From the 3,000 years ago in old Mesopotamia, brickmakers imprinted the fresh new names of their kings on the clay bricks. Now, a diagnosis of your metal cereals in those bricks provides confirmed a mysterious anomaly into the Planet’s magnetic occupation.

A brick matchmaking to your rule of Nebuchadnezzar II (circa 604 so you’re able to 562 B.C.), with respect to the inscription. It stone, that has been looted that will be now situated regarding Slemani Museum when you look at the Iraq, while some aided experts show an ancient magnetized occupation anomaly. (Visualize borrowing from the bank: Slemani Art gallery)

Old bricks out of Mesopotamia has actually assisted show a strange anomaly inside Earth’s magnetic career you to definitely taken place 3,000 in years past, new research finds out.

Brickmakers baked the bricks, which were imprinted with the names of Mesopotamian kings, between the third and first millennia B.C. Iron oxide grains within the clay recorded changes in Earth’s magnetic field when the bricks were heated, enabling scientists to reconstruct changes in the magnetic field over time, the team reported in a study published in the journal PNAS on Monday (Dec. 18).

“We often depend on dating methods such as radiocarbon schedules to get a sense of chronology in ancient Mesopotamia,” study co-author Draw Altaweel, a professor of Near East archaeology and archaeological data science at University College London, said in a statement. “However, some of the most common cultural remains, such as bricks and ceramics, cannot typically be easily dated because they don’t contain organic material. This work now helps create an important dating baseline.”

To investigate Earth’s magnetic field – which waxes, wanes and even flips over time – the researchers looked at grains of the mineral iron oxide in 32 clay bricks from ancient Mesopotamia, located largely in what is now Iraq. Continue reading →