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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to step to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe mcma. Today

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking a little bit about religion, a

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Speaker 1: little bit about geology, a little bit about about space

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Speaker 1: and science. But I wanted to start off thinking about

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Speaker 1: the idea of sacred places. For some reason, they're there

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Speaker 1: are always central places that people want to go to

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Speaker 1: and experience personally and stand in awe. I think about

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Speaker 1: the in the secular version, they're like, you know, museums

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Speaker 1: and stuff like this. Oh yeah, when I went to

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Speaker 1: the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I

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Speaker 1: remember feeling a kind of church like sensation, even though

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Speaker 1: those bonkers of people running all over and making all

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Speaker 1: kinds of noise. Uh, I had this sense of like

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Speaker 1: I'm in a special place place. Oh yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: a different place. Yes, well, I think I think museums

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Speaker 1: are a great example, because I feel the same way

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Speaker 1: about the MET and absolutely like it's it's so phil

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Speaker 1: it's like just you just as a place. It's very

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Speaker 1: much the place of pilgrimage for individuals who are interested

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Speaker 1: in history, and art and religion, and and then you

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Speaker 1: go in and you have all of these pieces that

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Speaker 1: themselves are from all of these distant sacred places and

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Speaker 1: sacred times. Oh totally. Yeah. It's great. Like you get

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Speaker 1: to go to the it's almost like the catch net

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Speaker 1: for for sacred places throughout history. But when you go

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Speaker 1: to a sacred place like this that you know, these

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Speaker 1: places that have a history, I almost feel like you

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Speaker 1: are you're playing on the same kind of awe that

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Speaker 1: you might experience if you went to and believed in

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Speaker 1: a haunted house that like that, that some somehow a

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Speaker 1: kind of energy has collected there over time, and it

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Speaker 1: it gives you this sense of the sense of being

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Speaker 1: part of history to be there. Yeah. I mean, we

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Speaker 1: we sort of map out our worlds with these with

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Speaker 1: these pinpoints, uh that that all the energy seems to

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Speaker 1: converge around. Uh. And then when we visit those places,

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Speaker 1: we're we're taking part in that energy. We have all

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Speaker 1: these expectations and then we're engaging in sort of the

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Speaker 1: collective expectations of that place. Now, this is certainly something

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Speaker 1: we've covered on stuff to blow your mind in the past,

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Speaker 1: that being a stin Dolf syndrome or Jerusalem syndrome. The

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Speaker 1: idea where when someone finally visits one of these places

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Speaker 1: that means a lot to them personally. Be it Jerusalem, uh,

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Speaker 1: be it in the case of today's episode of Mecca,

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Speaker 1: or be it just a museum, or to stand before

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Speaker 1: a particular piece of art that that carries a lot

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Speaker 1: of weight with you. You enter into it with all

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Speaker 1: these expectations. Then you're finally there, and it can be overwhelming.

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Speaker 1: It can be mentally overwhelming and physically overwhelming to actually

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Speaker 1: be there at this linchpin of your life. Yeah, despite

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Speaker 1: having lived in the world your whole life, suddenly you

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Speaker 1: feel that you have connected with with again this sense

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Speaker 1: of history, Like here's a place that that will continue

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Speaker 1: to be visited and written about, and now I'm here.

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Speaker 1: And it could be an historical cathedral, it could be Stonehenge,

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Speaker 1: it could be a restaurant that was used as a

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Speaker 1: filming location from movie you like, but whatever it is, like,

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Speaker 1: this is a place that that has value that seems

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Speaker 1: to extend beyond your life. Now. Of course we've been

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Speaker 1: talking about, you know, our our favorite secular examples museums

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Speaker 1: or whatever. But I'd say you probably have to amplify

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Speaker 1: this feeling of importance connected to place, even more so

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Speaker 1: for religious believers and the sites that are sacred to

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Speaker 1: their personal religious beliefs. And of course one of the

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Speaker 1: sites that is sacred to millions of people around the

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Speaker 1: world will be found in Mecca in Saudi Arabia. That's right,

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Speaker 1: as far as sacred places go, and the and the

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Speaker 1: collective capital of belief that goes into attributing them as such,

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Speaker 1: the Haram Mosque or the Grand Mosque in Mecca is

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Speaker 1: easily one of the most sacred places on earth, is

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Speaker 1: one of the five Pillars of Islam. Every able bodied

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Speaker 1: Muslim has to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca and

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Speaker 1: this is known as the Hodge. On the way, you

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Speaker 1: conduct a series of rituals, including the stoning of the

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Speaker 1: devil in Mina, and finally you conduct seven revolutions within

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Speaker 1: the Haram Mosque circling the Holy Kabba building, which is

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Speaker 1: this essentially, this this dark cube. It's featured in the

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Speaker 1: art for this episode, and I'm sure everyone out there

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Speaker 1: seeing the images of it. Of course, if you haven't,

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Speaker 1: you should go look it up because you should have

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Speaker 1: this in mind. This this dark stone building with the

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Speaker 1: with the tapestries draped on it versus from the Koran,

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Speaker 1: and then at one corner of the building something very special. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the eastern exterior corner includes something that is known as

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Speaker 1: the black Stone or the al hudge year al ha

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Speaker 1: swad uh. This uh, this, it's this is going to

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Speaker 1: be the object that we're talking about here. As you

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Speaker 1: pass it, you touch, you touch it if you can,

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Speaker 1: you kiss it if you can. If you can't reach it,

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Speaker 1: you you point at it. But to touch the stone,

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Speaker 1: it is said, is to enter into a contract with God.

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Speaker 1: And I've seen translations that indicate that the black Stone

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Speaker 1: itself is the right hand of God on Earth. Now,

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Speaker 1: later in this episode, we're going to be exploring what

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Speaker 1: the black Stone might be from a geological standpoint, what

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Speaker 1: it's it's history and significance is within the religion. But

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Speaker 1: I guess first maybe we should just take a look

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Speaker 1: at the site itself at large, the Kabba. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: Caba itself is a very holy place in Islamic tradition,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's uh. We're gonna in all of this,

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Speaker 1: as we do with any religion, We're gonna we discuss

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Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna sort of divide between the mythic history,

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Speaker 1: the religious ideas of what this is and where it

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Speaker 1: came from, as well as what we actually know from history.

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Speaker 1: But according to you, uh, to tradition, the Kaba was

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Speaker 1: constructed by Abraham, and its four corners a line with

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Speaker 1: the four compass points. It's made of great blocks of granite.

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Speaker 1: But the the holy black stone itself burns with an

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Speaker 1: even greater mysticism. So this black stone here, that's uh,

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Speaker 1: that's that's set in this in cement and surrounded by

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Speaker 1: silver here and again the eastern corner of the Coppa stone.

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Speaker 1: It's not a single stone, or at least it's not

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Speaker 1: actually a single stone anymore. Rather, it consists of eight

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Speaker 1: pieces of various size, seemingly the same rock, seemingly of

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Speaker 1: the same origin, and they're submitted together surrounded by a

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Speaker 1: silver frame. And the largest fragment is said to be

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Speaker 1: about the size of a date. So that's not very big, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's these things go. So sometimes you just hear about

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Speaker 1: the black stone eaters to match with something larger. I

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Speaker 1: must say that I always thought, before reading about this

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Speaker 1: for for the episode today, that it was a single stone,

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Speaker 1: and I thought it was sort of like one very

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Speaker 1: large jet black stone. And the reason for that is

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Speaker 1: that there are not very good pictures of it out there,

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Speaker 1: that's right. Uh So you you know, generally this is

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Speaker 1: not something that people photograph very much. The photographs of

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Speaker 1: it that do exist or kind of sometimes grainy or

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Speaker 1: low quality or from a distance. Uh, it's just not

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Speaker 1: ideal documentation conditions. But which is crazy considering this is

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Speaker 1: probably one of the most viewed objects on the planet. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's it's something that you know, millions and

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Speaker 1: millions of people have personally laid eyes on. But but

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Speaker 1: it's very hard to find a good picture of it. Um.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, so what you see in most of these

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Speaker 1: pictures is there is this silver It almost looks like

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Speaker 1: a like a like a basin turned sideways or something.

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Speaker 1: It's this silver collar that's built into the corner of

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Speaker 1: the building. And then inside this silver bowl there is

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Speaker 1: just this dark abyss. Generally is all you can see

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Speaker 1: from the outside. So if I had to guess before

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Speaker 1: I started reading the research on it what this was,

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Speaker 1: I would think it was like a large piece of

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Speaker 1: obsidian or something like that, just a large flat black

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Speaker 1: surface that is is smooth and dark and people, uh,

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Speaker 1: and you know, people pass by and and touch it

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Speaker 1: and kiss it. But no, it turns out that there's

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Speaker 1: actually a good bit more texture going on inside, which

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Speaker 1: makes identifying the geology of the of the black stone

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Speaker 1: all the more interesting. Yeah. So the pieces that are

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Speaker 1: set in the cement, they've been touched so many times

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Speaker 1: they have there's a smoothness to them. Um, and uh,

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Speaker 1: it's all the worth worth noting, like these are pieces

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Speaker 1: of something that was once whole. And we'll get into

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Speaker 1: that in a bit. Various authors have commented on it

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Speaker 1: and tried to you know, they're they're varying figures that

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Speaker 1: have come out over the years, over the centuries. Really

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Speaker 1: Westerner is getting a glimpse of it, looking at it,

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out how how big it is the

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Speaker 1: pieces are now and how big might have been when

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Speaker 1: it was a one piece. Um. There is a paper

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Speaker 1: by Elizabeth Thompson which we're gonna refer to several times here.

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Speaker 1: She was from the University of Copenhagen. She wrote a

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Speaker 1: paper in in Meteoritics in nine eighty titled New Light

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Speaker 1: on the Origin of the Holy black stone of the Kabba,

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Speaker 1: and she did some some figuring here, and she says

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Speaker 1: that the the possible original size of the stone would

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Speaker 1: have been by twenty centimeters or nine point eight inches

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Speaker 1: by seven point eight by seven point eight, which would

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Speaker 1: have made it what possibly about the size of a

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Speaker 1: cantaloupe originally basically candle. And I rough estimate estimate here.

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Speaker 1: I've never measured a candle. Ope, Robert Well, I did

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Speaker 1: some I was at home when I was doing this

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Speaker 1: portion of the notes, and I was like, all right, well,

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Speaker 1: how big is that? Let me think is that? What

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Speaker 1: fruit does that align with? And the best I can

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Speaker 1: tell possibly candiloup uh fruit or um Islamic history experts

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Speaker 1: may have may differ on that. Now, as for the color,

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Speaker 1: this is another interesting thing because again you look at it,

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Speaker 1: you just see darkness called the black stone. So what

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Speaker 1: color is it? That is actually kind of difficult to

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Speaker 1: decide on as well, because various accounts have described it

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Speaker 1: as brownish black or blackish brown, or reddish black or

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Speaker 1: deep reddish brown, and some accounts also speak to a

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Speaker 1: coal like matrix to it. I think I've read that

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Speaker 1: that was only one account that actually said that at

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Speaker 1: least one account they oh then said coal like matrix,

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Speaker 1: but most accounts point out that they're yellow spots pointed

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Speaker 1: white crystals. There's also an impossible interior that is described

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Speaker 1: as gray. So it's not just this obsidian or charcoal

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Speaker 1: like stone, but rather something that has flex of other

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Speaker 1: color in them. Right there there are these little pieces

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Speaker 1: of yellow or white. And then there are also some

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Speaker 1: reports that inside the stone it is white, or that

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Speaker 1: like covered parts of the stone that are not at

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Speaker 1: supposed in the in the cemented, cemented, paved surface are white.

