BURKE J.G. (1986) Cosmic Debris, Meteorites in History, pp. 221-223:
Partsch evidently favored a meteoritic origin of the stone, both because of von
Laurin's
description of the black exterior of the fragment he viewed, its interior
texture, and its
purported heaviness, and because Muslims said that it came from heaven and
venerated it
as the Greeks and Romans venerated similar stones not too far distant in time
and place.
In 1974 Dietz and McHone emphasized that the Muslims do not claim that the
stone is a
meteorite. They postulated that the stone is an agate, because of the high
polish it displays
among other physical attributes and because an Arab geologist, who studied the
stone carefully
during a pilgrimage to Mecca, reported that diffusion banding is clearly
discernible within
the stone.
In 1980, however, Thomsen presented a different hypothesis. She suggested that
the stone may be a
chunk of impactite glass, mined from one of the meteorite craters at Wabar in
the so-called Empty
Quarter of central Saudi Arabia, about 1,100 km from Mecca. She pointed out
that the whiteness
may derive from an exposure of the interior white core of a bomb or... from a
large fragment of
white glass or sandstone, and that the whiteness remains only where it is
protected by cement.
Further, she wrote: The yellow and white spots may be remnants of glass and/or
sandstone.
The porosity which allows it to float is due to vesicles in the glass, and the
resistance of the
material to abrasion due to the hardness of the glass. The blackness results
from the nickeliferous
iron spherules captured from an explosion cloud of Ni and Fe. Thomsen also
thinks that ancient
Arabs may have observed the meteorite fall, estimated to have occurred about
six thousand years
ago, and that natives later carried the impactite glass to Mecca along a
caravan route.
Thus, there is now considerable doubt that the black stone of the Ka'ba is a
meteorite.
Partsch Paul (1857) Über den schwarzen Stein in der Kaaba zu Mekka
(Denkschriften der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, 13, pp. 1-5).
Dietz R., McHone J. (1974) Kaaba Stone: Probably an agate (Meteoritics 9, pp.
173-179)
Thomsen Elsebeth (1980) New light on the origin of the Holy Black Stone
of the Ka'ba (Meteoritics 15, pp. 87-91).
--
Regards,
Bernd
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