[davidhakendel]

  "these coveted, precocious artifacts"
  should be
  "these coveted, precious artifacts"

There was a lot of disbelief in this article about our ancestors using metal from meteorites. Iron from meteorites has been used for at 6,000 years.

  Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys.
  It began far back in prehistory. The earliest surviving iron
  artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made
  from meteoritic iron-nickel.[1]

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrous_metallurgy

[JacobAldridge]

"Precocious" means roughly "premature", or "appearing before its time". So the word is used correctly here to talk about Iron artifacts appearing before they 'should' in the Iron Age.

[davidhakendel]

Ah. I see how that was used. It was another nod to the disbelief of people's knowledge prior to the iron age. Thank you.

[bookofjoe]

You are indeed a close, careful reader. Kudos!