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Speaker 1: Another claim we should probably deal with because it does

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Speaker 1: figure big into scientists trying to figure out what type

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Speaker 1: of rock or mineral this is is that it allegedly,

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Speaker 1: according to very old reports, floats in water. Yes, this

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Speaker 1: is this is something that comes up a time or

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Speaker 1: two in the actually the the historical record of the

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Speaker 1: stone where supposedly this was used to authenticated after it

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Speaker 1: had been stolen in return, and we'll get into that

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Speaker 1: story in a bit that wasn't like the tenth century. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so the idea that they could tell it's the stone

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Speaker 1: by placing it in water and seeing it would float, well,

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Speaker 1: not many stones float so that would be a unique identifier.

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Speaker 1: But I guess that that does just depend on taking

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Speaker 1: that story as accurate, right, And that's one of the

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Speaker 1: that's one of the problems, the challenges, the tantalizing aspects

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Speaker 1: of this whole exercise and discussing what the stone actually

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Speaker 1: consists of from a scientific standpoint, because you're you're left

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Speaker 1: to draw on all these varying accounts and a very limited, uh,

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Speaker 1: observational data about the stone. Yeah, I mean one of

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Speaker 1: the features of the stone. So one of the things

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Speaker 1: about observing the stone that you have to understand is

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Speaker 1: that it is sort of the mechanics of how the

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Speaker 1: ritual at the Kaba works. People are constantly circling this

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Speaker 1: and there, you know, there might be thousands of people

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Speaker 1: in there, all trying to get up to the stone

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Speaker 1: to kiss it, or to point at it, or to

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Speaker 1: touch it. And so you are not in a situation

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Speaker 1: where you can sit there and look at it and

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Speaker 1: take notes. Right. This is not a museum, right. Uh. No,

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Speaker 1: it might be more like in the louver where you

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Speaker 1: try to get a good look at the Mona Lisa,

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Speaker 1: but there's just people cramming in from all sides and

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Speaker 1: pushing you. I mean, I've read reports about people trying

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Speaker 1: to get a good look at the stone and and

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Speaker 1: they're they're always reports mentioning just the crowd pushing you along,

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Speaker 1: not being able to get up close to it, or

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Speaker 1: they are also guards there, and sometimes guards will push

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Speaker 1: you along, move you out of the way. Uh, you

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Speaker 1: can sort of understand why, I mean that they don't

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Speaker 1: want to have a case of crowd crush or something

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Speaker 1: like that with other people there. Yeah, I mean, so

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Speaker 1: you have and and on top of all of this,

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Speaker 1: you have your you're sort of religious expectations. You have

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Speaker 1: the whole Stendall syndrome coming into play here as you're

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Speaker 1: beholding it now, Robert, I think you had a couple

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Speaker 1: of accounts you were reading of people talking about visiting

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Speaker 1: the Kabba, right, Yeah. I just I tend to find

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Speaker 1: the idea of early Westerners visiting Mecca and seeing the

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Speaker 1: Cobba on the stone. I find those really fascinating. And

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Speaker 1: so I just had had had mainly two here I

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Speaker 1: wanted to to highlight. And there's a third one that

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Speaker 1: that we end up referencing later. So the first one

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Speaker 1: that to reference here Swiss traveler and Arabic speaker Johan

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Speaker 1: Ludwig Burkhardt visited Mecca in eighteen fourteen, so he was

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Speaker 1: very much an Arabic speaker enthusiast. He was. He converted

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Speaker 1: to Islam. This is also the guy who rediscovered the

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Speaker 1: ruins of Petra, which if you're if you're if you're

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Speaker 1: still foggy on what Petra is, think to what Indiana

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Speaker 1: Jones and the Last Year say, is that the treasury

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Speaker 1: building of Petra, that's the one set in the cliff full. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the tomb of the grail there, they're not the tomb,

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Speaker 1: the resting place, the booby trap place, Yes, the booby

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Speaker 1: trap place with the with the with all the grail stuff.

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Speaker 1: In reality, of course that is Petra and does not

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Speaker 1: have booby traps, does not have boot traps. Now, one

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Speaker 1: of the most notable individuals, one of one of my

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Speaker 1: favorites to visit Mecca in early times as a Westerner

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Speaker 1: is Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He visited in eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty three, and Burton was also allegedly a convert to

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Speaker 1: Islam and earlier or a possible convert to Hinduism. He's

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Speaker 1: a difficult guy. To pin down and it sounds like

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Speaker 1: I'm being vague here. So he spoke twenty five distinct languages,

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Speaker 1: not counting dialects. Uh. He was something of a bisexual, hedonist,

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Speaker 1: a spy and explore. He was endlessly fascinated with other cultures, languages,

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Speaker 1: modes of human sexuality. And he's probably some commentators classify

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Speaker 1: him more as an atheist, but his explorations into Hinduism

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Speaker 1: and Islam are are often referred to his conversions, Like

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Speaker 1: he didn't just study them, he became them. Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: that that's kind of my my my read on him,

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Speaker 1: Like here's a guy who learned all these languages, and

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Speaker 1: in using these languages, you kind of have to change

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Speaker 1: the way your brain operates. And even to fake, like

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Speaker 1: even just to us, if you were to assume, okay,

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Speaker 1: someone like Burton um they just faked Islamic belief in

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Speaker 1: order to go on the Hodge, like to fake that,

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Speaker 1: you would still have to be so versed in a

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Speaker 1: deep understanding or of the cult. Sure the rights entailed there,

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Speaker 1: like your cover would be so deep. How would you

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Speaker 1: keep it from overcoming you? I mean, in one sense,

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Speaker 1: it almost you almost want to say that to fully

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Speaker 1: understand someone else's religion, you almost have to be able

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Speaker 1: to mentally convert to it, and kind of hypothetical sense

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Speaker 1: to like to try to see what it looks like

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Speaker 1: from the inside, right, And then at the same time,

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Speaker 1: like Burton, again a fascinating character. We can't get into

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Speaker 1: everything he did here, but he wrote a lot about

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Speaker 1: his his travels, and his ideas and his his observations.

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Speaker 1: And at times too he kind of waffles back and forth.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes he sounds, you know, very much uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: at one with Islam and and and intrigued by it.

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Speaker 1: Other times you still still see some of that the

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Speaker 1: English colonial um mentality rising to the surface, and he

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Speaker 1: sounds a bit dismissive. Like I said, very very fascinating guy.

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Speaker 1: Difficult guy to to nail down. But here's a quick

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Speaker 1: quote from his writings about beholding the stone. He said,

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Speaker 1: after thus reaching the stone, despite popular indignation, testified by

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Speaker 1: impatient shouts, we monopolize the use of it for at

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Speaker 1: least ten minutes, which is quite a lot. When you

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Speaker 1: see the CROUPD pictures right, whilst kissing it and rubbing

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Speaker 1: hands and forehead upon it, I narrowly observed it and

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Speaker 1: came away persuaded that it is an aerial light. Other travelers,

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Speaker 1: including Burkhardt, had thought it volcanic in origin. Right, So

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Speaker 1: here we're starting to get to the question of what

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Speaker 1: the stone is geologically. A lot of commentators throughout the

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Speaker 1: years have assumed that it was that it was lava

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Speaker 1: of some kind of basalt, things like that. But here's

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Speaker 1: the idea that it's an aero light, that it is

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Speaker 1: a type of meteorite, a space rock. Right. And to

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Speaker 1: understand why this idea is so appealing, we have to

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Speaker 1: discuss the mythic the religious history of the stone a

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Speaker 1: little bit. So if you if you dive into Islamic tradition.

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Speaker 1: In Islamic belief, there's a basic kind of a damic

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Speaker 1: origin story and play here. So depending on how you

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Speaker 1: interpret this origin story, the Black Stone dates back to

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Speaker 1: either Abraham or Adam, the first created human. So one

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Speaker 1: interpretation is that Adam built the first kava on Earth

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Speaker 1: and here he sat on a white stone, okay, a

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Speaker 1: stone that turned black with the fall of man, and

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Speaker 1: the first Kaba was then destroyed in the Great Flood,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't until later that Abraham was tasked with

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Speaker 1: rebuilding it or building the first cabin, depending on on

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Speaker 1: the telling. Another idea here is that this was a

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Speaker 1: meteorite brought to Abraham by the archangel Gabriel from the

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Speaker 1: mountain side where it had fallen, or that it originally

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Speaker 1: was one of the stars of Paradise. Now, one of

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Speaker 1: the reasons they're they're kind of varying takes on this

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Speaker 1: is because the black Stone, as I understand it, is

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Speaker 1: not actually mentioned in the Koran. It is uh, it

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Speaker 1: comes from a adational Islamic sources and just sort of traditions.

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Speaker 1: To me, that's always some of the most interesting things

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Speaker 1: you find in any religion is the stuff that's not

339
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Speaker 1: necessarily straight in the middle of the cannon, but but

340
00:19:12,320 --> 00:19:15,600
Speaker 1: not necessarily out of the mainstream cannon either. It's sort

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00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:19,879
Speaker 1: of like it comes from additional traditional material, the the

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00:19:20,680 --> 00:19:23,440
Speaker 1: you might you know, the metadata of the religion. Right.

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Speaker 1: I think we've touched on this before, discussions of heaven, hell,

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Speaker 1: and purgatory in Christian and Catholic traditions and where those

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Speaker 1: ideas come from, because certainly, if you're looking for a

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Speaker 1: strict definition of those things within the Older New Testament, uh,

347
00:19:39,480 --> 00:19:41,840
Speaker 1: those details are not really forthcoming. No, you get a

348
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Speaker 1: few hints, but you're not going to find Dante in

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Speaker 1: the Bible right now. In terms of what the stone does,

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Speaker 1: already mentioned that it's it's it's considered the right hand

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Speaker 1: of God. To touch it is to enter into a

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Speaker 1: contract with God, and there are additional powers that have

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Speaker 1: been attributed to it. Oh, and I believe this comes

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Speaker 1: from the wings of one Heinrich von Maltzen. We visited

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Speaker 1: this Mecca as well in eighteen fifty eight, coming after

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Speaker 1: the two individuals we already mentioned. Yeah, supposedly so so

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00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:16,400
Speaker 1: von Maltzen. Um. I want to be careful about citing

358
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Speaker 1: him because he strikes me as perhaps unreliable and definitely unsympathetic.

359
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Speaker 1: Like he wrote this eighteen sixty five book in German

360
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Speaker 1: called minah walfartnck Mecha, which means my Pilgrimage to Mecca

361
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Speaker 1: the books in German. I've not found an official published translation,

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00:20:35,320 --> 00:20:40,119
Speaker 1: but using Google Translate, I did a little uh looking

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00:20:40,160 --> 00:20:45,000
Speaker 1: through this book and he um, he strikes me as

364
00:20:45,040 --> 00:20:50,000
Speaker 1: an sort of unsympathetic and perhaps uncomprehending outsider, So I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't use him as a as a very reliable account

366
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Speaker 1: of what the people on the Hajj in in the

367
00:20:56,680 --> 00:21:00,440
Speaker 1: nineteenth century we're actually believing. But he at least claimed aims,

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Speaker 1: possibly wrongly, that the Pilgrims at the time believed that

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Speaker 1: it was impossible to destroy the Kaaba and that and

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00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:12,040
Speaker 1: impossible to destroy the Black Stone itself. Uh So he

371
00:21:12,440 --> 00:21:15,760
Speaker 1: said that, you know, they were attributing these miraculous powers

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Speaker 1: to it. Now, I know, um, you know, within every

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Speaker 1: religion there's always going to be plenty of diversity of

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Speaker 1: opinion and different ideas. But I know one strong tradition

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Speaker 1: in Islam, probably not adhered to by all Muslims, is

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Speaker 1: the idea that you know that that there aren't miraculous objects.

