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#History and culture

Meteorites in history, religion and art, from ancient iron to famous falls.

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Courses (2)

  • Meteorites in historyPeople have treasured meteorites for thousands of years. This final lesson visits Ancient Egypt and medieval France, and ends with how to lo
  • Key Stage 2: Rocks from spaceTwelve lessons on meteorites for Years 3 to 6: what they are, where they come from, how to test a rock like a scientist, craters, the end of

Books (1)

  • Meteorites in History and CultureIron beads hammered from a meteorite and buried in Egypt about 3200 BCE. A dagger blade of sky iron in Tutankhamun's tomb. Inughuit kniv

Famous meteorites (3)

  • EnsisheimThe stone that fell on Alsace in 1492 is the oldest European meteorite with a known fall date that still survives.
  • ImilacA pallasite scattered across the Atacama Desert, whose weathered pieces look like metal sponges.
  • NWA 7034Nicknamed Black Beauty, this dark Martian breccia contains the oldest pieces of Mars yet found.

Meteorite types (2)

  • LL chondritesLow iron, low metal: the ordinary chondrites matched to asteroid Itokawa. LL chondrites have the least metal of the ordinary chondrites, onl
  • ALH 84001 and other Martian rocksThe ancient Martian rock once claimed to hold fossils, and 'Black Beauty'. Allan Hills 84001, found in Antarctica in December 1984,

Questions and answers (20)

Impact craters (9)

  • AcramanAcraman, in the Gawler Ranges of South Australia, is a crater whose story was pieced together from two places about 300 km apart.
  • BosumtwiLake Bosumtwi, in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, fills one of the youngest and best-preserved large impact craters on Earth.
  • CharlevoixCharlevoix, on the north shore of the St Lawrence River in Quebec, is one of the few large impact craters where many thousands of people liv
  • HollefordHolleford is a small, simple impact crater about 2.35 km across in farmland north of Kingston, in eastern Ontario, Canada.
  • KaaliKaali, on the Estonian island of Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea, is one of the few meteorite craters that probably formed while people were livi
  • LappajärviLake Lappajärvi, in the region of South Ostrobothnia in western Finland, fills an ancient impact crater.
  • SiljanSiljan, in the heart of Sweden's Dalarna province, is the largest known impact structure in western Europe.
  • TunnunikTunnunik, formerly called the Prince Albert structure, is an eroded impact structure about 25 km across on the Prince Albert Peninsula of Vi
  • YarrabubbaYarrabubba, in the Murchison region of Western Australia, holds the record as the oldest known impact structure on Earth.

Micrometeorites (1)

History (10)

  • Egyptian meteorite beadsJewellery made from space metal, 5,000 years ago. In 1911, nine small iron beads were excavated from two graves at Gerzeh, about 70 km south
  • From ancient Greece to MeccaSacred stones of the Greek, Roman and Arab worlds. Greek writers recorded a large stone that fell at Aegospotami in Thrace around 466 BC.
  • From prehistoric times to ancient EgyptThe first iron people ever worked came from space. The oldest iron objects known are made from meteorites.
  • From the Middle Ages to EnsisheimHow Europe moved from omens to science. In medieval Europe, falling stones were usually read as omens. Few were kept, and fewer were studied
  • King Tutankhamun's meteorite daggerA blade from the sky, buried with a pharaoh. When Howard Carter opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1925, he found two daggers wrapped with th
  • Meteorites in history and religionFor thousands of years, stones that fell from the sky were treated as messages from the gods.
  • The Stone of EmesaA Roman emperor who worshipped a black stone. Before he became Roman emperor in AD 218, the teenage Elagabalus was a priest of the sun god E
  • The Thunderstone of EnsisheimEurope's oldest witnessed fall with the stone still preserved. Shortly before noon on 7 November 1492, a stone of about 127 kg fell with
  • Tutankhamun's desert glass scarabA jewel carved from glass made by a cosmic impact. Among Tutankhamun's treasures is a gold pectoral jewel with a winged scarab at its ce
  • The Winona meteoriteA meteorite buried like a person, 800 years ago. In 1928, archaeologists excavating Elden Pueblo, a ruin of the Sinagua people near Flagstaf

Myths and folklore (11)

  • Anaxagoras and the stone of AegospotamiA falling stone, and a philosopher who said the Sun itself was a stone. Greek writers recorded that around 467 BC a large stone fell from th
  • The Black Stone of the KaabaThe most revered stone in Islam, and why its nature is unknown to science. Set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba in Mecca is the Black St
  • The bewitched burgrave of ElbogenA cruel lord turned to iron: the legend of a meteorite kept in a castle town. The town of Loket, called Elbogen in German, sits in a loop of
  • The Thunderstone of Ensisheim as an omenA stone that fell as Europe went to war, read as a sign from God. Just before midday on 7 November 1492, a stone of about 127 kg fell with a
  • Images that fell from heavenSacred statues and stones said to have dropped from the sky. Several of the most sacred objects of the ancient Mediterranean were said to ha
  • Iron from the sky: ancient EgyptThe Egyptians treasured iron from meteorites, and their texts link iron with the heavens.
  • The 'Iron Man' statueA statue carved from a meteorite, wrapped in a story that does not stand up. In 2012 a small statue of a seated figure with a swastika on it
  • Kaali, the sacred lakeA crater lake on Saaremaa that may have been a holy place for thousands of years. The round crater lake of Kaali, on the Estonian island of
  • Meteorites honoured in ancient North AmericaMeteorites buried with care and their iron worked into treasures. The Hopewell culture flourished in what is now Ohio and nearby states from
  • The Nōgata meteorite and its shrineThe oldest meteorite seen to fall that still exists, kept for over a thousand years at a Shinto shrine.
  • ThunderstonesStones believed to fall with lightning, and why scholars long refused to believe in meteorites.

People (1)

  • Ursula MarvinThe Smithsonian geologist who studied Moon rocks and meteorites, searched the Antarctic ice for ANSMET and wrote the history of meteoritics.

Museums and collections (4)