Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
A great example of this from history are the early Norse smiths, who would make weapons from bog iron, using bones and blood to try and make magical weapons by "imbuing the weapons with the spirits of the creatures the bones/blood came from". They were actually making a rudimentary type of steel, but they thought it was magic.On another note, the idea of magic and science being in opposition to each other is a very modern one. In a more historical view, science is magic. Take metallurgy, for example. In many ancient cultures, metallurgy held a special, mystical significance. Smiths could create incredible works by treating the metal they worked in just the right ways - ways which were esoteric to others. A “magic sword” would just be a particularly well-made sword, who’s properties might seem miraculous to someone who knows nothing of the science behind it. These techniques were probably arrived at through trial and error, but when you found something that worked, you kept at it, which meant things like saying particular prayers at particular points were often considered by the smiths themselves to be as important to the process as any of the direct physical actions.
Another example is people making weapons out of meteoric iron, believing the weapons were supernatural because they were better than the other weapons they had, but this was just because iron is a better material to make a weapon out of than copper or bronze.
If you don't understand what's going on, you're more inclined to think that it's magical. We used to do this with lightning (Frankenstein's monster being brought to life through electricity, the Flash getting his speed from lightning), chemistry (alchemy), electromagnetic radiation (glowing radioactive ore), and we still do it with Quantum Physics.
If we don't understand something, we very commonly label it as "magic".