Inside Cape York — the historic meteorite that brought Greenland to the Iron Age

Starting in the 8th-century, the Cape York meteorites provided the sole source of iron from which the local Dorset, and later the Inuit, made knives, tools and weapons. The existence of this Inuit hammering and metalworking outpost was unknown to Europeans until 1818 when explorer Captain John Ross, in search of the Northwest Passage, became icebound. His ship was visited by natives with whom the British officers traded for tusks. They were astonished to find that they had knife blades, harpoon points, and engraving tools made of meteoric iron. The area has no natural metal deposits, yet the plentiful supply of meteoric iron enabled the polar hunters to develop Iron Age technology to help them survive. The natives, however, would not divulge the location of their source of metal. Ross later had samples of the metal fragments analyzed and found them to contain nickel, leading Ross to believe that the source of the metal was meteoric.

Five expeditions from 1818 to 1883 failed to find the source of the iron until Robert Peary was led by a local guide, in exchange for a gun, to their “iron mountain” on Saviksoah Island off northern Greenland’s Cape York in 1894

Over the next three years, Admiral Peary’s expeditions managed to load the pieces of the meteorite onto ships despite severe weather, engineering problems, and having to build Greenland’s only railway specifically for the task. Upon arrival in New York City, the source of Greenland’s Iron Age was sold to the American Museum of Natural History for $40,000. Several more large masses have since been found and recovered from the strewnfield.

Weighing 31 tons, the meteorite named Ahnighito or “The Tent” is the centerpiece of Ross Meteorite Hall at the American Museum of Natural History. This meteorite is so heavy that before construction commenced on the museum extension which houses it, the armature that supports it had to extend through the floor, beneath the building and be anchored directly into Manhattan’s bedrock.

This slice has two armored troilite inclusions. In the words of meteorite expert Dr. Vagn Buchwald, “Probably no other meteorite has been so intimately connected with the life and fate of so many people as Cape York.”

An image of this exact specimen was used to illustrate an article on the History of Meteoritics which appeared in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia.

Iron, medium octahedrite – IIIAB in MetBull; Savissivik, Greenland, 135 x 159 x 4mm (5.3 x 6.25 x 0.2 in.) and 537.8 grams (1.2 lbs)