Laura is the archaeology and Life's Little Mysteries editor at Live Science. She also reports on general science, including paleontology. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Scholastic, Popular Science and Spectrum, a site on autism research.
A greenish obsidian blade, believed to have been found on the Texas Panhandle, may be from the 16th-century expedition led by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, a new study suggests.
According to common lore, Coronado and Spanish knights were sent by the king of Spain to look for the fabled gold Seven Cities of Cíbola. Nowadays, historians note that it was Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain , who ordered Coronado to find the rumored city; instead, Coronado's expedition journeyed to modern-day Kansas before returning empty handed.
X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, a non-invasive technique that determines an object's elemental composition, revealed that the blade is"wholly consistent with obsidian from the Sierra de Pachuca source in Central Mexico," about 55 miles northeast of Mexico City, the authors wrote in the study. But, given the uncertainty of the blade's origins, it's hard to say for certain whether it came from the Coronado expedition, the Flints said.—Indigenous Mexicans migrated to California 5,200 years ago, likely bringing their languages with them, ancient DNA reveals
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