People of the Arctic worked meteorite iron 1,200 years ago

About 10,000 years ago a big meteorite fell to the Earth on northern Greenland and broke apart. About 1,300 years ago, Dorset Culture people in the Innaanganeq or Cape York Peninsula area of Greenland began extracting iron from it. Ironfromthesky.org says the meteorite was apparently a valuable commodity, and the people walked three days to take iron from it using stone tools.

Harpoon tip of the Cape York Peninsula (geni photo, Wikimedia Commons)

The Inuit people settled Greenland about 3,000 years ago, scientists believe. Inuit people of the Thule Culture moved to Cape York Peninsula in the 8th century and took over the iron trade across the eastern Arctic region from the Dorset people. Some iron pieces from this meteorite have been found as far away as Canada halfway to Alaska, says ScienceNordic.com.

This time frame of the 9th to 12th centuries is later than the Iron Age of Eurasia, which began as long ago as 3,400 years ago. Another difference is that some European and Asian people mined the earth for iron ore as opposed to taking it from meteorites.