Forgotten Ages Research

The Enduring Enigma of the Delhi Pillar and Other Mystery Metals— What is Modern Technology Learning from the Unknown Past?

Report Topics:

• Remnants of high-grade steel found in a French Neolithic hearth eight millennia old
• Evidence for carbon steel manufactured in the Lake Victoria region, and in ancient China
• Description of the sophisticated Medzamor metallurgical factory from circa 2500 B.C.E.
• My personal encounter with the Delhi Iron Pillar in the summer of 1987
• Historical background and statistics of the Kutab Minar monument
• Early chemical analysis of the Delhi Pillar’s composition and rust-free surface features
• Twentieth century industrial innovations utilized by fifth century metal-workers
• Secrets of the Delhi Pillar now being applied to the development of new forms of phosphorus iron
• The enigma of the Kottenforst “Iron Man”—a corrosion-free metal monument from the end of the last Ice Age?
• Platinum jewelry fron ancient Ecuador, and images of aluminum belt-fasteners from a Chinese tomb
• Report Update—Questions Raised About the Pillar Inscriptions

Full Report:

One of the enigmas of technological history are several finds which push the production of highly specialized metals back into very early history.

In 1905, a Neolithic hearth was unearthed near Nancy, France, the contents of which left its discoverers almost in shock.

At a depth of fifteen feet, a mass of metal was brought to light sixty pounds in weight, accompanied by the tell-tale forgers sign of charcoal fragments and slag. The mass was composed of 98.861% iron, 1.670% silicon, 1.212% carbon, 0.180% manganese, 0.038% graphite, 0,026% sulfur, and 0.013% phosphorus. Not only are these the ingredients of a good grade of steel, they are also components of a form of steel which only fairly recently has found industrial applications in modern manufacturing. The high percentage of silicon classifies it in the first group of silicon steel, and also among the pearlite steels. The question is, what had this material been used for more than eight thousand years ago?

In 1977 anthropologist Peter Schmidt, and Donald Avery, a professor of metallurgy at Brown University, reported their finding of the making of carbonized steel in forced-draft furnaces among the Haya tribesmen in the Lake Victoria, Tanzania area.

The production of carbon steel, with the use of the open hearth furnace, was supposed to have been invented in Europe only in the early nineteenth century by the German Karl Siemens—yet excavation work on the western shores of Lake Victoria demonstrated the Haya had been working more than thirteen hearths as early as two thousand years ago.

Using goatskin bellows and ceramic blowpipes, the tribal smiths blew pre-heated air into cone-shaped furnaces made of slag and mud and built over a pit packed with charcoal and swamp grass, thereby creating temperatures above 3,275 degrees Fahrenheit—high enough that the carbon-charred reeds impregnated the liquid steel and produced a high-grade metal not attained by modern industries until two millennia later.

The making of carbon steel by the same means was also known to the Chinese, who called it the “one hundred refinings.”

In this case the ancient wisdom influenced the modern development: Joseph Needham, the leading authority on ancient Oriental science and technology, discovered that when the first furnaces for producing steel by the Bessemer process were set up in the United States, Chinese metallurgical specialists were imported to work and help perfect the system.

In 1968, Dr. Koriun Megartchian of the Soviet Union unearthed what is considered to be the oldest large-scale metallurgical factory in the world at Medzamor, in Armenia. Here, four and a half millennia ago, an unknown prehistoric people worked with over two hundred furnaces, producing an assortment of vases, knives, spearheads, rings and bracelets. The Medzamor craftspeople wore mouth-filters and gloves while they labored and fashioned their wares of copper, lead, zinc, iron, gold, tin, manganese and fourteen kinds of bronze. The smelters also produced an assortment of metallic paints, ceramics and glass. But the most out-of-place discovery was several pair of tweezers made of steel, taken from layers dating back before the first millennium B.C.E. The steel was later found to be exceptionally high grade, and the discovery was verified by scientific organizations in Russia, the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

French journalist Jean Vidal, reporting in July, 1969, expressed the belief that these finds point to an unknown period of technological development:

“Medzamor was founded by the wise men of earlier civilizations. They possessed knowledge they had acquired during a remote age unknown to us that deserves to be called scientific and industrial.”

