An inscription on a Mesopotamian brick advertising a king when he was deposed helps reveal details of a strange strengthening of the Earth’s magnetic field. Traces of this mysterious strength have been found from China to the Atlantic Ocean, spanning over 500 years, starting just over 3,000 years ago, and becoming more pronounced the closer you get to present-day Iraq. However, so far evidence from the region itself is lacking and poorly dated.
The Earth’s magnetic field is not constant in time or space. A temporary weakness has appeared, but I don’t know why yet. The same goes for the unexplained intensity. This field protects us from cosmic radiation and guides our navigation systems and those of migrating animals. Explaining this strange behavior is a priority.
Knowing when these anomalies started, when they ended, and how they fluctuated over time is considered important for this, but is rarely easy. For one of the more famous anomalous phenomena, scientists are getting help from the bricklayers of ancient Mesopotamia.
Under certain circumstances, magnetic materials retain traces of the magnetic field in which they were formed, or we can learn a little about the Earth’s previous magnetic field, which has undergone significant changes. Plate tectonics, part 20th The most important geological discovery of this century was evidenced by records of magnetic fields held in lava flows around mid-ocean ridges.
However, accurate dating is required to make the most of this. It would be really nice if someone could provide us with a date stamp, and we’re lucky that someone did in some cases.
Professor Mark Altaweel from University College London is studying the exceptional magnetic field strength in the Middle East some 3,000 years ago, known as the Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic anomaly. “To figure out the age of ancient Mesopotamia, we often rely on dating methods such as radiocarbon dating. However, some of the most common cultural remains, such as bricks and pottery, are organic They usually cannot be dated easily because they do not contain statement.
But Altaweel and his colleagues found 32 Mesopotamian clay bricks, each inscribed with the name of one of the 12 kings, likely the ruler at the time they were made. These bricks also contain iron oxide particles that retain the direction and strength of the magnetic field during firing.
Depending on the length of a king’s reign and how much we know about its time, inscriptions could be a much more accurate record than carbon dating, which has uncertainties of decades or centuries. there is.
The magnetic properties of the particles were measured by scraping pieces weighing 2 grams (0.07 ounces) from a brick and examining them with a magnetometer.
The results confirmed that the magnetic field in this region was almost twice as strong as it was a thousand years ago. Appropriately, the greatest change that al-Taweel and his colleagues discovered occurred during the reign of one king whose name is still well-known. Nebuchadnezzar II, also known as Nebuchadnezzar the Great, is much more famous than his predecessor with a similar name. The establishment of the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon and other large-scale construction projects are in his favor. History did not look very favorably on his destruction of Jerusalem and enslavement of Jews and other peoples in the area.
When five bricks from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II were tested, they produced vastly different magnetic field strengths, with larger and more rapid fluctuations than those detected elsewhere in just 42 years. Suggests. This confirms the suspicion that the Earth’s magnetic field can rise rapidly.
“Geomagnetism is one of the most mysterious phenomena in Earth science,” says Lisa Tauchs, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This study puts us in a good position to solve that mystery, but the authors have not yet achieved it.
This research proved more directly useful to historians. Although detailed records exist of the order of the 12 kings and the length of their reigns, when the order began and ended remains debated. By comparing the fields recorded on the bricks with fields measured using other methods, the research team determined that his one of the competing timelines proposed by historians, known as the low chronology, provided corroboration.
Such abnormal situations are not a thing of the past. The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) is thought to have existed for millions of years and continues to exist today. In the absence of a similar dating method, scientists have tracked changes in SAA’s strength between 800 and 500 years ago by measuring ash from local huts burned during this period.
This study Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.