Enough iron to forge 500 swords discovered in river as ancient rusty treasure emerges

Archaeologists have identified Europe’s largest known collection of Iron Age iron bars in Austria — raising the possibility that the valuable cargo was lost in a shipwreck on the Danube River more than 2,000 years ago.Workers recovered at least 500 bars, making the collection the largest known Iron Age find of its kind in Europe.The “rusty treasure,” as researchers called it in a press release, would have been extremely valuable during the Iron Age, when iron production and trade were expanding across Europe.“Fortunately, the gravel workers [who found the iron bars] reported this find to the Monuments Authority and did not sell them to a scrap dealer,” Peter Trebsche, a professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, told Fox News Digital. The iron bars — which weigh more than a metric ton in total — could have been used to forge roughly 500 swords weighing between 3.3 and 4.4 pounds each, according to the researchers. The research was published earlier this fall by archaeologist Trebsche as well as archaeologist Marion Berranger in the journal Antiquity.The iron bars were originally discovered in 2019 during gravel extraction work in Deinham, Austria.Researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the iron bars, which likely date to the third or second century B.C.While its intended destination remains unknown, researchers believe the iron may have been forged in Bavaria, Germany, before being transported along the Danube River. The discovery sheds new light on the scale of ancient iron production, which has been difficult to measure because iron objects are often overlooked or difficult to date the researchers said. “Therefore, the discovery of numerous double-pointed iron objects during gravel extraction along the River Danube provided a unique opportunity to investigate large-scale prehistoric iron production and trade,” the press release said.In a statement, Trebsche called the discovery “nothing short of a minor mira...