In June, 1987 I took a tour group to China, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, India, Nepal and Kashmir on a grand odyssey to many of the sacred placed of Asia. While visiting India, for me one of the highlights was to see what is called the Delhi Pillar, a column of wrought iron that stands in the courtyard of Kutab Minar, in what is now the capital city of New Delhi. In the past the column has also been called the Singh Stambh, the Ashoka and the Lion Pillar. It stands 23 feet 8 inches tall, averages 15 inches in diameter and weighs approximately 6 tons.

I had read and studied so much about this enigmatic Pillar and the fact that it has not rusted in the millennium and a half of its existence. It was one of my lifetime goals to someday travel to the other side of the world, to be in its physical presence, and to investigate this mystery monument up close and personal.

As I finally stood next to this very unassuming yet impressive column of black metal and touched its surfaces that show no evidence of weathering whatsoever, I felt like the astronaut in “2001: A Space Odyssey” reaching out toward the alien black monolith found on the Moon.

For the Delhi Pillar is a genuine out-of-place artifact, a silent tribute to advanced metallurgical skills made by unknown artisans who possessed a secret knowledge handed down to them from a forgotten civilization. The Pillar contains such a level of sophistication that its inherent wisdom is today just beginning to impact upon our present manufacturing technology.

The Delhi Pillar is a solid shaft of wrought iron made up of iron discs expertly welded together in a fashion that the welding marks are hardly discernible. The iron for the Pillar is believed to have originated from the Bihar region and may have been manufactured there, for the forest people of Bihar are reputed to have known of advanced forms of the art of forging iron and steel in their clay furnaces for untold thousands of years.

An inscription still plainly seen on the Pillar’s base is an epitaph to King Chandra Gupta II, who died in A.D. 413. So it is known the Pillar is at least 1,600 years old, no doubt probably older. The monument was first erected at Udayagirl near the present-day city of Bhopal in central India. The Pillar first stood in the temple of Muttra capped with a Garuda, an image of the bird incarnation of the god Vishnu. In the year 1052 Moslem invaders tore off the Garuda and transported the Pillar, re-erecting it where it stands today, it what was then the courtryard of the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque, the very first mosque built in India. How long the Pillar had been in the previous temple, however, is unknown.

The most fascinating feature about the Delhi Pillar is the fact that, despite it being well over a millennium and a half in age, its iron constitution is nevertheless in a remarkable state of preservation. The inscription on its base still appears clearly cut with very little evidence of weathering.

Immediately above the base the Pillar surface is slightly rough and pitted due to corrosion from soil moisture inroads into forge-welding marks, and areas damaged by its re-erection in the past.

From here on up, the surface is very smooth like polished brass, and in the top portion this smoothness persists, with only occasional instances of pock-marks and weathering.

At the column’s very top is a rust-free decorative “bell” that is a marvel of blacksmithing in itself, consisting of seven parts. These individual components were shrunk-fit around a hollow cylinder and then joined to the main body with the use of an insert.

The mystery is, one should have expected that any equivalent mass of iron—subjected to the Indian monsoon rains, winds and temperatures for 1,600 years or more—should have been reduced to a pile of rust long ago. But the Delhi Pillar still stands, unthreatened by the elements. What is its secrets?

In 1911, Sir Robert Hadfield made an analysis of the pillar’s ingredients and found it be composed of: Iron–99.72%, Phosphorus–0.114%, Carbon–0.08%, Silicon–0.046%, Nitrogen–0.032%, and Copper and other elements–0.114%. Sir Hadfield found the iron to be entirely free of inclusions, and in terms of homogeneity and purity ranked it with the best Swedish charcoal irons of his day.