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00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:36,840
Speaker 1: You know that that that essentially people aren't going to

378
00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:40,399
Speaker 1: do miracles for you, objects aren't going to be miraculous.

379
00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:44,040
Speaker 1: But if this account of is correct, there are at

380
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Speaker 1: least some slightly miraculous uh properties attributed to the stone

381
00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:51,320
Speaker 1: at some points in history. But then again, as I say,

382
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Speaker 1: this guy seems like a jerk and like he's maybe

383
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:58,800
Speaker 1: not understanding things correctly, Like he seems disgusted by the rituals.

384
00:21:59,160 --> 00:22:01,760
Speaker 1: He doesn't. At one point, he's like, I had to

385
00:22:01,800 --> 00:22:05,280
Speaker 1: go and kiss the stone and he calls it the monster.

386
00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:10,000
Speaker 1: So he's is perhaps not looking at the stone from

387
00:22:10,119 --> 00:22:13,800
Speaker 1: the perspective of of an outsider who has converted to

388
00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:19,040
Speaker 1: it to Islam and is fully uh fully accepting any

389
00:22:19,040 --> 00:22:21,520
Speaker 1: of the ideas and traditions around it. Yeah, or even

390
00:22:21,560 --> 00:22:23,920
Speaker 1: just trying for the sake of understanding to get into

391
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:27,000
Speaker 1: that headspace. What what does this mean to the insider

392
00:22:27,080 --> 00:22:29,120
Speaker 1: to the believer? And then as far as the future

393
00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:33,960
Speaker 1: is concerned, there are tales that on the day of judgment, Uh,

394
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:36,760
Speaker 1: it is said that the stone will grow eyes, mouth,

395
00:22:36,840 --> 00:22:39,879
Speaker 1: and tongue, and that will see and speak, and it

396
00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 1: will witness in favor of all those who touched it

397
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:46,040
Speaker 1: with sincere hearts, which I think is wow, quite a

398
00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:48,080
Speaker 1: visual that one kind of gives me a chill bumps.

399
00:22:48,119 --> 00:22:51,120
Speaker 1: The idea of the stone sort of becoming this floating

400
00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 1: face that then speaks on behalf to God. Uh, of

401
00:22:57,119 --> 00:23:00,359
Speaker 1: those who actually touched it entered into that con tracked

402
00:23:00,359 --> 00:23:04,240
Speaker 1: with with with it not just a mouth but a tongue.

403
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:07,800
Speaker 1: That's good. Well, maybe we should take a break, yeah,

404
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 1: and then when we do, we can discuss a little

405
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 1: bit more about the supposed history of this stone. And

406
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:17,600
Speaker 1: then get into some of the geological ideas about what

407
00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:25,320
Speaker 1: it is and where it came from. Alright, we're back.

408
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:31,640
Speaker 1: So the stone, the black Stone here it actually predates Islam.

409
00:23:31,680 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 1: So it was it was there when Mohammed the Prophet

410
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:39,200
Speaker 1: came into Mecca. And this is a fact that's acknowledged

411
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:42,240
Speaker 1: by Islamic tradition, not contrary to it. Right right, Yeah,

412
00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:45,200
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty settled as far as I

413
00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:48,680
Speaker 1: understand it. So in Persian legend it was supposedly a

414
00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:51,159
Speaker 1: symbol of the planet Saturn. That was a tip that

415
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:54,399
Speaker 1: I read in a Brewer's dictionary, phrase and fable. Now,

416
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:58,960
Speaker 1: according to Oliver C. Farrington's writings, in nineteen hundred, he

417
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:03,119
Speaker 1: wrote an article the Worship and Folklore of Meteorites. He

418
00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:06,120
Speaker 1: says that the worship of the stone by Arabian tribes

419
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:09,760
Speaker 1: is first spoken spoken of by Greek writers of early times,

420
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:13,800
Speaker 1: and that the Kabba definitely existed as a as a

421
00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 1: shrine as early as two hundred c E. And the

422
00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:21,160
Speaker 1: black Stone was part of it. So this would have been,

423
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:26,199
Speaker 1: you know, a shrine that entailed venerated objects devoted to

424
00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:30,840
Speaker 1: different deities, and among them was the black Stone. And

425
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:33,159
Speaker 1: so like having idols there. Like I know, part of

426
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:37,040
Speaker 1: the Islamic tradition is the idea of removing the idols

427
00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 1: from the kaba right right, And that's exactly what happened

428
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 1: in UH six thirty C. That's when when the prophet

429
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: entered Mecca purged the Kabba of idols, reportedly destroying something

430
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:52,960
Speaker 1: like three three hundred and sixty idols. But as often

431
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:56,159
Speaker 1: is the case with holy places in history, the Kabba

432
00:24:56,240 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 1: and the stone retained their sacred aspects. We see this

433
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:02,919
Speaker 1: in Islamic history all the time as well, such as

434
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: the function of the Greek Parthenon as a mosque during

435
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 1: Ottoman occupation. This was something I really didn't know a

436
00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: lot of a lot about until recently when I attended

437
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 1: a talk at at Emory University. How they you had

438
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,440
Speaker 1: the you had it was converted into a mosque, the Parthenon,

439
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:22,879
Speaker 1: and then when the Parthenon was put was partially destroyed,

440
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 1: you had sort of the gutted Parthenon, and in the

441
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: middle they had this, uh, this this kind of cubicle

442
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:33,640
Speaker 1: mosque that actually reminds one a little bit of the Kabba. Yeah,

443
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. I've never heard that before. Now, there was

444
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:42,080
Speaker 1: a lot of turmoil even during Mohammed's life. Mohammed lived

445
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:46,480
Speaker 1: five seventies through six thirty two, and the Kabo was

446
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:49,360
Speaker 1: was burnt during this time, and this may have caused

447
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:52,880
Speaker 1: some of the fragmentation that we see. That's the thing.

448
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:55,480
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly when this fragmentation of the of

449
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:59,439
Speaker 1: the stone occurred. Yeah, this history of the uh, the

450
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:02,680
Speaker 1: stone as an object becoming many objects does seem kind

451
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,359
Speaker 1: of fuzzy. Like there's this general idea that it was

452
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:09,080
Speaker 1: once a single stone or fewer number of stones, and

453
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:13,160
Speaker 1: then broke into smaller parts. And then now there are

454
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:17,640
Speaker 1: apparently fewer visible pebbles in the stone than there were,

455
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:19,840
Speaker 1: say in the nineteenth century, right, And one of the

456
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 1: ideas here is that that the pieces could either have

457
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 1: been removed or lost, or they could still be there.

458
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:26,800
Speaker 1: We just can't see them all that well because a

459
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: we can't really see the stone fragments all that well anyway,

460
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: where they might be partially obscured by the by the

461
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: senent and the silver and repeated attempts to you know,

462
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: hold everything together. Right, So what were the circumstances under

463
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 1: which it was burned? So this was during the civil

464
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: war between the caliph Abdal Malik and Ian Zubar, who

465
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 1: controlled Mecca at the time the Kabba was set on fire.

466
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:58,160
Speaker 1: This would have been six eighty three and report by

467
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: some accounts, the black stone broken of three pieces and

468
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 1: then was reassembled with silver. So that's a that's an opportunity,

469
00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: let's say, for the stone to have been broken, certainly. Um.

470
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,919
Speaker 1: Now another opportunity that comes up is in nine thirty

471
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 1: and that's when Mecca was sacked by the Carmathians led

472
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 1: by Abu ter al Janabi, who apparently used the hodge

473
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: as an excuse UH to demand entry into the city

474
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:32,679
Speaker 1: with his troops. Now, a number of you probably wanting, well,

475
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: who are the Carmathians. Uh. They were an heretical sect

476
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:40,160
Speaker 1: of Islam that considered the Koran allegory. They refuted various

477
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:44,879
Speaker 1: rights and entailed a mix of uh of of of

478
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:49,640
Speaker 1: Islamic and Persian mysticism. They sacked and looted Mecca. They

479
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:54,159
Speaker 1: desecrated holy sites. They mascuard pilgrims around the Kaba and

480
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:57,679
Speaker 1: removed the black Stone and took it out of Mecca,

481
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:02,400
Speaker 1: apparently in hopes of moving the destination of the Hodge

482
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:06,719
Speaker 1: to Hajar in what we now call the rain. So

483
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 1: they were trying to get everybody to come to them

484
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,720
Speaker 1: from now on. That that is the that that is

485
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:14,119
Speaker 1: how I understand it. Yeah, based on the material I

486
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 1: was reading, Um, this ended up not working all that well,

487
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: and uh, I mean it's worth it's also worth noting

488
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:24,720
Speaker 1: here that of course history is written by the victors,

489
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: So you know, to what extent is some of this

490
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:29,479
Speaker 1: color by the fact that the that even though the

491
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 1: Carmathians were very powerful at the time, they ended up

492
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: fading into history. So they tried to change the point

493
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:41,360
Speaker 1: of the hodge didn't work. The black Stone is a

494
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 1: return to Mecca around or nine fifty two, but for

495
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 1: a hefty ransom fee. Well, now, hold on a second.

496
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 1: How do you know it's really the stone when you

497
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 1: return it. Well, you've got to test its buoyancy, right,

498
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 1: You've got to see if it floats and water, and

499
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 1: apparently it did. So that's where this idea comes from.

500
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 1: Right in the tenth century that that this was returned,

501
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 1: and one thing that was known about the stone somehow

502
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 1: was that it would float in water. Yes, and some

503
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: accounts indicate that it was returned and of shattered into pieces.

504
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: So whether it was whether it was shattered during extraction

505
00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: or during the return, that's kind of you know, up

506
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: in the air. Now, there's an additional account that is

507
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: sometimes brought up as a as a possible uh incident

508
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 1: in which it was shattered, and that's around ten fifty

509
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:33,840
Speaker 1: the caliph Al Hakim by am Allah allegedly sent an

510
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:37,400
Speaker 1: agent to smash the stone, but this only inflicted slight

511
00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: damage and the agent was killed on the spot. Who's

512
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: to say. I only found one account where someone was

513
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 1: speculating on the nature of the stone, who thought that

514
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: this might have been an incident that could have resulted

515
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: in serious damage. And the details on these accounts were

516
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: from Mecca, a literary history of the Muslim Holy Land

517
00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 1: by Francis E. Peters. So if any of these didn't

518
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,080
Speaker 1: to the trick, though, there was also a six flood

519
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: that toppled three of the cabal walls, so that also

520
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:10,120
Speaker 1: could have contributed to the fracturing of the black Stone. Right, So,

521
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 1: if you have a you have an object that is

522
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 1: susceptible to damage and it plays such a vital role

523
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 1: for such a long period of time, um, it's it's

524
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: it's there's there's a high possibility it's gonna result in damage.

525
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:25,840
Speaker 1: You know. One of the other things we should mention

526
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: is that this is a stone that you can quite

527
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 1: well expect to be undergoing a certain amount of wear

528
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 1: and tear, with millions of people from around the world

529
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: coming to this stone and trying to touch it and

530
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:43,720
Speaker 1: kiss it. Um, I mean, there is, there's all. There's

531
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 1: all manner of which, uh, you know, handling of things

532
00:30:48,600 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 1: leads to their deterioration over time, even if you think

533
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 1: you're being gentle. I mean, there's a reason museums don't

534
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:57,240
Speaker 1: let you touch stuff, right Like what if what if

535
00:30:57,320 --> 00:31:01,200
Speaker 1: the statue of David? What if everyone got to touch David? Yeah, um,

536
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: you know that would that would erode the statue over time.

