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The meteoritic iron has never been replicated until modern times because the ancients did not know that its good qualities are caused by its content of nickel and cobalt. Even if they had known that, they would not have known which are the minerals that contain nickel or cobalt, despite the fact that minerals containing cobalt have been used for coloring glass for many millennia. There have been several places, including China, where in ancient times alloys of copper and nickel have been made. Nevertheless, even in those places the smiths did not know that the nickel minerals contain another metal. They knew only that when adding nickel minerals to copper minerals, a better copper is obtained after smelting. This was similar to what the ancient Romans did, who knew very well to make brass, and who used zinc oxide for a lot of things, including in medicine, but who had no idea that brass and zinc oxide contain a distinct metal, zinc. The metals nickel and cobalt have been discovered only during 18th century, at the start of modern chemistry, when people, especially in Sweden, have started to classify all the known chemical substances and minerals and to search for new minerals and substances. In the Sweden of the 18th century there was some kind of classification mania, which has been very useful for mankind, because its result was the start of the modernization of biology, chemistry and mineralogy. Before modern chemistry, the Europeans knew 7 metals in pure form, because the 8th metal, the adamant of the ancient Greeks and Romans had been forgotten (i.e. natural nuggets of Os-Ir alloy), while 2 other metals had been discovered and used by the natives of other parts of the world, i.e. zinc in Asia and platinum in South-America. When not counting the semi-metals As, Sb and Bi (which are fragile, because they do not have a metallic crystal structure, even if they have free electrons), cobalt and nickel have been the first true metals discovered in modern times, after the 9 metals (7 + Zn + Pt) that had been in use for many centuries or millennia. |