The purity level is particularly surprising, for it was not attained in Europe until the nineteenth century, and was certainly a technological anomaly for the fifth century. The level helps to explain, in part, the Delhi Pillar’s survival. The process of rusting requires a catalyst, and with few impurities present in the iron, oxidation would have been retarded. However, the purity alone does not fully answer its persistent existence.

In 1953, J. C. Hudson published the results of experiments in which he exposed steel and zinc plates 4 x 2 x one-eighth inches in size to the atmosphere conditions at Delhi over one year periods. What he discovered was that the corrosion rates for metals in this locale are low, and proposed this finding as the answer to the iron Pillar’s preservation.

However, as W. H. J. Vernon pointed out, significant iron rusting occurs when air humidity exceeds 70%. According to the Indian Meteorological Office, the humidity factor at Delhi reaches 74% during two months out of the year, in January and August. Admittedly, this is less moisture than other parts of India and the world, and this low level does indeed help the life of metals.

But high moisture during two months every year for ever 1,600 years’ time should still have been active enough to severely rust even the most durable of modern irons.

So weather conditions, while it was an aid, is not the whole answer to the Delhi Pillar puzzle either.

Another contributing factor to the Pillar’s long life is its resistance to water. The shaft below ground is covered with a rust layer one-half inch thick, with corrosion pits three inches deep. This is a result of the iron’s constant contact with the soil, which holds a certain percentage of moisture no matter what the weather or temperature. What has happened to the Pillar below ground should have also happened to the shaft above ground as the result of exposure to rain and dew, but it did not.

The reason for this is that the column is unusually conducive to heat absorption and retention. This causes rapid evaporation of water droplets accumulating on the Pillar, even at night. The result is the Pillar has a built-in mechanism for keeping itself as dry and moisture-free as possible.

The real focus point of the mystery centers on the chemistry of the Delhi Pillar’s surface. When Sir Hadfield tested samples from the ancient column in 1911 in a laboratory with a 70% to 75% humidity factor, he discovered that the internal newly exposed iron rusted in four days, as any normal iron sample would. But the iron taken from the outer edge of the Pillar would not rust at all. In the early 1970’s, G. Wranglen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm found that the entire Delhi column is covered with an oxide film of metallic sheen, blue-black in color, between 50 and 600 millicrons (a millionth part of a millimeter ) in thickness. In an experiment conducted by Wranglen at Delhi, a small portion of this film was scraped off. In one day rust appeared on the bared iron patch below, but within a week the rust had undergone a chemical change, turning it into a new layer of film and preventing further oxidation.

Wranglen believes that the high phosphorus, low sulfur content of the iron encourages the formation of this self-protecting coating. Aiding in the process further, the outer surfaces—especially where the original surface can be detected—have been found to contain a higher percentage of silicon, a rust retarding agent. This appears to have been intentionally impregnated into the column at the time of its creation.

Still another aid is the Pillar’s highly polished smoothness. Not long ago, Bell Laboratories perfected a technique that rust-proofs all metals called ion-milling. By this process the metal surfaces is made so smooth that oxygen atoms cannot adhere to it and commence the rusting process.

Like the production of the iron in the Delhi Pillar itself, these techniques of metal preservation are far beyond the abilities of the fifth century artisans who were supposed to have made the Pillar.

What this suggests is a far older origin, older than the inscriptions that must have been simply added onto it at a later date—older perhaps by several thousands of years. This is borne out by the fact that no other Indian iron works dating to the fifth century can compare with the Delhi Pillar.

At Manud near Dhar are the remains of a second iron pillar called the Dhar Column. It once stood over fifty feet tall, but now lays broken in three pieces with a total length of 43 feet 4 inches. It too was made with welded discs and it too has a high purity level of iron, though not anywhere as high as the Delhi Pillar. The one difference is the Dhar Column is heavily corroded, its surface pitted, and there is evidence it collapsed in about the fourteen century from welding weaknesses compounded by advanced rusting.