537
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: And certains and certainly accounts of the black Stone indicate

538
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:10,239
Speaker 1: that there is a certain amount of erosion that has

539
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 1: taken place, a smoothing of the stones from all of that,

540
00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:15,720
Speaker 1: all of those human touches, all of those kisses, all

541
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: of that, you know, the oil from from human skin. Yeah,

542
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 1: but one can imagine that, I don't know, all manner

543
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: of various handling, touching and stuff like that could also

544
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: maybe have contributed to fracturing. I mean, it would have

545
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:31,760
Speaker 1: to be a highly destructive event. Uh, even even gentle

546
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: caresses over the centuries can add up. Indeed. All right,

547
00:31:36,440 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: and that basically brings us up to modern times. So

548
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,

549
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss the possible scientific origins of the stone.

550
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:48,320
Speaker 1: What is it? Where did it come from? And how

551
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 1: how limited are we in our ability to answer that question?

552
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So we're to be talking about

553
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 1: scientific inquiry into the geologic nature of the black Stone

554
00:32:05,320 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: of the Kappa What what kind of rock is it?

555
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:10,520
Speaker 1: Did it come from space, did it come from Earth?

556
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: What's it made of? And there's one thing we should

557
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: note at the outset here, which is that it is

558
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 1: hard to know the answer to this question because the

559
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 1: rock has not been removed to a scientific lab where

560
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: you can do tests on it. This is one of

561
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:31,400
Speaker 1: these strange situations where people are trying to do science

562
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 1: from a distance, sort of through the intermediary of people's

563
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: subjective accounts. Right, you have, scientists have not examined the

564
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:42,959
Speaker 1: black Stone, and really scientists are probably not going to

565
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 1: get to analyze the black Stone at any point in

566
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future. Uh, Like I kind of have to

567
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:52,880
Speaker 1: think of sci fi scenarios in which the black Stone

568
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: could possibly be analyzed. It's uh, it's it's simply like,

569
00:32:57,400 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: why would you do it, Why would you allow it,

570
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: why why would you submit it for scientific analysis? Because

571
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: because there's really nothing quite like the black Stone in

572
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: any other religious tradition that I can think of. I mean, yeah,

573
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: an object that is so central, like literally central to

574
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,600
Speaker 1: the belief system. Like the closest thing I can think

575
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 1: of in Christian and specifically Catholic traditions is the shroud

576
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 1: of Turin. But even that is not you know, I

577
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: would not say the shroud of Turin as an article

578
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: of faith or or you know, in any way associated

579
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 1: with a pillar of Christianity. Yeah, there are definitely in

580
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:40,600
Speaker 1: other religions holy objects, holy sites, but I feel like

581
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: nothing as central as this and as as hard to

582
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 1: get at, because because as hard to get out in

583
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 1: a in a scrutinizing way, obviously it's not hard to

584
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: get at just in general, and that like we said,

585
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 1: millions of people go in touch and look at this thing,

586
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 1: but you can't remove it. You can't take it away

587
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:01,200
Speaker 1: with you, and you can't spend some time screwt noizing it, right,

588
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: so we end up with it was generally intellectuals geologists

589
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:10,800
Speaker 1: looking at a pictures such as they are looking at sketches,

590
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 1: analyzing descriptions of it, and then using their knowledge of

591
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:19,440
Speaker 1: material science is to try and figure out what it

592
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 1: could be, which can be very interesting. So one of

593
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 1: the standard things this is probably not a very interesting hypothesis,

594
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: but for you know, years people have said, well, it's

595
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 1: probably some kind of lava or basalt something like that. Uh.

596
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: Generally now people don't think that's the answer. Uh. So

597
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:41,839
Speaker 1: another one of the main theories that's been offered over

598
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:47,800
Speaker 1: the years is that the Blackstone is meteoritic in origin,

599
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:52,120
Speaker 1: that it came from space. And you know, it makes sense,

600
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:56,040
Speaker 1: right because this this aligns with the cosmic origins that

601
00:34:56,080 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: are presented in the mythic history as a gift of

602
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 1: a primordial god, better origin than outer space. Right. And

603
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 1: there's also a long history of two important factors here,

604
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:10,680
Speaker 1: one the worship or at least veneration of meteorites and

605
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 1: to the use of meteor media meteoric iron. Now I

606
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:17,880
Speaker 1: think a lot of Muslims would probably want to emphasize

607
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 1: the distinction that the Kabba stone is not something that

608
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:26,360
Speaker 1: is worshiped, but it's a more like symbolic object that is, uh,

609
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:28,840
Speaker 1: that is playing a role in what they would describe

610
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 1: as their relationship with God. But even if the object

611
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:35,720
Speaker 1: is not itself a point of worship, you can easily

612
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,799
Speaker 1: see how objects that fall from space would take on

613
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,839
Speaker 1: some kind of sacred or venerable dimension. Yeah. Like, one

614
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 1: cool example of this is that the Native Americans from

615
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Roamed Community of Oregon

616
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: continue to make annual ceremonial visits to the famous Willamette

617
00:35:56,560 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 1: meteorite at the American Museum of Natural History. Back to that. Yeah,

618
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:03,319
Speaker 1: so while scientists believe the rock is the iron core

619
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:08,000
Speaker 1: of a shattered planet, uh, the Clackamas tribes people knew

620
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: it as tommin Owa's a representative of the sky people

621
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,359
Speaker 1: and a source of healing and cleansing. I mean, if

622
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:19,680
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of this meteorite, and you should, Yeah,

623
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,399
Speaker 1: it looks like something that was sent by the gods.

624
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 1: Of course it does. This thing looks insane. It's got

625
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 1: these caverns in it. Robert, do you know what it

626
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 1: looks like. I've seen pictures. Yes, yeah, it looks like

627
00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:35,840
Speaker 1: you get a sense of topography, like it's a maze

628
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 1: or even like a lit of former living thing. There

629
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:42,920
Speaker 1: are like coral aspects to it. Yes, it looks like

630
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:47,000
Speaker 1: a large piece of iron. Uh, parts of which have

631
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:52,719
Speaker 1: come alive and slithered away. Now the the iron is

632
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:55,399
Speaker 1: interesting too, because that comes back to this, this use

633
00:36:55,560 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 1: of meteoric iron. So, before mining technology allowed for the

634
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 1: ready harvesting of iron ore, one of the few sources

635
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 1: of this durable metal was the was bits of it

636
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 1: that plummeted from the sky in the form of meteorites. Uh.

637
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:14,160
Speaker 1: The ancient Egyptians knew about it. They dubbed black copper.

638
00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:17,400
Speaker 1: That's a cool name it is. It's very very very cool.

639
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. And you know it's generally spread then

640
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:23,040
Speaker 1: across vast distances. You're gonna find little bits of it

641
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:25,520
Speaker 1: here and there. So it was a rare commodity. You

642
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:28,759
Speaker 1: could not cannot arm an army with it, correct, you could. Yeah,

643
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: you couldn't make enough swords for an army, but you

644
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:34,320
Speaker 1: could make if you scratch scratch enough of it together,

645
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:37,239
Speaker 1: you could make a single sword and it would have

646
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: you know, obviously would have holier or at least um,

647
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:46,799
Speaker 1: you know, ceremonial significance. Um. So this this relegated most

648
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 1: meteoric iron creations to the realm of decorative or significance

649
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: or ceremony. In fact that in Islamic history, the seventh

650
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:59,239
Speaker 1: century Caliphs were said to have brandish swords made from

651
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 1: meteoric iron, while such iconic figures as a Till of

652
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:07,440
Speaker 1: the Hun and tamar Lane reportedly wielded other cosmic blades

653
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:12,280
Speaker 1: against their enemies. And you know also their bowls, plows,

654
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:14,399
Speaker 1: and stirrups that have been observed they've been made from

655
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:17,359
Speaker 1: it as well. So maybe sometimes you just ended up

656
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:19,799
Speaker 1: making what you needed out of the iron, but for

657
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,319
Speaker 1: the most part it tended to take on a sacred significance.

658
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: Weapons from space, Yeah, that should be a whole episode

659
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:27,839
Speaker 1: on its own. Sometimes could be is there enough there

660
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:30,160
Speaker 1: could we do? Weapons from space? I mean, has anybody

661
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: ever tried to make like a like a I don't Oh,

662
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: what do you call it? A morning star? I don't know.

663
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:39,360
Speaker 1: Why would you make a morning star out of it?

664
00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:41,920
Speaker 1: When you could make a sword. Terry Pratchett, by the way,

665
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 1: before he died, I believe had obtained a sword made

666
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 1: from hero o'kirn. Know what I meant was make a

667
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 1: morning star with a moon rock? Oh yeah, I like

668
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 1: the idea. Yeah, who does that? You mean, if you

669
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:59,320
Speaker 1: have to be brained to death with a medieval blunt weapon,

670
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:03,520
Speaker 1: why not? Why not? Moon rock makes it a little special.

671
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 1: So it's easy to fall into this thinking, all right,

672
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 1: it's a meteorite. Maybe it's it's it's it's meteoric iron,

673
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: and that's why all this, uh this, uh, the significance

674
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:18,319
Speaker 1: is given to it. However, as Thompson points out, we

675
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,759
Speaker 1: mentioned her, We mentioned her earlier, Elizabeth Thompson. Yes, As

676
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 1: she points out, this isn't necessarily a slam dunk theory.

677
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:29,439
Speaker 1: An iron meteorite, she wrote, would not break into fragments,

678
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:31,799
Speaker 1: nor would it float in water because it is a

679
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:35,480
Speaker 1: piece of iron and so, but that doesn't alull out

680
00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:38,399
Speaker 1: all meteorites. There's also the idea that it's a stony meteorite.

681
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: But it would a stony meteorite float in water? Would

682
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 1: it be able to withstand the centuries of human erosion? Um?

683
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,800
Speaker 1: Probably not. Yeah. So here I think we should actually

684
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 1: get into a few of the papers that have been

685
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: published on this subject. And the first big one and

686
00:39:58,080 --> 00:40:01,479
Speaker 1: that tried to get at the after the meteorite theory

687
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:04,240
Speaker 1: had been dominant for a long time in the twentieth century.

688
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 1: The first one that I think really tried to dig

689
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: in and and look at the descriptions and figure out

690
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:13,320
Speaker 1: what it would what it could be was in four

691
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,880
Speaker 1: in the journal Meteoritics. And so they're looking at it

692
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:18,960
Speaker 1: and saying, okay, pretty much everybody thinks this thing is

693
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:22,479
Speaker 1: a meteor rte. Are they onto something or are they wrong?

694
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:26,680
Speaker 1: And this was by Robert Dietz and John McCone. And

695
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: in this paper, Dietz and McCone argued that the Kabba Stone,

696
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 1: the blackstone, is probably not a meteorite but an agate.

697
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 1: So why do they get to age it. Well, let's

698
00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 1: follow them through their reasoning. So first of all, they say,

699
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 1: the fact that it appears to have been cracked and fractured,

700
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, Robert sort of rules out the

701
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: possibility that it's a nickel iron media. Right, you you've

702
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:55,040
Speaker 1: seen these types of media writes before that are that

703
00:40:55,080 --> 00:41:00,120
Speaker 1: are essentially like a big metal sponge. You know, if

704
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: you have tripped to phobia, these things really should set

705
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,440
Speaker 1: you off with these patterns of holes. But a nickel

706
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 1: iron meteorite, it's not brittle like most earth rocks. It's

707
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,359
Speaker 1: more like a piece of metal, and thus we would

708
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: not expect to see a meteorite like this with a

709
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 1: crack or cracked into multiple pieces. But they say, okay,

710
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: well maybe it could be a stony meteorite. There is

711
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 1: a different kind of meteorite. It's more like earth rocks.

