Sword thought to be fake turns out to be a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age artifact

The replica sword, which has been in the collection of the Field Museum in Chicago for almost a century, is actually

a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age artifact.An amazing discovery was made by the curators during preparations for the exhibition “The First Kings of Europe”. The 91cm long bronze sword has been in storage since the museum acquired the weapon in the 1930s. It was pulled out of the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary, during excavations.

One of the traditions of Bronze Age warriors was to throwswords and armor in a pond “in memory of lost loved ones or battle.” This is how the artifact ended up in the river, explain representatives of the Chicago Field Museum. “Sometimes they literally buried the hatchet,” William Parkinson, curator of anthropology, said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.

Installation with a reclassified sword that dates back to the Bronze Age. Image courtesy of the Chicago Field Museum

However, at some point in history, the sword was mistaken for a replica. While it is impossible to know exactly how the oversight occurred, it was most likely a simple administrative error.

In preparation for the exhibition, Hungarianarchaeologists asked museum curators to show them the sword. Suspecting something was wrong, scientists scanned the weapon using X-rays and compared its chemical composition with other known swords from the Bronze Age of Europe. It turned out that the content of bronze, copper and tin in all samples was almost the same.

Read more:

10 seconds closer to the end of the world: what will happen if the Doomsday Clock strikes

Earth's core will soon be spinning in a different direction

A giant sunspot is turning towards the Earth. It is visible to the naked eye

On the cover: photo freepik.com

</ p>