It is clear the Dhar Column was a fifth century attempt at copying the far older Delhi Pillar—an attempt that failed in time, because it did not incorporate secrets of metal preservation unsuspected by the fifth century metallurgists nor detected by them as they studied the Delhi Pillar model.

In 2007, Ramamurthy Balasubrahmaniam, a professor of metallurgical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, announced the development of a new type of corrosion-resistant iron. It is called ductile phosphorus iron, and commercially it will prove to be highly beneficial for construction engineers who use iron supports in damp or submerged environments such as bridges, and especially encased in wet concrete. So far test samples produced by ITT Kanpur submersed in acidic solution have remained corrosion-free compared with commercially available steel test controls which quickly began forming rust when subjected to the same solution. Other test samples and similar controls showed the same results when embedded in simulated concrete solution.

What is amazing is that Balasubrahmaniam admits that his pioneering development of the new iron is based solely on his personal research into the mystery of the Delhi Pillar. The Times of India, in its April 24, 2004 edition that first announced the professor’s initial work, headlined their article: “History Comes to the Aid of Chemistry in Beating Rust.” The professor himself stated, “There is an exciting future in developing phosphorus irons. The beacon of light shining the way to the future is the Delhi Iron Pillar, with its tested proof of corrosive resistance.”

As early as 1990, Balasubrahmaniam focused his attention primarily on the high purity of the iron used in the monument, the high phosphorus content and relative absence of sulfur and magnesium in the metal, the composition of its grain structure, and a process called passivity enhancement as all having been somehow utilized in its production. He also at first suspected that there may have also been an initial exposure to an alkaline and ammoniacal applicatioin, as well as other surface coatings provided after the metal’s manufacture.

Balasubrahmaniam believes the Pillar is a “living example of an object made by the powder metallurgical route.” This conclusion came after a microprobe analysis revealed that its metal “composition of copper, nickel, manganese and chromium was uniform through several millimeters into the samples from the surface.” In fact, the consistency is such that the professor referred to the inherent materials as “nano-powder.” He likewise noted that the metal’s microstructure shows a wide variety of complexities, proving the iron was obtained by direction reduction process rather than casting. “The pillar is a solid body with mechanical strengths throughout.”

Careful analysis has shown that 40- to 50-lbs. lumps of iron served as the raw material used in the production process. “Research has indicated that the pillar was manufactured with the pillar in a horizontal position, and the addition of the lumps was from the side.” Balasubrahmaniam commentered further, “This is one aspect that is not well understood (from a leading-edge metallurgical perspective) and may be called a mystery. This is the unknown method by which the iron lumps were forged to produce the massive six-ton structure.”

The professor soon concentrated his ongoing studies on the monument’s high phosphorus content, and it was in this regards that he made his breakthrough discoveries. “The presence of phosphorus,” he concluded, “is crucial to the corrosion resistance.” He also surmised that the original ore “must have been carefully chosen so that a relatively high amount of phosphorus would result in the extracted metal.” The enigma is just where such a specialized ore would have originated.

More specifically, Balasubrahmaniam noted that:

“The critical factor aiding the superior corrosion resistance of the Delhi iron pillar is the formation of iron hydrogen phosphate hydrate (gamma-FeOOh and delta-FeOOh) as a thin layer next to the metal-oxide interface. The amorphous to crystalline transformation of the phosphate is aided by alternative wetting a drying cycles in the environment. The formation of y-FeOOh as a continuous layer next to the metal surface is catalyzed by the presence of phosphorus and copper in the iron. Any freshly exposed part of the pillar surface attains the color of the rest of the pillar in a relativel short period of time. This conclusively indicates that the protective passive film on the Delhi iron pillar grows from the (inherent) pillar material.”

