Nantan nickel - iron meteorite droplets have been chemically dated back to approxi-

mately 4.4 billion years ago, originating long before the birth of our solar system.

Over 80% of all meteorites striking the Earth are never seen, but are later found. Few
meteorite showers are ever recorded. But the Nantan Meteorite fall was recorded in
Nantan Province's (China) archives in 1516. It is recorded as: "Zhengde (the Chinese
Emperor in the Ming Dynasty) 11th year in the month of May. Stars fell down from a
northwest direction, five or six fold long, waving like snakes and dragons, bright like
lightning and disappearing in seconds."

That event was pretty much forgotten in Chinese lore until 1958, when the Chinese
needed an abundance of steel for constructing the "New China". The people were told
to go out and find iron ore, even cooking woks were being melted to produce steel. The
villagers living in the Nantan region came across heavy rocks strewed across a large
area and thought they had made a very lucky find. Unfortunately the iron rocks would
not smelt. The people were so puzzled because of this that they sent a report to the
Chinese Central Government. They in turn sent geologists to investigate and deter-
mined these rocks to be nickel-iron meteorites, with a distribution or 'impact area' ap-
proximately 28 Kilometers long and 8 Kilometers wide.

The Chinese consider Nantan meteorites to be sacred stones from heaven. But what
really makes these little meteorite droplets intriguing is the result of follow-up research.
In a study that was conducted at the University of Leeds in England, researchers found
Nantan meteorites contained H-Phosphoric acid, which is the key element that most
scientists believe to have long-ago triggered life on Earth.