Hi, We have two sub-categories in this title:
1. "Oldest Conserved Meteorite (or positively identified meteorite with historical provenance). 2. "Oldest Almost-Certainly-Meteorite Conserved Object" (but not now available or known to have survived). We have the Black Stone in the corner of the Ka'bah in Mecca, which structure pre-dates Islam as a place of worship and said to have "fallen from the sky" long before the days of the Prophet. Such stones were also found in a number of north Arabian Pre-Islamic shrines thought to be the residence of a god, hence the term applied to them by Byzantine Christian writers of the fifth and sixth centuries: "baetyl," from bet'el, "the house of god." There are the meteoritic iron beads (a worked meteorite) recovered from Dickinson Mound in Illinois. A Hopewell site, it has to date to before 400 AD. There are numerous other meteorites in a "conserved" context in the Americas, most notably the massive Casas Grandes. You can still go visit it, just not in its original location, nor receiving its former reverence. And naturally, you have to include the great Greenland irons, both respected and mined by the natives, and the Willamette iron, despite their recent change of residence. The USA is not the only country to bring great meteorites to its capitols; the Romans did it, too. In the Classical world, there were many deities known to have been associated with "black stones." Thise include the shrine of Aphrodite at Paphos, of Cybele at Pessinus and later at Rome, of Astarte at Byblos and the famous Artemis/Diana of Ephesus. The latter's most ancient sculpture was, it is said, carved from a black meteorite. Of course, there is argument over which "black stones" were meteorites and which were just black stones. None of these ancient stones, meteorites or not, has survived the zeal of early Christians, of course. Cybele's stone was certainly a meteorite. Like many of the early sacred stones, it was said to be "conical." We probably lost some big oriented beauties in the loss of these stones. The stone associated with Cybele's worship was, originally, probably at Pessinus but perhaps at Pergamum or on Mount Ida. What is certain is that in 204 BC it was taken to Rome, where Cybele became "Mother" to the Romans. Her ecstatic rites of worship made the Roman streets very lively during the annual procession of the goddess's statue. Alongside Isis, Cybele retained prominence in the heart of the Empire until the fifth century AD; the stone was then "lost." It has been described very fully by Arnobius (about 300 AD). He states that it was a small stone which could be easily and lightly carried in the hand; it was of a black hue and of rough surface, and had many irregular projecting angles. Regmaglypts? Some authors have interpreted that it could be "lightly carried in the hand" as meaning it was of low density and hence, not a meteorite. Did everybody just want to claim that THEIR stone "fell from the sky"? But why make the claim unless some of them really did? Oddly enough... I keep saying that, but history IS odd. The Pessinian stone may have been housed in the temple of Cybele called the Phrygianum, whose ruins are UNDER St. Peter's, so perhaps the Vatican has a meteorite in its foundations just as Islam has in the Ka'bah. I think that qualifies as "odd." In 220 AD, the Syrian Roman Emperor Elagabalus brought the "black stone" of Emessa, an undoubted meteorite, from its old home in the temple of Ba'al to Rome, hoping to establish a new State religion (which he would run, of course). Didn't work out, but the temple (and the stone) remained there. The home temple of Aphrodite was at Paphos on Cyprus and very old. The tapering black stone which was the object of verneration at this Temple still survives, even if it now placed inside the site musuem. It doesn't seem to be a meteorite, which is odd because it was said to be, in ancient times. Perhaps it never was a meteorite, or the present stone may be a replacement for a lost original. Oddly enough, also on Cyprus is another highly venerated Islamic site -- the third most important after Mecca and Medina -- the Hala Sultan Tekke. This, too, has a black rock, said to have fallen as a meteorite as part of the tritholon over the shrine. The shrine is to a woman - the aunt and foster mother of the Prophet Mohammed. Maybe that's the original Paphan meteorite? The most famous Classical site with a meteoritic sacred stone is the great Oracle of Delphi in Greece, dating in its foundation to more than 1000 BC, which was built around a meteoritic shrine. The original stone, now lost, was a large meteorite fallen from the sky in deepest antiquity, it's said, before the shrine itself was built. Anaxagoras (in the 5th century BC) witnessed a wagon-sized meteorite strike the earth. Because of its fiery nature, he assumed that it had broken off from the Sun. Since the meteorite was iron, he deduced that the Sun must be a huge ball of burning hot iron 35 miles in diameter about 4000 miles away. Yeah, yeah, but where did the "wagon-sized" meteorite get to? Well, it seems that "in 405 B.C., Lysander won his