Myths and folklore of meteors and meteorites
For as long as people have watched the sky, they have told stories about lights that fall and stones that come down from heaven. Here are 25 of them from around the world, each told with respect and set beside what science has learned.
Some of these traditions belong to living cultures and faiths, and some are sacred to their communities. They are described here only as their keepers have shared them publicly. Where a story and the science differ, both are given: they answer different questions, and neither is told to mock the other. For common mistaken beliefs, such as whether meteorites arrive hot, see myths and facts.
Shooting stars 2
Wishes, souls and omens: what people have seen in a meteor.
Meteor showers and storms 2
Annual showers and great storms remembered in story and song.
The ancient world 3
Sacred stones and sky-iron in Greece, Rome and Egypt.
Anaxagoras and the stone of Aegospotami
A falling stone, and a philosopher who said the Sun itself was a stone.
Europe and the MediterraneanImages that fell from heaven
Sacred statues and stones said to have dropped from the sky.
AfricaIron from the sky: ancient Egypt
The Egyptians treasured iron from meteorites, and their texts link iron with the heavens.
Sacred stones and scripture 3
Meteors and sacred stones in living religious traditions.
The Black Stone of the Kaaba
The most revered stone in Islam, and why its nature is unknown to science.
WorldwideShooting stars in the Qur'an
Meteors described as flames that guard the heavens.
ArabiaWabar and the lost city of Ubar
A legendary city destroyed by fire from heaven, and the craters an explorer found while looking for it.
Europe 4
Thunderstones, omens and legends from medieval and early modern Europe.
Thunderstones
Stones believed to fall with lightning, and why scholars long refused to believe in meteorites.
EuropeThe Thunderstone of Ensisheim as an omen
A stone that fell as Europe went to war, read as a sign from God.
EuropeThe bewitched burgrave of Elbogen
A cruel lord turned to iron: the legend of a meteorite kept in a castle town.
EuropeKaali, the sacred lake
A crater lake on Saaremaa that may have been a holy place for thousands of years.
Asia 4
Records, shrines and legends from China, Japan, Siberia and beyond.
Five stones fell in Song
One of the oldest dated records of a meteorite fall, from China's ancient chronicles.
AsiaThe Nōgata meteorite and its shrine
The oldest meteorite seen to fall that still exists, kept for over a thousand years at a Shinto shrine.
AsiaTunguska and the Evenki
How the people who lived through the Tunguska blast understood it.
AsiaThe 'Iron Man' statue
A statue carved from a meteorite, wrapped in a story that does not stand up.
The Americas and the Arctic 4
Meteorites honoured by Indigenous peoples from Greenland to Argentina.
The woman, the dog and the tent
The Cape York irons, a vital source of metal for Arctic people, and the story told about them.
North AmericaTomanowos, the visitor from the sky
The Willamette meteorite is still honoured by the people who revered it first.
South AmericaThe field of the sky
A crater field in Argentina whose name, in Spanish and in Moqoit, points to the sky.
North AmericaMeteorites honoured in ancient North America
Meteorites buried with care and their iron worked into treasures.
Aboriginal Australia 3
Craters in the stories of the world's oldest continuous cultures.
No stories match that search.
See also
The history stories follow meteorites as sacred objects, treasures and finally scientific samples, and the impact events pages tell the science behind several of the places in these stories.