However, the question that remains unanswered is, if such a chemical process is so sophisticated that modern metallurgists are just now discovering its secret properties and are only beginning today to find ways of applying it, from where did the metal-workers of a millennium and a half ago or older still acquire this same knowledge? This is indicative of a form of technology that had to have been the result of many centuries of experimentation by trial and error. Yet we do not find evidence of such developmental stages having existed at any point in the fifth century, or before or since. Clearly, this was a special knowledge that had to have been inherited from a much older but forgotten civilization long lost to recognized history. And in our modern civilization today we are only treading the same pathways of discovery someone else in dim antiquity traveled long ago.

Another remarkable iron column exists at Kottenforst, a few miles west of Bonn, Germany. More specifically, it is situated in the national forest at Naturpark Kottenforst-Ville. Locally it is known as Der Eiserne Mann—”The Iron Man”—and is a rough-surfaced square metal bar 4 inches by 8.5 inches wide and stands 4 feet 10 inches above ground, with an estimated 9 feet beneath the surface. Excavation work in 1978 revealed that its bottom ends in a hammer-like T-formation.

The real mystery is that, like the Delhi Pillar, it shows little to no trace of corrosion. Any other average piece of iron, left out in moist air and a rainy forest environment, after only a short time should have been left with prominent evidence of rust all over its surfaces. Especially with having a roughened exterior, which was the result of its pouring and forging, the minor crevices that cover the pillar would have long ago invited inroads of major pitting. Nothing of the case exists. So where and when did this metal shaft come from?

A nearby sign, set up a few decades ago by local authorities, reads:

“The Iron Man is a piece of poured pig iron ingot. It is approximately 2.18 meters long and about 1 meter of its T-shaped end is in the ground. It was apparently intended as an attachment point for transport and processing and has until now, as an anchoring point, prevented any attempt at removing the ingot by force. Its porous surface and uneven cross-section over its whole length are caused by the sandbed pouring technique. The technique and the form point to a date of manufacture in the late Middle Ages.”

This description, however, raises more questions than it answers, especially when trying to match its purported origins and purpose to the scant amount of contradictory information found in local historical sources.

Today, the metal post is located at the juncture of five forest trails that were constructed in the early eighteenth century. The making of one of the trails unearthed the stonework of a much older walkway of unknown age that once led directly to the monument. The claim is made that in 1727 the local ruler, Prince Elector Clemens, moved the pillar to better serve as a marker in the planning of a series of hunting pathways between two neighboring palaces. But this account is now thought to be spurious—given the fact that in more modern times attempts to pull out the iron shaft with a diesel tractor have proven impossible, and that there remains no evidence whatsoever of the former location of the pillar, it seems highly unlikely that it was ever moved at all, but has remained where it is in situ for untold ages.

A document dated to 1625 mentions the Iron Man being used to delineate a border between two townships, while a later source, from 1717, states that at that time it was still serving the same function. The earliest written reference to the pillar goes back to the fourteenth century. But the claim that it was a pig iron ingot made in the Middle Ages does not hold up, because during that period iron was considered very valuable. The metal shaft weight is estimated at almost half a ton. As one German scholar remarked, why would anyone manufacture such a significant amount of iron only to place it in the middle of a forest where it would be exposed out in the open to the elements?

The monument also happens to be perfectly aligned with the ruins of a nearby Roman aqueduct, and there are signs it may have been utilized as a surveyor’s marker when the aqueduct was constructed nearly two millennia ago. Going a step farther, paleo-soil samples taken from around the iron shaft suggest that it may not have been buried, but that the detritus surrounding it was built up over a considerable period of time. Part of that detritus material is morainal till from a time when glaciers once covered this part of the German landscape. But if the Iron Man was already present during the last glaciation, it means it could possibly date back at least 15,000 years.

