civilization curator emeritus Robert McGhee, has been bolstered by recent research indicating a later and faster migration of the ancient Thule Inuit across North America's polar frontier than previously believed.


Now, in a just-published volume of essays by some of the world's leading Arctic archeologists, McGhee advances his theory — a 4,000-kilometre beeline quest for iron from Greenland's famous Cape York meteorite deposit — as the likeliest explanation for the sudden spread of the Thule culture across Canada around 1250 AD.


"Current evidence increasingly suggests that the concept of a relatively slow, environmentally driven Thule Inuit expansion across Arctic Canada, beginning around AD 1000, is no longer viable," McGhee writes in The Northern World: AD 900 to 1400, a newly released book he co-edited with two U.S. scholars.

http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/Rush+iron+spurred+Inuit+ancestors+sprint+across+Arctic+book+contends/2538167/story.html

[RushIsRot]

1. It's one thing to have access to iron and another thing to work with it.

Did these people have that technology?

This statement: "The Dorset people are known from archeological investigations to have used Cape York meteoric iron for centuries." implies so, but it doesn't go into any detail about how the metal was used.

One wonders.

[Adsos Letter]

2. Well...he IS selling a book...

probably setting the hook. :D Or, as others have pointed out, the transmission from scholar/author to the news media often makes a mess of the message...

[davepc]

3. If they knew enough to be looking for it then that assumes knowledge on what to do with it

How'd they learn of this large deposit in the 1st place?

edit: guess I should read the article.

McGhee believes the Thule Inuit had learned about the valuable metal at the Cape York meteorite field from contact with Canada's aboriginal Dorset people, who were already using iron and trading it with Norse sailors from southern Greenland and Iceland.

"It would seem plausible to suggest that metal — meteoric iron from the Cape York meteorites and metal goods traded from the Norse — may have been the magnet that drew ancestral Inuit eastward from Alaska," McGhee contends.

[Mopar151]

4. Early colonists smelted "bog iron"

Charcoal will do for fuel, especially if you have a bellows of a sort to force air into the fire. Rocks will do for forging tools, 'til you figure out how to make a hammer head. You would probably start out with spear points, knives, and fishhooks. Carbon steel can actually be honed to a very sharp edge.

[formercia]

13. Khatadin Iron Works

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katahdin_Iron_Works

--snip--

In 1843, a limonite gossan, a form of iron ore, was discovered on nearby Ore Mountain. The gossan was the primary source of mined ore. It overlaid a pyrrhotite deposit of iron sulfide ore. Assuming the depth matches the known surface area, this deposit would be among the world's largest sulfide deposits. However, the rural location and poor quality of the ore continues to make it uneconomic to mine.

Operating for 25 years intermittently between 1843 and 1890, a blast furnace iron mill located where the West Branch of the Pleasant River flows out of Silver Lake was the most significant iron works in the state. The mill converted 10,000 cords (36,000 m³) of wood to charcoal in sixteen beehive kilns. This charcoal was used to fire the furnace and produce about 2,000 tons of pig iron annually. It failed economically when steel mills that delivered the pig iron directly to the steel furnaces were developed because it was a small scale operation in a location remote from both workers and customers. The state has restored the blast furnace and one of the beehive charcoal kilns; these and some of the foundations for other buildings are all that remain of the mill and village.

--snip--


Great Trout fishing nearby. Well worth the trip.

[Brother Buzz]

5. I understand it to be easy and low tech to work. Easy, but time consuming.

Meteorite iron can be worked cold if it is repeatedly heated at regular intervals to prevent stress hardening cracks, not unlike working native copper. Anvil and hammers were nothing but hard stones selected for the purpose, pretty low tech.

I read of these northern meteoric iron finds when I first started blacksmithing and always dreamed of gloaming on to a few pounds of a meteorite to give it a try. It can be purchased, and I have friends that use it for making beautiful laminated blades, but it doesn't come cheap.

[RushIsRot]

6. I learn things all the time on DU. Whatta site!

[aquart]

7. Wow. Never heard of this before. Of anyone doing this.

I love new knowledge. (New to me.)

[Brother Buzz]

9. Mild steel can be works cold to some degree...

but it too, can become stressed if overworked. You can pound a bolt head (mild steel) with a hammer (hardened carbon steel) and it will easily mushroom, but if you pound it enough it will start to crack and fracture. A tin can lid (mild steel) can be easily bent, but if you bend it enough, back and forth, it ultimately becomes stressed and breaks.

Staples and paper clips are mild steel, think about it.

[aquart]

10. I didn't know there was such a thing as "mild" steel.

My knowledge ends with the word "stainless" and I have no idea how that happens, either.

[Mopar151]

11. Low carbon , unalloyed steel

In the SAE numbering system, the last 2 numbers are the "points" of carbon - as I understand it, 100 points is the maximum amount of carbon that can be included before the grain structure precipitates carbon (like cast iron). The first 2 numbers indicate other alloying elements, like chrome, nickel, molybdenum, or manganese.
1005 is soft, workable sheet steel for easy forming. Typical "Cold Rolled" is 1020, for bar and tube stock - can't be hardened much unless it it has carbon infused into it aka "carburized" or case hardened. High carbon alloy steels - 4340, 5140 - can be worked fairly easily when annealed (aka normalized), get stronger and harder with heat treatment - heating and rapid cooling. 52100 is ballbearing steel - it will shatter rather than permanently deform when heat treated.

"Stainless" has almost no carbon, but LOTS of chrome and nickel. It is sometimes "passivated" - treated with acid to remove the iron from the outer layer, to prevent even trace corrosion.

I need to go back to work - I have too much of this stuff swimmin' around on my head to stay on the shelf.

[aquart]

14. Thank you.

[Mopar151]

8. To get high-quality steel cheap

Talk to some local racers, find out who has a pile of blown-up racing engines. Stock forged components are usually 1053 steel, Aftermarket forgings are typically 4340.

[formercia]

12. Meteorite Iron usually has a high Nickel content.

The problem in Greenland would be finding enough fuel to work it.



Composition: 7.58% Ni, 19.2 ppm Ga, 36.0 ppm Ge, 5.0 ppm Ir

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite

[Mopar151]

15. They found a way

from the same wikipaedia article: For centuries, Inuit living near the meteorites used them as a source of metal for tools and harpoons.<2><3>
Nickel adds tensile strength and toughness, both excellent attributes for tools.

[formercia]

16. Here's a related article from the references:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2844401

[mdmc]

17. $