great victory over the Althenian fleet at Aegospotami in Thrace, and Plutarch writes, in his life of Lysander, that a stone which fell from the heavens a short time before the battle was regarded by many as a portent predicting the dreadful slaughter that was to ensue. At the time Plutarch wrote (circa 150 A.D.) this stone could still be seen at Aegospotami, where it was regarded with great veneration by the Chersonites. [The Greek philosopher Anaxagorus is said to have predicted the fall of this meteorite, but as Anaxagorus died in 428 B.C., his prediction must have long antedated the fall of the meteorite. And indeed, it seems the predictor was not Anaxagorus]: "A detail given in one of the early recitals might possibly have constituted the basis of a prediction by some contemporary physicist. In the latter part of his account of the phenomenon, Plutarch quotes from a Treatise on Religion, by a certain Daimachus, to the effect that, for seventy-five days before the fall of the meteorite, a vast fiery body was seen in the heavens, in appearance 'like a flaming cloud.' This well describes the appearance of a great comet, and might be regarded as significant... Of this meteoric mass said to have fallen at Aegospotami, Pliny states that it was as large as a wagon and of a dusky hue, adding that a brilliant comet was visible at the time of its fall... A portion of the stone was preserved as a venerated relic in the town of Potidaea." If so, it's gone now. Aristotle, who had written that this stuff about rocks falling from the heavens was just supertitious nonsense and that if rocks DID fall from the sky, they had merely been picked up by a strong wind and tossed there, was severely embarassed by the Aegospotami fall, since it was a big as wagon and much, much heavier! Why, then, don't wagons fall out of the sky on a regular basis? There is such a thing as too much common sense... "The site of the city of Seleucia is said to have been determined by the fall of an aerolite, and this stone is figured on some of the coins of the Seleucidae, a thunderbolt appearing in its stead on other coins. In the Temple of Diana, at Ephesus, there was a stone partly fashioned into the conventional form of the Ephesian Diana. This, it was asserted, had fallen down from the Heavens. The stone is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (xix. 35), where we read that the city of the Ephesians was a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, ... the image of which fell down from Jupiter. In this text the word 'image' has been supplied by the translators, a more literal rendering being 'that which fell down from the sky.' This clearly shows that the stone only faintly indicated the human form. Tacitus says of the stone sacred to the Astarte (or Aphrodite) of Paphos, that it was a symbol of the goddess, not a human effigy, since it was an obscurely formed cone. In his life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus, also, mentions this stone and tells us that when Apollonius visited Paphos, he admired there 'the famous symbolic figure of Aphrodite.' These 'living stones' were often covered with ornaments and vestments, and it has been conjectured that these adornments were, in some cases, changed so as to accrod with the garments appropriate to certain special festivals of the respective gods. The colossal emerald of the temple of Melkarth at Tyre is designated in the fragments of Sanchoniathon as a 'star fallen from heaven.' It was said to have been raised up by Astarte, and this last myth is represented on the silver coins of Marium in Cyprus." Could that "emerald" been green olivine? Every ancient culture seems to have had one. The now-lost Star Stone that marked the meeting corner of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire in the UK was supposed to a meteorite, also a vanished stone at Grimston, Leicestershire, was also said to have such an origin. They're everywhere, it seems. If a nearby supernova sterilized the Earth, no doubt alien "anthropologists" would uncover many "meteorite shrines" in the homes of our List members, harder to explain than the "meteorite shrines" in our museums... Sterling K. Webb ------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com> Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 1:06 PM Subject: [meteorite-list] Turkish Scientists in Search for 14th CenturyMeteorite > Hello Ron and List, > > "Batuta recalls in his memoir an Anatolian feudal lord speaking to the > author about "a rock that fell from the sky", a black- colored meteorite > weighing about 80 kg, and witnesses' accounts about the body." > > Well, this is probably the Aidin stone (said to have fallen in the year > 1340) > but the evidence is not conclusive! > > "the oldest recorded celestial body that ever hit the Earth" > > Hmm! And what about Nogata which fell in 861 A.D. after detonations > and a brilliant flash. The following morning, a single stone was recovered > from a hole in the ground. The stone has since been preserved in a Shinto > shrine. > > Cheers, > > Bernd > ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list