712
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: And from descriptions, the stone they say is quote hummocky

713
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: and muscled. So what does this mean and why is

714
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 1: it relevant? Well, hummocky that's not just like a cute

715
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: British word or something that does kind of sound like,

716
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 1: you know, lord hummocky twizzled, And I was thinking it

717
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 1: sounds like a great description for for a wine. It's like,

718
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:46,800
Speaker 1: what do you what do you think of this particular Wine's? Okay,

719
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 1: well it's it's it's hummocky and and muscled, well muscled wine, yeah,

720
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: with notes of elderberry. Uh yeah, So hummocky actually means

721
00:41:56,000 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 1: something in geology. It means highly uneven or irregular and surface.

722
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:05,560
Speaker 1: So they say, you know, literally millions of people have

723
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 1: touched this thing over the centuries, and yet they haven't

724
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:13,239
Speaker 1: worn away these apparent irregular features of the surface of

725
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:16,160
Speaker 1: the stone. So for that to be the case, the

726
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:18,920
Speaker 1: author suggests that the stone needs to have a pretty

727
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: good Mose scale rating, which they estimate should be a

728
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: minimum of a seven. So you know about the Mose scale, right,

729
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: That's that's how you an mo m O H. The

730
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:34,240
Speaker 1: Mose scale geological hardness scale. It's how you rate how

731
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 1: hard is it? You want to know how hard it is,

732
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 1: you'd give a Most scale rating um and at ten

733
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:42,920
Speaker 1: on the Most scale is a diamond that's super hard.

734
00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:46,479
Speaker 1: I think. I think talc is like a one or two.

735
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: A seven is courtz. So they think for this thing

736
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: to have withstood all of the touching and kissing over

737
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 1: the years and still have this uneven, hummocky surface, it

738
00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: needs to be at least a seven on the Most scale,

739
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: So that gives them one clue to work with. Another

740
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:09,399
Speaker 1: conclusion from the descriptions is that the black stone supposedly

741
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:13,839
Speaker 1: has this highly reflective almost mirror like polish. You know,

742
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:16,399
Speaker 1: you can you can put your makeup on in it.

743
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:20,000
Speaker 1: I would advise against doing that. Now. I don't know,

744
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 1: people probably would not have the patience for that. Uh no,

745
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 1: and you probably actually couldn't. It's uh it's but they

746
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:29,319
Speaker 1: say that it is almost mirror like, it's highly reflective.

747
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:33,279
Speaker 1: Um and they claim that this indicates the stone must

748
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:38,160
Speaker 1: be a phanitic and monomineralic. Oh God, more terminology, So

749
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 1: what does that mean? A phonitic is a geology term

750
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: that means very fine grained minerals. So a phanitic rocks

751
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:50,799
Speaker 1: are those where you can't see the individual mineral crystals

752
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: with the naked eye. And this usually happens in igneous rocks,

753
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 1: you know, fire formed rocks that are formed from molten

754
00:43:58,160 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: rock cooling and solidifying pretty quickly. You know that often

755
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 1: happens near the surface. One common example would be basalt. Uh.

756
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:10,640
Speaker 1: The other word was monomineralic. That means exactly what it

757
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 1: sounds like, rocks that are made of just one type

758
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 1: of mineral. If the rock is a fanitic and monomineralic,

759
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: they think it's more likely that it could be polished

760
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:22,359
Speaker 1: down to this reflective surface by people touching it over

761
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 1: the years. Already, though, I think we should Note this

762
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 1: is something we we sort of warned about earlier, the

763
00:44:28,719 --> 00:44:32,719
Speaker 1: awkwardness of doing science this way because listen to what's

764
00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 1: going on. They're having to work from secondhand descriptions of

765
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 1: the features of the stone without examining it themselves. So

766
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:44,439
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of room for problems to creep

767
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:46,799
Speaker 1: into this kind of analysis. So we should definitely take

768
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:53,080
Speaker 1: their conclusions with a large grain, large crystal grain of salt. Anyway,

769
00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:55,799
Speaker 1: to continue, how about the color of the stone? Can

770
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 1: that tell us anything about it? Well, their description says,

771
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,760
Speaker 1: you know, it's called the blacks Stone. The stones black,

772
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 1: maybe even jet black. Now they don't know whether black

773
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: is the original color of the stone or whether it

774
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:12,360
Speaker 1: has turned black through handling, because again the mythic idea

775
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 1: here is that it was originally white and human sin

776
00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 1: has turned it black or mostly black. And this this

777
00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 1: on top of the differing opinions of just how black

778
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 1: it actually is now right referenced earlier. Yeah, and so

779
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 1: back when this article was first published, the author has

780
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:32,720
Speaker 1: managed to get in contact with the keeper of the Kaba,

781
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:36,880
Speaker 1: who in turn got a Muslim scholar named Mohammed alui

782
00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:40,800
Speaker 1: Uh to offer a sort of concurrently published reply that

783
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:45,399
Speaker 1: gives some theological and historical context to their article. And uh,

784
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: and this scholar had the among his claims, I guess,

785
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:51,320
Speaker 1: is the idea that the stone was originally white. He

786
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 1: goes with that idea, and he says, various descriptions have

787
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:58,280
Speaker 1: called it quote whiter than snow, as white as silver,

788
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 1: or charmingly as white as a yogurt. And I guess

789
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 1: they what they have in mind is not that gray

790
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:08,879
Speaker 1: purple tricks yogurt that Oh goodness, I forgot about tricks

791
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 1: tricks yogurt yogurt in name only. Why would you make

792
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: gray yogurt? That is a crime against nature? Yeah, yeah,

793
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 1: I mean the fruit needs to stay on the bottom

794
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: or is added after the fact. It should It should

795
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:29,240
Speaker 1: not come pre mixed tricks tricks are for kids, I guess. Anyway,

796
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,400
Speaker 1: one explanation for the change in color, if in fact

797
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 1: what happened is that it was originally white and it

798
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: darkened over time, is that whenever the pieces of the

799
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:43,720
Speaker 1: stone become loosened or dislodged from the inset over the years,

800
00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:45,360
Speaker 1: you know, they start to come out of the cement

801
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 1: they were reattached with. This kind of putty or cement

802
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: made by kneading together wax, musk and amber grease. Yeah,

803
00:46:56,600 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 1: and so exposure to this putty is said to have

804
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: turned the stone black over the time over time, and

805
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 1: supposedly the historian Ibn Nafi al Kazi, while writing a

806
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: history of the Kabba, got to see the stone inset

807
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: completely exposed while the Kabba was being rebuilt, so out

808
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 1: of the frame where it's usually kept, and he reported

809
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: that the part of the stone usually kept covered by

810
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 1: the wall, the part that's usually hidden is white. So

811
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:26,919
Speaker 1: if he's correct about that, um, then it's not just

812
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:29,960
Speaker 1: a jet black stone, but a white stone that is

813
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:33,280
Speaker 1: either black on one part that's exposed, or has turned

814
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: black over time due to possibly multiple factors. But in

815
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:41,239
Speaker 1: any case, if the stone were originally black, it could

816
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,560
Speaker 1: be a type of stony meteorites, such as condrite. Condrite

817
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:47,840
Speaker 1: is a stony meteorite. Um. And remember that the stony

818
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 1: meteorites different from that that solid metal sponge meteorite, the

819
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:57,400
Speaker 1: iron nickel meteorite. But then again, a chondrite meteorite probably

820
00:47:57,400 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: would not have been able to maintain it's out hummocky

821
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:03,879
Speaker 1: character with all those years of rubbing. So you put

822
00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 1: a stony meteorite in there, people touch it for a

823
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:10,280
Speaker 1: thousand years, it would get ground down. And the authors

824
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:12,960
Speaker 1: also say that a chondrite meteorite probably would not be

825
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:17,240
Speaker 1: described as having a mirror like reflective polish. Now here's

826
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 1: one other option, how about a Howardite meteorite. Good name again, um,

827
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,279
Speaker 1: howard It's. The authors don't think it's going to be

828
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:27,600
Speaker 1: that because howard It's are very rare. They think it's

829
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:30,960
Speaker 1: an unlikely candidate. Also, howard it tends to be light colored,

830
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 1: and this would not fit in with an originally black

831
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:37,600
Speaker 1: cobba stone. But then it might fit if the original

832
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:41,440
Speaker 1: stories of original whiteness are true. Uh So a little

833
00:48:41,440 --> 00:48:43,759
Speaker 1: bit more, some legends about the stone point to the

834
00:48:43,760 --> 00:48:47,839
Speaker 1: possibility of it being a sapphire or an amethyst, which

835
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:51,280
Speaker 1: is interesting, but the authors think neither of those minerals

836
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:54,440
Speaker 1: really fit. Sapphires are not big enough to be you know,

837
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: the date sized pebbles we see now, and uh and

838
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 1: amethysts are they quote they say, quote too readily cleaved.

839
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:06,880
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure I understand why that would disqualify.

840
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,240
Speaker 1: Maybe they're saying that that doesn't meet the hardness characteristics

841
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: had just come apart. Yeah, because because again have to

842
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:15,640
Speaker 1: have a sweet spot here between something that is hard

843
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:21,920
Speaker 1: enough to withstand all that human erosion. But also yeah, uh,

844
00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: and so I I don't know. It sounds like what

845
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 1: you would want is something that is readily cleaved but

846
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,359
Speaker 1: is not ground down by touching. Yeah, maybe they mean

847
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:33,799
Speaker 1: it would have just it's just just too fragile. Maybe yeah,

848
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:36,960
Speaker 1: it could be. So what do they conclude, Well, the

849
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: authors suggest the simplest explanation would be to think of

850
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:45,080
Speaker 1: visually attractive stones that are somewhat unusual, but also not

851
00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:49,600
Speaker 1: things that are considered precious gems. So they say obsidian

852
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:52,440
Speaker 1: might fit, but they say it's too brittle and delicate

853
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:54,799
Speaker 1: to have survived the years of handling and abuse that

854
00:49:54,840 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: the Cobba stone has, And in the end they settle

855
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:00,880
Speaker 1: on agate. They think aga is the most slightly candidate,

856
00:50:00,960 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: especially black ag it Why well, it's monomenteralic. Uh, it's

857
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:11,040
Speaker 1: hard a Mose scale seven, it's tough, and it's fine grained,

858
00:50:11,120 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 1: meeting a fanitic in a fun word from earlier. So age,

859
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:17,880
Speaker 1: when polished by years of rubbing, should also show a

860
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 1: fairly reflective surface. You know, kind of mirror. Like one

861
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:24,279
Speaker 1: last thing that they sit in their favor. They sit

862
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:27,880
Speaker 1: an anonymous Arab geologist who went to view the stone

863
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 1: for himself while he was on the Hajj, and the

864
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:35,240
Speaker 1: scholar said that he observed what's called diffusion banding within

865
00:50:35,280 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 1: the Kabba stone. If you've ever looked inside a cross

866
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:41,160
Speaker 1: section of an aggot, you see these things that are

867
00:50:41,200 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: kind of like tree rings, you know what I'm talking about,

868
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:48,800
Speaker 1: And these are the band's diffusion banding. And the authors

869
00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:51,279
Speaker 1: claimed that this would be consistent with the stone being

870
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:56,200
Speaker 1: an aggat um. One note is they seem absolutely unconcerned

871
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:58,959
Speaker 1: with or unaware of the idea that the stone maybe

872
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 1: should float. Yes, and that's that's something that Elizabeth Thompson

873
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:07,360
Speaker 1: commented on when in her paper which came afterwards, she

874
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:11,840
Speaker 1: argued that that this choice, uh, the wouldn't wouldn't float,

