Ancient 'rusty treasure' emerges from river with enough iron to forge 500 swords

Archaeologists have identified Europe's largest known collection of Iron Age iron bars in Austria — raising the possibility that the valuable cargo was lost in a shipwreck on the Danube River more than 2,000 years ago.

Workers recovered at least 500 bars, making the collection the largest known Iron Age find of its kind in Europe. The "rusty treasure," as researchers called it in a press release, would have been extremely valuable during the Iron Age, when iron production and trade were expanding across Europe.