Tag Archives: civilizations

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Magnetic minerals locked inside artifacts from ancient civilizations reveal a snapshot of Earth’s magnetic field at the time. That, in turn, could give us insights into its future. | Credit: Wei-An Jin In 2008, Erez Ben-Yosef unearthed a piece of Iron Age “trash” …

In 2008, Erez Ben-Yosef unearthed a piece of Iron Age “trash” and inadvertently revealed the strongest magnetic-field anomaly ever found. Ben-Yosef, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University, had been working in southern Jordan with Ron Shaar, who was analyzing archaeological materials around the Levant. Shaar, a geologist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was building a record of the area’s …