Since it was found in 1911, an Egyptian iron bead has sparked wonder and debate over how it was produced — made around 3,300 BC, it predates the region's first known iron smelting by thousands of ...

Photograph of two Havana meteoritic metal beads with a 1 cm cube for scale. The bead on the left (7.8 g mass) is cut perpendicular to the central hole, illustrating the extensive alteration of the ...

After a century of uncertainty, researchers have confirmed that the iron used to weld 5,000-year-old Egyptian beads fell from the sky—in the form of a meteorite, that is. The nine small beads were ...