Ensisheim
The stone that fell on Alsace in 1492 is the oldest European meteorite with a known fall date that still survives.
Key facts
- Type
- Ordinary chondrite (LL6)
- Fell or found
- Fell (witnessed)
- Year
- 1492 (7 November)
- Country
- France (Alsace)
- Mass
- about 127 kg originally; about 55 kg survives at Ensisheim
- Official name
- Ensisheim
Just before midday on 7 November 1492, a thunderous crash echoed over the countryside around Ensisheim, a small town in Alsace, then part of the Holy Roman Empire and today in eastern France. A boy working in a wheat field outside the town saw a large stone plunge out of the sky and bury itself in the ground. When townspeople dug it out, they found a rough, triangular block of dark-crusted stone, said to weigh around 127 kilograms. It is the oldest meteorite in Europe whose fall date is recorded and which still survives today.
Souvenirs and a royal visit
The news spread quickly, and people rushed to break off fragments as souvenirs and lucky charms, until the town's magistrate stopped them and had the stone carried into the parish church. A few weeks later Maximilian, then King of the Romans and later Holy Roman Emperor, passed through the area on his way to war with France. He examined the stone, kept a fragment, and declared it a sign of heavenly favour. He ordered that it be preserved in the church as a reminder of the event.
A news event in the age of printing
The fall happened just a few decades after printing with movable type spread across Europe, and it became one of the first natural events to be reported widely in print. The poet Sebastian Brant wrote verses about the 'thunderstone' that were printed on illustrated broadsheets and circulated across German-speaking lands. People at the time interpreted the stone as an omen, as was common for unusual events.
For centuries the stone hung in the church, according to local tradition held by chains. Over time more pieces were removed, some given to important visitors and others taken for study. During the French Revolution it was taken away to a museum, but it was later returned to Ensisheim. About 55 kilograms remain, displayed in the town's Regency Palace, a historic building that now serves as a museum.
What it is made of
Modern analysis shows that Ensisheim is an LL6 ordinary chondrite. Ordinary chondrites are the most common meteorites to fall on Earth. The letters LL mean it belongs to the group with the lowest amounts of iron and metal. The number 6 means it was strongly heated inside its parent asteroid, which blurred and recrystallised its chondrules, the small round grains that make up much of an unheated chondrite. Ensisheim is also a reminder of how much can be lost once a meteorite becomes famous: more than half of the original stone has gone, chipped away over the centuries as gifts, souvenirs and samples, and those pieces are now scattered among collections around the world. LL chondrites are thought to come from stony asteroids, and some spacecraft samples from a rubble-pile asteroid have been found to be closely similar.
Why it matters
Ensisheim stands at the meeting point between science and history. In 1492 nobody knew what meteorites were. At the time, people accepted that the stone had fallen but saw it as an omen. Over the following centuries educated opinion swung the other way, and by the 1700s most scholars doubted that stones could fall from the sky at all. Not until around 1800 did scientists accept that such stones come from space. Yet the careful preservation of the Ensisheim stone meant that, once the science caught up, investigators could study a specimen whose fall date and place were firmly recorded.
The town is proud of its stone, and a local society still celebrates it and the tradition of meteorite collecting. Its story shows how a single witnessed fall can move from omen to object of curiosity to scientific specimen, and how important it is to record exactly when and where a meteorite comes down. That same lesson guides fireball networks and meteorite hunters today.
Did you know?
Ensisheim fell in the same year that Christopher Columbus first reached the Americas.
Verses about the stone by the poet Sebastian Brant were printed on illustrated broadsheets and spread across German-speaking lands.
Local tradition says the stone was chained up in the church, and a story grew that this was to stop it flying away.