875
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:16,280
Speaker 1: and it also lacked a cosmic origin story. Now now, personally,

876
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 1: I think that last bit especially is shortsighted, because I

877
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:22,400
Speaker 1: think human history shows is that an object or place

878
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 1: need not be verifiably heaven touched to resonate with with

879
00:51:26,200 --> 00:51:29,560
Speaker 1: cosmic potency. Yeah, I'm not very convinced by that, either,

880
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 1: I don't see why you couldn't conclude that a regular

881
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:36,799
Speaker 1: earth rock was a supernatural gift from heaven, Like it

882
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: doesn't literally have to come from space for people to

883
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 1: venerate it as a gift from heaven. Yeah, Because I mean, essentially,

884
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:45,040
Speaker 1: you could boil it down to two different ways of

885
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:47,479
Speaker 1: looking at this stone and it's in its origin. Either

886
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:50,600
Speaker 1: it was a really cool looking stone that someone came

887
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:54,400
Speaker 1: across and and it kind of went from there, or

888
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 1: it was a perfectly normal stone, but there was enough

889
00:51:57,640 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 1: capital wolf belief that was put into it, be it

890
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:04,480
Speaker 1: something situational or just the right people saying this is

891
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 1: this is it, this is tied to to some something

892
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:11,080
Speaker 1: larger than ourselves. I mean, you can just look around

893
00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:12,960
Speaker 1: your house and you can find examples of two of

894
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,239
Speaker 1: those things in action. Right. Um, I have. I'm on

895
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:18,680
Speaker 1: my desk right now, I have just a normal like

896
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 1: gravel pete rock. I don't know, probably came from from

897
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:25,360
Speaker 1: asphalt or something. But my son brought it to me

898
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: one day and sit and to and wanted me to

899
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:29,480
Speaker 1: keep it because it was special. It's not special, it

900
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 1: doesn't look special at all, but the fact that he

901
00:52:31,640 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 1: gave you tell that No, No, I took it in.

902
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:37,200
Speaker 1: For the life of me, I can't quite get rid

903
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:40,600
Speaker 1: of it because because I have this small attachment to it,

904
00:52:41,160 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 1: and likewise, we all have various do dads around where

905
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:47,400
Speaker 1: that we have, be it a stone or some minor

906
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:50,759
Speaker 1: decoration where we just it just looks too interesting to

907
00:52:50,840 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 1: get rid of. Well, I think maybe now we should

908
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:57,280
Speaker 1: go to the next paper, the one we've been talking

909
00:52:57,280 --> 00:53:01,120
Speaker 1: about several times already, that of Elizabeth Thompson, who has

910
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:05,080
Speaker 1: a different theory about where this stone comes from. And

911
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:07,960
Speaker 1: her theory is an interesting hybrid, I think, or I

912
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 1: guess we should say it's a hypothesis. It's an interesting

913
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:15,640
Speaker 1: hybrid of the meteoric uh or the meteoritic origin story

914
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:20,759
Speaker 1: and UH and dealing with some of the problems with that. Right.

915
00:53:20,840 --> 00:53:23,320
Speaker 1: So as as you can tell by that that earlier

916
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 1: criticism she had, she puts a lot of stock in

917
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:30,680
Speaker 1: the cosmic origin aspect that this is somehow connected to

918
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:35,319
Speaker 1: to a meteorite. Uh. However it need not be an

919
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:39,360
Speaker 1: actual meteorite according to her theory, it could be uh

920
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 1: what is known as impact type glass. So I've attached

921
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:46,160
Speaker 1: for Robert for you to look at here a couple

922
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 1: of pictures of of wabar impact type glass so cool looking. Yeah,

923
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:55,600
Speaker 1: these wish I had some of this. These look these

924
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:58,240
Speaker 1: look super cool. Yeah, and and there are there are examples.

925
00:53:58,560 --> 00:54:00,720
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll try to include some links to these images

926
00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:02,880
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode of Stuff to

927
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com um, because they are kind

928
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 1: of how would you describe them? I actually I was

929
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:10,120
Speaker 1: trying to think of the best way to put this.

930
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:13,200
Speaker 1: They don't look like normal rocks. That do look again,

931
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:15,799
Speaker 1: sort of like the iron meteorite. They look like something

932
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:18,880
Speaker 1: that could plausibly have come from a supernatural realm. It

933
00:54:19,000 --> 00:54:23,319
Speaker 1: looks sort of like a fistful of cottage cheese was

934
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 1: wrapped up in a bunch of seaweed, in a wad

935
00:54:27,640 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: of seaweed, and then turned into stone, by which that

936
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: sounds about right. Yeah, essentially the idea here. I'll get

937
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: into it more. But imagine what happens when a meteorite

938
00:54:39,840 --> 00:54:43,400
Speaker 1: uh impact occurs in a sandy region. All right, Okay,

939
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: so there's silica sand, and what happens when sand is

940
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 1: heated up turns to glass? Yeah, So Thompson points to

941
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:54,280
Speaker 1: the meteorite impact craters of a region known as Wabar.

942
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:59,759
Speaker 1: This is six four miles or kilometers from Mecca, so

943
00:54:59,800 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 1: it's reasonably close. It's in the Ruble Collie Desert and

944
00:55:04,280 --> 00:55:07,960
Speaker 1: here several iron meteorites have turned up. But the bedrock

945
00:55:08,080 --> 00:55:13,360
Speaker 1: here is pure pale sandstone composed mostly of quartz. Crater

946
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:16,799
Speaker 1: walls are composed of block glass that are formed from

947
00:55:16,880 --> 00:55:21,880
Speaker 1: fuse silica and infused with billions of sphere ules of

948
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: of nickel and iron. So this is impact tight glass. Yeah,

949
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:29,520
Speaker 1: and it occurs in in what they call porous bombs

950
00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:32,920
Speaker 1: uh so, and often with a white interior and a

951
00:55:32,920 --> 00:55:37,719
Speaker 1: glossy black shell, sometimes as black droplets. So she theorizes

952
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:40,600
Speaker 1: that the observed yellow white specks in the stone are

953
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:43,920
Speaker 1: remnants of glass and or sandstone, and then the hardness

954
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 1: of the glass would make it resistant to all of

955
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:49,440
Speaker 1: that human erosion. Meanwhile, the porous nature of the glass

956
00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:52,759
Speaker 1: would make it would would make it float, and that

957
00:55:52,840 --> 00:55:55,480
Speaker 1: the black color would be due to the nicoliferous iron

958
00:55:55,560 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: sphere rules captured from an explosion of nickel and iron.

959
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:02,439
Speaker 1: And she adds that these qualities match up with other

960
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:05,719
Speaker 1: examples of Wabar glass, as well as reports of meteorites.

961
00:56:06,160 --> 00:56:08,640
Speaker 1: Used as memorials to the prophet. Now, I think this

962
00:56:08,680 --> 00:56:11,920
Speaker 1: is a really interesting theory. Uh may I might be

963
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,560
Speaker 1: sort of favoring it just because I love the pictures

964
00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:18,840
Speaker 1: of this impact type glass so much. It looks really cool.

965
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:22,439
Speaker 1: It looks so cool. I want this to be the answer. Yes,

966
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:25,399
Speaker 1: it it's It very much matches up with that classification

967
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 1: of I mean, you can imagine somebody coming across the

968
00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:32,080
Speaker 1: stone and realizing, this looks really cool. What's the story

969
00:56:32,120 --> 00:56:36,360
Speaker 1: of this. It's also I'm I'm persuaded by not persuaded,

970
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:39,560
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say that, I'm I'm unfairly biased by this

971
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:44,160
Speaker 1: being a very geologically cool origin story that an object

972
00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:48,360
Speaker 1: from the heavens came down and literally melted the earth

973
00:56:48,880 --> 00:56:53,840
Speaker 1: to form these these objects that later become objects of reverence.

974
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:57,839
Speaker 1: One thing that's probably not necessarily h I don't know,

975
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:01,239
Speaker 1: an influence, but just a very interesting agendary parallel is

976
00:57:01,320 --> 00:57:04,200
Speaker 1: the idea of the destruction of the city of Iram

977
00:57:04,280 --> 00:57:08,479
Speaker 1: of the Pillars by fire from heaven. Yeah. I've seen

978
00:57:08,480 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 1: this referred to as the Atlantis of the Sands Iram. Yeah,

979
00:57:12,960 --> 00:57:15,360
Speaker 1: because it's you know, it's a lost city, and I

980
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:17,960
Speaker 1: think it's also called is it ubar? Is that right?

981
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:20,560
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I've seen it referred to it either

982
00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:23,080
Speaker 1: I I ram with an eye or a ram with

983
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:26,440
Speaker 1: an a at least in the copy of the Koran

984
00:57:26,480 --> 00:57:28,240
Speaker 1: that I was looking at, because it is mentioned in

985
00:57:28,240 --> 00:57:34,080
Speaker 1: the Koran, chapter eighty nine, verse six to fourteen. It reads,

986
00:57:34,280 --> 00:57:37,400
Speaker 1: hast thou not considered how thy Lord dealt with ad

987
00:57:37,400 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 1: of Aram, having lofty buildings, the like of which are

988
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:43,920
Speaker 1: not created in the land, And of Thamid, who hewed

989
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:46,480
Speaker 1: up rocks in the valley, and the Pharaoh, the lord

990
00:57:46,520 --> 00:57:49,280
Speaker 1: of Hosts, who exceeded limits in the cities and made

991
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:52,720
Speaker 1: great mischief therein so thy Lord poured on them a

992
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: portion of chastisement. Surely thy Lord is watchful. WHOA yeah, alright.

993
00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:03,280
Speaker 1: So Thompson has made an interesting uh speculation here that

994
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:05,120
Speaker 1: that it could be this impact type glass. But there

995
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 1: was another scientific paper on it by H. J. Acson

996
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Materials Science Letters in n

997
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 1: two called the black Stone of Kabba Suggestions as to

998
00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:19,520
Speaker 1: its constitution, And he looks at the research we've already

999
00:58:19,520 --> 00:58:23,000
Speaker 1: talked about and tries to draw some conclusions from it,

1000
00:58:23,160 --> 00:58:25,640
Speaker 1: critique it and then offers some ideas of his own.

1001
00:58:26,400 --> 00:58:30,120
Speaker 1: So he reacts to to that original discussion of Dietz

1002
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:33,240
Speaker 1: and McCone who said it was an agate and so

1003
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:36,480
Speaker 1: he says, Okay, their reasoning rests on some assumptions that

1004
00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:39,400
Speaker 1: the stone is jet black, that it's mirror like in

1005
00:58:39,440 --> 00:58:43,520
Speaker 1: reflective power. Uh, and that it's got these apparent banded

1006
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:47,400
Speaker 1: regions that there that their friend the geologists saw when

1007
00:58:47,400 --> 00:58:50,160
Speaker 1: he went and visited it, uh, that they attribute to

1008
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 1: diffusion banding. So it makes them think age on this basis.

1009
00:58:55,360 --> 00:58:58,040
Speaker 1: They say that it's not a stony meteorite of the

1010
00:58:58,120 --> 00:59:01,840
Speaker 1: chondrite variety, be cause those crumble too easily. And the

1011
00:59:01,840 --> 00:59:05,600
Speaker 1: word here is friable. They're too easily friable. Uh. So

1012
00:59:05,640 --> 00:59:08,920
Speaker 1: they're looking for something that's a fantic and monomineralic you

1013
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: remember that, And they conclude that it's ago. But accon

1014
00:59:12,240 --> 00:59:15,880
Speaker 1: claims that even though agat is readily available in the

1015
00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:19,480
Speaker 1: Middle East, he thinks the authors overlooked the importance of

1016
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:23,080
Speaker 1: the fact that the stone is a collection of pebble

1017
00:59:23,240 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 1: like fragments cemented together, rather than a single stone with

1018
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: a well preserved hummocky surface. So he he thinks that

1019
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:37,080
Speaker 1: they may be sort of um mistaking the the textured

1020
00:59:37,120 --> 00:59:42,120
Speaker 1: appearance of this cemented together piece of pavement essentially for

1021
00:59:42,320 --> 00:59:45,600
Speaker 1: the surface of what a stone itself should look like.

