Ancient Forges

[FrankM]

It was determined by the most sophisicated diagnosis tools available in the early 1900's that the "iron slag" found at various places in the Argentine Pampas could have been made only by the forges of the indigenous natives in some past era. Samples of the material were sent to the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institute and the experts there concluded that to produce the material found it would have required temperatures of up to 2100 degrees (F) to produce the "iron slag".

Anyone can read this material in a book that summarized the "ancient forge" research, "Forbidden Archaeology" by Cremo and Thompson (1998 Revision). Start at page 303, Sec. 5.1.6 and read thru the summary on page 311. You will be laboring through the best scientific thought of a century ago.

I read the material some five years ago and I didn't accept the original materials published conclusion. It took awhile, but I found a summary of a research paper by a geologist in Western Australia that described the mechanism that produced "clay soil fulgurites". I contacted the author of the research report and summarized my reasons for contacting him. He responded after an extended delay, this because it took him over a month to get a copy of the book I referenced sent from an Eastern Australia Univ. to him. He stated he has seen many instances of clay soil fulgurites in Western Australia and in the plains of Zimbabe. He concluded early on that they were from lightning strikes and it simply had not been documented. He was not aware of the erroneous conclusions made some 90+ years earlier.

We are familiar with the fulgurites produced in sand and sandy soil, they producing long hollow erratically shaped tubes made from fuzed silica. I contacted the research director at the Univ. of Florida where they do "lightning research" and he responded that he has observed lightning produced fulgurites produced in non-sandy soil. He also mentioned that HV power line shorts to ground have produced "fuzed soil", which could be mistaken as a lightning produced non-sandy soil type fulgurite.

The Argentine Pampas, Zimbabe and Western Australia "clay soil fulgurites" were created when "iron rich soil" was struck by lightning. The iron is fuzed into an irregular slag lump by the heat of the lightning strike and its erratic current dissipation paths at the earth's surface.

I contacted one of the authors of the "Forbidden Archaeology" book and related what I had found. I did receive a response from the author and we had several communications. The book is not easily revised, it being produced by the "plate" method. The publisher may have a large stock of books and continues to sell from this inventory. Anyone that manages to read that far into the book will encounter the "ancient forge" conclusion, thus it remains unchallenged and embedded in many peoples minds as being a fact. Remember, the authors of the book I referenced used the conclusions of published research reports, they did not make it up. They had to rely upon the best science of the time the reports were published, and it was difficult for me to find any current reports covering non-silica fulgurites, and I had an idea as to what I was looking for.

Wrong conclusions based upon the limited technical knowledge of past scientist/researchers continues to be forwarded in many past and current publications, some being currently printed or provided on the WWW.

One could make a career out of examining old research conclusions that have never been challenged, and it is difficult to refute some of the erroneous material out there, and there are so many adherents (scientifically credentialed) to what they consider valid "facts" they will challenge anything different. Even if you had the resources to identify the false conclusions, and everybody agreed, there is no effective way that long established beliefs can be expunged from the system. The wrong stuff will continue to be passed from generation to generation.