If this is indeed the case, then we are looking at a most remarkable piece of metal, one that has somehow managed to survive since the end of the last Ice Age. The shaft certainly dates far earlier than “the late Middle Ages,” as claimed, and its prehistoric pourers and forgers may have really been Cro-Magnons.

Curiously, as of this present writing, no chemical analysis of the Iron Man has ever been conducted, to test for its enigmatic non-corrosive properties.

Another enigma involving ancient metallurgy is the discovery in the last century of ornaments made out of platinum discovered in Ecuador which date back to 5000 B.C.E. Platinum is a durable metal with a high melting point, and its manipulation was not achieved in Europe until two centuries ago. A test performed by the United States Bureau of Standards on the Ecuadorian artifacts found that the ancient platinum had been combined with other unknown metals to produce an alloy with a melting point of 9,000 degrees. What puzzles modern metallurgists is what kind of mystery furnace existed seven millennia ago to have produced that kind of heat output?

Going a step beyond, a find made in China takes the mystery of forgotten metals even further. In 1956, twenty metal belt fasteners with open-work ornamentation were discovered in the burial site of the notable Chinese general of the Tsin era, Chou Chu, who died in A.D. 297.

The fasteners were examined by the Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Dunbai Polytechnic. Their analysis showed that the metal of the fasteners was an alloy of 5% manganese, 10% copper—and 85% aluminum.

Now aluminum was supposedly not discovered until 1807, and produced successfully in industrial form until 1857. Today the process of extracting aluminum from bauxite mineral is very complicated and involves the use of a Reverbier oven, refraction chamber and regenerator, and utilizes temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Centigrade. What is more, electrolysis plays a key role.

The question is, where did the Chinese acquire these elements of present era technology in the third century? Or is it possible that they may have possessed methods of producing aluminum unknown today, employing a simpler long-lost forgotten technique not yet rediscovered by modern science?

Joseph Needham, the leading historian on Chinese science, has voiced his opinion that the anomalous aluminum was the product of an unknown alchemist, someone who had access to the lost science of alchemy. What else could they have produced using the same methods? And could such methods be re-discovered and applied commercially once more today?

Report Update—Questions Raised About the Pillar Inscriptions

Recently, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), at Shimla in northern India, published a work entitled The Delhi Iron Pillar—New Insights, based on a series of lectures sponsored by the Institute on the celebrated out-of-place artifact.

Among the many topics discussed was the subject of the Brahmi inscriptions which appear on the Delhi Pillar, which consist of six lines in three stanzas, and has been translated with a wide range of interpretations.

The inscription is in archaic Sanskrit verse form, and sings the praises of the Pillar’s patron and erector as having been a great warrior and vanquisher of many enemies. The last line reads:

“He who, having the name of Chandra, carried a beauty of countenance like the full moon, having in faith fixed his mind upon the deity Vishnu, raised this lofty standard (the Pillar) to the divine Vishnu, and set it up on the hill of Vishnupada.”

The first problem is in identifying which “Chandra” is being referred to. The assumption has usually been that the reference points to one of the Gupta period rulers, either Chandragupta I, Chandragupta II or Samudragupta. But was there an even older forgotten ruler, from a far earlier period, with the name of Chandra only?

The second difficulty is the revelation that the Pillar had originally been erected on “the hill of Vishnupada,” the location of which remains a mystery. Historically, we do know that the iron monument was brought to Delhi from elsewhere as a trophy of conquest, but precisely when this had occurred, and what had been its point of origin, is in no way clear.

The term Vishnupada is used in a Brahmi form that suggests a separate country or nation now vanished, once devoted to Vishnu the god of peace, and one with a more varied elevation containing hills, unlike the flat plains which surround Delhi.

Despite the best efforts at new research, the scholarly questions still remain:

Where was this ancient far-distant enigmatic country of Vishnupada?

What happened to its lost inhabitants including its mysterious ruler Chandra?

And what became of their sophisticated technology that once produced such an impressive out-of-place iron artifact as the Delhi Pillar?

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]