1022
00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:51,280
Speaker 1: And in defense of stony meteorites, he says, okay, chondrites,

1023
00:59:51,320 --> 00:59:54,720
Speaker 1: those are stony meteorites actually vary a whole lot and

1024
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:58,000
Speaker 1: exactly how crumbly they are, you know, some of them

1025
00:59:58,080 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 1: might be more crumbly than others. How friable they are. Also,

1026
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:05,080
Speaker 1: Accon says, you know, condrites that have been subjected to

1027
01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:10,400
Speaker 1: what he calls extraterrestrial shock, which is also the medical

1028
01:00:10,440 --> 01:00:14,439
Speaker 1: condition induced by watching the movie Mac and Me. He says,

1029
01:00:14,440 --> 01:00:18,880
Speaker 1: they quote tend to be compacted and contain dark veins

1030
01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:24,480
Speaker 1: which might be mistaken for banding under unfavorable conditions of observation.

1031
01:00:24,560 --> 01:00:26,880
Speaker 1: So he says, you know, if you're just coming up

1032
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:28,320
Speaker 1: at this thing in the middle of the day and

1033
01:00:28,400 --> 01:00:31,520
Speaker 1: you're trying to peek in at it, you might mistake

1034
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:35,280
Speaker 1: these these veins that we would often see in certain

1035
01:00:35,320 --> 01:00:38,520
Speaker 1: types of condrites for the kind of banding you'd see

1036
01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:41,080
Speaker 1: in an agate. So that's in defense of it being

1037
01:00:41,080 --> 01:00:45,600
Speaker 1: a meteorite. On the other hand, against the condrite hypothesis.

1038
01:00:45,600 --> 01:00:49,320
Speaker 1: Accent says, Uh, it's common for chondrites to have these

1039
01:00:49,360 --> 01:00:55,000
Speaker 1: metallic iron nickel pieces distributed evenly throughout, which should be

1040
01:00:55,080 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 1: obvious when you look at this thing. Uh, this is

1041
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:00,600
Speaker 1: something that people would have observed about it it. On

1042
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:03,680
Speaker 1: the other hand, he says that metal can disappear by

1043
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:07,720
Speaker 1: way of oxidation i e. Rusting if exposed to your

1044
01:01:07,760 --> 01:01:11,400
Speaker 1: earth weather for long periods of time. So maybe maybe

1045
01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:13,720
Speaker 1: it's just rusting. But if this were the case, you'd

1046
01:01:13,720 --> 01:01:16,240
Speaker 1: expect to see rust. You'd expect to see like a

1047
01:01:16,280 --> 01:01:20,680
Speaker 1: reddish you. Now that being said, there are some accounts

1048
01:01:20,680 --> 01:01:23,640
Speaker 1: have said brownish or reddish. Yeah, and here we get

1049
01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:26,080
Speaker 1: back to the problem with like combining all these different

1050
01:01:26,120 --> 01:01:29,080
Speaker 1: accounts that seem to differ from one another. Uh, it's

1051
01:01:29,080 --> 01:01:31,000
Speaker 1: hard to know which one to go on if you're

1052
01:01:31,000 --> 01:01:33,960
Speaker 1: trying to draw the best conclusions. But yeah, I have

1053
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:37,400
Speaker 1: seen that too. Some people say reddish brown, others say black.

1054
01:01:37,520 --> 01:01:41,840
Speaker 1: So that's a little confusing. Um. But also he says,

1055
01:01:42,080 --> 01:01:45,120
Speaker 1: we would expect to see in a chondrite quote light

1056
01:01:45,160 --> 01:01:49,040
Speaker 1: colored con drools of silicate, So what is that? Well,

1057
01:01:49,480 --> 01:01:54,960
Speaker 1: con drools are these visually striking, colorful spherical minerals that

1058
01:01:55,000 --> 01:01:58,040
Speaker 1: are found in some meteorites. You should look this up.

1059
01:01:58,080 --> 01:02:02,200
Speaker 1: We could go Google search condrouls. They have a distinctive

1060
01:02:02,200 --> 01:02:05,520
Speaker 1: appearance and people would probably have noticed and reported them

1061
01:02:05,640 --> 01:02:08,080
Speaker 1: if they'd been present in the stone because they're these

1062
01:02:08,160 --> 01:02:14,560
Speaker 1: like colored spheres. You would see them. So Accent says, Okay, okay,

1063
01:02:14,600 --> 01:02:19,160
Speaker 1: what about a carbonaceous meteorite. These are rare condrites that

1064
01:02:19,200 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 1: are low in density, they're free of obvious medical medical

1065
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:27,800
Speaker 1: metal particles, and sometimes they don't have these big cond

1066
01:02:27,840 --> 01:02:31,840
Speaker 1: rules that are really obvious. But these are rare meteorites.

1067
01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:34,680
Speaker 1: They're not a major candidate, and Accent thinks maybe we

1068
01:02:34,720 --> 01:02:36,320
Speaker 1: should just keep them in the back of the mind,

1069
01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:39,240
Speaker 1: you know. And we've had a to two different authors

1070
01:02:39,320 --> 01:02:43,479
Speaker 1: here discussed like rarity being an issue. I keep thinking, though,

1071
01:02:44,360 --> 01:02:47,080
Speaker 1: we're talking about a rare stone, like you no, in

1072
01:02:47,680 --> 01:02:52,080
Speaker 1: no classification. It's not like black stone. Yeah, like this

1073
01:02:52,160 --> 01:02:57,240
Speaker 1: is a singular stone. So can we really count out

1074
01:02:57,320 --> 01:02:59,960
Speaker 1: the possibility of rare meteorites. Well, I mean, they just

1075
01:03:00,240 --> 01:03:04,240
Speaker 1: it lowers the probability that anybody in history would have

1076
01:03:04,240 --> 01:03:08,520
Speaker 1: found trace things, but it maybe increases the probability that

1077
01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:10,400
Speaker 1: if they had found it they would have kept it

1078
01:03:10,440 --> 01:03:13,840
Speaker 1: and revered it. UM. So you're just sort of like

1079
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:19,600
Speaker 1: adjusting the selection dials in two different ways. Um. What

1080
01:03:19,880 --> 01:03:22,480
Speaker 1: about Thompson's hypothesis, he comes to that, you know that

1081
01:03:22,600 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: it's this fused silical glass. There's an impact event in

1082
01:03:26,280 --> 01:03:29,200
Speaker 1: the sand in the desert, a bunch of sand gets melted,

1083
01:03:29,440 --> 01:03:33,160
Speaker 1: along with some pieces of the meteorite into these crazy

1084
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:40,320
Speaker 1: wads of spinach and cottage cheese, uh, turned into stone. Well, Thompson, obviously,

1085
01:03:40,360 --> 01:03:42,840
Speaker 1: as we said, likes this hypothesis because it means the

1086
01:03:42,880 --> 01:03:46,400
Speaker 1: stone could feasibly float, and there are those stories from

1087
01:03:46,400 --> 01:03:49,600
Speaker 1: the past of it floating in brine or water or

1088
01:03:49,600 --> 01:03:53,560
Speaker 1: even concentrated brine, and this would this would also explain

1089
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:59,280
Speaker 1: the white stone inside the black stone. UM. But Accon says,

1090
01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:02,080
Speaker 1: it's hard to see see how a large peat piece

1091
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:06,120
Speaker 1: of this impact type glass would form the smooth pebble

1092
01:04:06,200 --> 01:04:09,160
Speaker 1: shapes that are described by observers. Again back to what

1093
01:04:09,200 --> 01:04:12,400
Speaker 1: people say. You see these smooth pebbles, you know, no

1094
01:04:12,480 --> 01:04:15,680
Speaker 1: bigger than a date in in the cement. If you

1095
01:04:15,680 --> 01:04:17,960
Speaker 1: look at these things, Accident says, if the black stone

1096
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 1: fragments really are this fused silical glass, from an impact,

1097
01:04:21,920 --> 01:04:24,960
Speaker 1: they shouldn't look like these smooth pebbles. They should uh,

1098
01:04:25,480 --> 01:04:29,280
Speaker 1: they should have different surface features, including things like bubbles

1099
01:04:29,320 --> 01:04:34,680
Speaker 1: and vesicles um. And so one last thought he offers is,

1100
01:04:34,720 --> 01:04:37,200
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps the original body was what he calls

1101
01:04:37,240 --> 01:04:42,760
Speaker 1: a concreteation of pebbles. And so this originally, this original stone,

1102
01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:45,600
Speaker 1: when when it fractured, what it was was a bunch

1103
01:04:45,640 --> 01:04:48,280
Speaker 1: of pebbles stuck together, and it was just the pebbles

1104
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:51,280
Speaker 1: coming off, if that makes any sense. So if you

1105
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:54,480
Speaker 1: imagine the original stone was not like a solid stone

1106
01:04:54,560 --> 01:04:57,720
Speaker 1: that broke into pieces and then the pieces got smoothed down,

1107
01:04:58,440 --> 01:05:00,720
Speaker 1: what if it was a solid a stone that was

1108
01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:04,680
Speaker 1: more like a cluster of grapes in shape. And he

1109
01:05:04,800 --> 01:05:07,920
Speaker 1: cites one example of a piece of lunar material that

1110
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:11,120
Speaker 1: had been hit by a shock media write bombardment that

1111
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:14,480
Speaker 1: actually showed this type of this shape that it looked

1112
01:05:14,600 --> 01:05:17,640
Speaker 1: sort of like a cluster of grapes. And so that's

1113
01:05:17,720 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 1: one possibility in his mind. But ultimately he concludes, you

1114
01:05:22,280 --> 01:05:25,200
Speaker 1: know what, we don't know, and even though we've got

1115
01:05:25,280 --> 01:05:28,760
Speaker 1: better scientific knowledge to work with, we really need better

1116
01:05:28,840 --> 01:05:31,919
Speaker 1: access if we're going to make a conclusion. Just better

1117
01:05:31,960 --> 01:05:34,200
Speaker 1: access to the primary data. We'd have to be able

1118
01:05:34,240 --> 01:05:37,320
Speaker 1: to look at this thing closely and make some measurements. Yeah.

1119
01:05:37,360 --> 01:05:39,280
Speaker 1: I really like that point that he made in the paper,

1120
01:05:39,360 --> 01:05:41,640
Speaker 1: saying that even at the time it was this ad two,

1121
01:05:42,040 --> 01:05:46,400
Speaker 1: that the material sciences had advanced so much, uh, even

1122
01:05:46,440 --> 01:05:49,000
Speaker 1: from some of the previous studies in the prior decades,

1123
01:05:49,800 --> 01:05:53,680
Speaker 1: and yet our information about the black Stone itself has

1124
01:05:53,720 --> 01:05:59,560
Speaker 1: remained relatively the same. Uh, just you know, a few

1125
01:05:59,640 --> 01:06:04,240
Speaker 1: more objective observations of what it consists of. But but

1126
01:06:04,240 --> 01:06:10,760
Speaker 1: but ultimately no new information, certainly no scientific, scientifically analytic information. Yeah.

