Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [220]
How does this compare with the slag found on the Argentine coast? Chemical analysis of a scoria sample from north of Necochea revealed 9.79 percent iron compounds (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 81). Another piece of scoria from San Blas, north of Rio Negro gave 9.71 percent iron compounds (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 86). Several other samples yielded at least 5 percent iron compounds.
The following description of a crude furnace uncovered in Sweden is interesting when compared with the evidence discovered in Argentina. John Nihlen stated: “The owner of the farm found some pieces of slag on a hill about two hundred meters south of the farm. In a smaller pit here was found under the grass, one-half meter [20 inches] deep, a large amount of slag pieces, such as iron slag in chunks of glazed pieces mixed with or attached to pieces of hard-burned red clay. At the bottom of the pit was dark sand and a few cinders of charcoal but no real burned material. Around the pieces of slag were some round stones but no real construction of stone” (Mallery 1951, p. 204).
Of particular interest in the above statement are the pieces of scoria “mixed with or attached to pieces of hard-burned red clay.” At Miramar, reported Wright and Fenner, Hrdlicka and Willis collected some specimens of “tierra cocida and scoriae combined” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 73). Wright and Fenner described a particularly interesting example: “The hard specimen shows a regular and uniform transition from a dark-gray scoria filled with small vesicles to a brick-red material, which bears a close resemblance to some of the specimens of baked earth. It is different from the latter, however, in this respect that, while the baked earths have a close, compact texture, the portion of this specimen which resembles them most . . . is filled with minute holes and is distinctly glassy in character. . . . A careful determination of the mineral fragments in the black and the red portions of the specimen proved them to be of the same general size and kind. . . . Superficially the red portion of this specimen resembles the baked earths, but closer examination has shown it to be distinctly different. Its glassy, vesicular texture throughout is indicative of melting; the red coloration may be the result of alteration or oxidation, whereby magnetite has been changed to the red oxide of iron” (Hrdlicka 1912, pp. 73–74).
At another location in Sweden, John Nihlen discovered another furnace, and described it as follows: “While the gravel was being dug, pieces of slag were found here and there, none of them collected in heaps nor visible on the surface.
. . . It [the furnace] was about one meter [about 3 feet] wide in the upper part and narrowed slightly downward, being cup-formed at the bottom. The sides were made of round or flat gray stone which were laid in clay which also covered large parts of the inside. Probably the lining was not over the stones. The bottom of the furnace . . . consisted of a ten-centimeter [4 inch] layer of hard and partially burned clay. It could almost have been taken out. In the cup-formed lower part there still remained a ten-centimeter layer of slag, bog ore, and charcoal. The depth of the furnace was about one meter. . . . it had been a simple earth furnace without a blast intake, built of stone and clay and with a thick bottom of burned clay” (Mallery 1951, p. 201).
Here we take note of the furnace bottom, which consisted of a “ten-centimeter layer of hard and partially burned clay.” Willis described a similar section of hardened red earth found in the Chapadmalalan beds of a seaside barranca, or cliff, at Miramar. The Chapadmalalan, said by Ameghino to be of Late Miocene age, is dated by modern authorities to the Late Pliocene (about 2–3 million years before the present). According