1127
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:13,360
Speaker 1: That that is a good point. And I think one

1128
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:16,040
Speaker 1: thing that I come away from this discussion with is

1129
01:06:16,360 --> 01:06:21,760
Speaker 1: um this attempt to investigate the material or geological character

1130
01:06:22,040 --> 01:06:24,560
Speaker 1: of of the black Stone strikes me as kind of

1131
01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:28,200
Speaker 1: similar to our episode from a couple of years ago,

1132
01:06:28,400 --> 01:06:30,560
Speaker 1: or I guess, let yeah, almost a couple of year

1133
01:06:30,560 --> 01:06:33,640
Speaker 1: and a half ago, maybe on the will of the wisp. Uh.

1134
01:06:34,040 --> 01:06:37,240
Speaker 1: In the same way, it encapsulates some of the difficulties

1135
01:06:37,280 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 1: of doing what you might call second hand science. In

1136
01:06:40,920 --> 01:06:44,120
Speaker 1: both cases, you've got scientists trying to apply their knowledge

1137
01:06:44,120 --> 01:06:49,040
Speaker 1: of natural phenomena to match this wide range of disparate

1138
01:06:49,160 --> 01:06:53,760
Speaker 1: subjective reports. Now I think the reports of the black

1139
01:06:53,800 --> 01:06:57,439
Speaker 1: Stone of the Kabba are much more substantive than those

1140
01:06:57,440 --> 01:06:59,160
Speaker 1: of the Will of the Whisp. Obviously, in the case

1141
01:06:59,200 --> 01:07:01,640
Speaker 1: of the black Stone, it actually exists, and we know

1142
01:07:01,760 --> 01:07:04,960
Speaker 1: for a fact that it actually exists. It's not something

1143
01:07:05,040 --> 01:07:08,920
Speaker 1: that maybe people are just imagining. We know millions of

1144
01:07:08,920 --> 01:07:12,240
Speaker 1: people see it all the time. It's not an ephemeral phenomenon.

1145
01:07:12,320 --> 01:07:15,880
Speaker 1: It's like a thing that's there. It's widely observed, and

1146
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:18,920
Speaker 1: we know that it's one unified phenomenon and not like

1147
01:07:19,160 --> 01:07:23,720
Speaker 1: different phenomena being reported under the same name. So these

1148
01:07:23,720 --> 01:07:25,640
Speaker 1: are all not the case for the Will of the Whisp,

1149
01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:27,880
Speaker 1: But like the Will of the Whisp, we have to

1150
01:07:27,920 --> 01:07:33,040
Speaker 1: make judgments based on a host of variable descriptions and characteristics.

1151
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:37,040
Speaker 1: What color is it? Different reports and different things. Are

1152
01:07:37,080 --> 01:07:39,800
Speaker 1: there flecks of other colors within it? What color was

1153
01:07:39,840 --> 01:07:43,520
Speaker 1: it originally? Does it float in water? How reflective is it?

1154
01:07:43,600 --> 01:07:46,280
Speaker 1: Even in the cases where there's only one major answer

1155
01:07:46,320 --> 01:07:48,720
Speaker 1: to these, sometimes we don't know if we should trust

1156
01:07:48,760 --> 01:07:51,760
Speaker 1: that answer or just throughout the question entirely. You know

1157
01:07:51,760 --> 01:07:54,480
Speaker 1: it does it float in water? Are our evidence that

1158
01:07:54,520 --> 01:07:57,000
Speaker 1: the stone floats in water is some report from a

1159
01:07:57,040 --> 01:07:59,880
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, like should we give it? Give that

1160
01:08:00,080 --> 01:08:03,680
Speaker 1: more weight than the question, well, could it conceivably you know,

1161
01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:07,120
Speaker 1: spout a mouth and start talking. You know, uh, you

1162
01:08:07,160 --> 01:08:08,880
Speaker 1: know at what point you just cut off and say,

1163
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:11,680
Speaker 1: all right, we're only gonna we're only gonna look at

1164
01:08:11,720 --> 01:08:15,880
Speaker 1: these three qualities. What class of meteorite most commonly sprouts

1165
01:08:15,880 --> 01:08:21,200
Speaker 1: a tongue? I can't, I I can't think think of

1166
01:08:21,200 --> 01:08:24,160
Speaker 1: one offhand. We'll have to what we'll have to have

1167
01:08:24,200 --> 01:08:26,080
Speaker 1: to have to reach out to our audience on that one.

1168
01:08:26,120 --> 01:08:29,000
Speaker 1: Maybe the in meteorites. Yeah, well, I mean, even if

1169
01:08:29,040 --> 01:08:32,560
Speaker 1: you do make a distinction between um, you know, subjective

1170
01:08:32,640 --> 01:08:36,960
Speaker 1: religious beliefs and just subjective direct observational reports, even the

1171
01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:40,679
Speaker 1: direct observational reports, they're giving us all this conflicting info

1172
01:08:41,280 --> 01:08:43,760
Speaker 1: and and none of it's very solid. Like you you're

1173
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:46,439
Speaker 1: you're not taking a measurement of it. You're just saying like, yeah,

1174
01:08:46,479 --> 01:08:49,760
Speaker 1: here's generally what I saw. But then there's one other

1175
01:08:50,120 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 1: interesting parallel, at least it seemed interesting to me. Uh

1176
01:08:53,640 --> 01:08:58,519
Speaker 1: here in talking about a religious object is that I

1177
01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:01,160
Speaker 1: think it's kind of funny how the practice of trying

1178
01:09:01,200 --> 01:09:04,880
Speaker 1: to do a geological or material science analysis on the

1179
01:09:04,920 --> 01:09:10,840
Speaker 1: black Stone based on these subjective descriptions almost reminds me

1180
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:14,840
Speaker 1: of something that often happens in our faith traditions, which

1181
01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:19,000
Speaker 1: is the process of trying to draw clarity of theology

1182
01:09:19,120 --> 01:09:22,360
Speaker 1: from just what amounts to a large collection of stories.

1183
01:09:23,200 --> 01:09:26,519
Speaker 1: You know. So when theologians of almost any religion try

1184
01:09:26,600 --> 01:09:29,439
Speaker 1: to come up with the systematic theology of that religion,

1185
01:09:29,439 --> 01:09:33,000
Speaker 1: the systematic theology being here are beliefs, here are the rules,

1186
01:09:33,080 --> 01:09:36,040
Speaker 1: here's what happens in the metaphysics of our religion, essentially

1187
01:09:36,360 --> 01:09:40,200
Speaker 1: the science of the religion. Uh, they often have to

1188
01:09:40,320 --> 01:09:43,920
Speaker 1: draw these conclusions based on sources that are not originally

1189
01:09:43,920 --> 01:09:47,280
Speaker 1: written to be clear and systematic descriptions of rules and

1190
01:09:47,360 --> 01:09:52,519
Speaker 1: theological principles. But they're based on stories, and so you

1191
01:09:52,560 --> 01:09:54,880
Speaker 1: have to sift through the stories to try to pull

1192
01:09:54,920 --> 01:09:58,360
Speaker 1: out this clear, systematic understanding of it all. Anyway, I

1193
01:09:58,680 --> 01:10:01,000
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of interesting. No, No, I think, yeah,

1194
01:10:01,040 --> 01:10:04,599
Speaker 1: that's that's that's fair. It has a yeah, the idea

1195
01:10:04,640 --> 01:10:07,680
Speaker 1: of of taking all of these either tales or these

1196
01:10:07,720 --> 01:10:11,280
Speaker 1: accounts and trying to build something concrete out of it,

1197
01:10:11,560 --> 01:10:14,080
Speaker 1: or just to say what does it mean? Yeah, yeah,

1198
01:10:14,080 --> 01:10:16,280
Speaker 1: what is the what is the shape of this or indeed,

1199
01:10:16,280 --> 01:10:17,640
Speaker 1: what is the meaning of this? Well? What am I

1200
01:10:17,680 --> 01:10:22,120
Speaker 1: supposed to take home from this? But it's but again,

1201
01:10:22,160 --> 01:10:25,880
Speaker 1: so it's fascinating to to look at these different scientific

1202
01:10:27,080 --> 01:10:31,360
Speaker 1: hypotheses about the black Stone. It's also interesting just to

1203
01:10:31,360 --> 01:10:36,360
Speaker 1: look at the history and in mythology surrounding it and

1204
01:10:36,360 --> 01:10:38,559
Speaker 1: try and figure out what that means as well. It's uh,

1205
01:10:38,800 --> 01:10:42,240
Speaker 1: it's really an enigma on several different levels. And I

1206
01:10:42,280 --> 01:10:44,439
Speaker 1: hope that we've been able to relate some of that

1207
01:10:44,760 --> 01:10:48,080
Speaker 1: to you today. And on that note, Hey, we're thinking

1208
01:10:48,120 --> 01:10:52,400
Speaker 1: about doing more episodes in this series looking at sacred

1209
01:10:52,439 --> 01:10:56,360
Speaker 1: places or objects, so we should throw out the question

1210
01:10:56,880 --> 01:10:59,559
Speaker 1: what sacred objects or places would you like us to

1211
01:10:59,680 --> 01:11:01,400
Speaker 1: cover in the future. We already have a few ideas

1212
01:11:01,479 --> 01:11:05,280
Speaker 1: kicking around, obviously, especially if there's some interesting scientific angle

1213
01:11:05,439 --> 01:11:07,800
Speaker 1: we can be discussed about it. One of the things

1214
01:11:07,840 --> 01:11:09,479
Speaker 1: that I might want to talk about in the future

1215
01:11:09,640 --> 01:11:14,400
Speaker 1: is is the Ganges. Oh, yes, that's a good one. Uh.

1216
01:11:14,600 --> 01:11:17,280
Speaker 1: More of an object than a place that comes to

1217
01:11:17,320 --> 01:11:20,040
Speaker 1: my mind is, of course, the Ark of the Covenant. Um,

1218
01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:23,840
Speaker 1: it's like nothing we've gone after before. We should at

1219
01:11:23,880 --> 01:11:27,559
Speaker 1: least consider it Uh, but I'm sure there are some

1220
01:11:27,600 --> 01:11:29,800
Speaker 1: other examples out there that our listeners can think of,

1221
01:11:29,880 --> 01:11:31,960
Speaker 1: and certainly you can get in touch with us about those.

1222
01:11:33,560 --> 01:11:37,519
Speaker 1: And finally, you know, we've covered Islamic history, Islamic myth,

1223
01:11:37,760 --> 01:11:41,759
Speaker 1: Islamic scientific contributions on the show before and will again,

1224
01:11:42,280 --> 01:11:44,719
Speaker 1: and you know, it's all part of our shared global culture.

1225
01:11:44,760 --> 01:11:47,360
Speaker 1: And at the same time, we recognize that discussions of

1226
01:11:47,400 --> 01:11:50,639
Speaker 1: Islamic culture continue to resonate with particular potency in today's

1227
01:11:50,680 --> 01:11:54,519
Speaker 1: political climate. So we encourage everyone out there to expand

1228
01:11:54,560 --> 01:11:56,799
Speaker 1: their understanding of what it means to be a muzzlement

1229
01:11:56,840 --> 01:11:59,679
Speaker 1: today's society. And as the starting point, we just wanted

1230
01:11:59,680 --> 01:12:01,880
Speaker 1: to high two organizations you might want to check out.

1231
01:12:02,560 --> 01:12:06,719
Speaker 1: First off, there's Muslims for Progressive Values at www dot

1232
01:12:06,840 --> 01:12:09,800
Speaker 1: mp V USA dot org. This is a um a

1233
01:12:09,880 --> 01:12:13,960
Speaker 1: faith based, grassroots international human rights organization organization that embodies

1234
01:12:14,080 --> 01:12:18,320
Speaker 1: and advocates for the traditional chronic values of social justice

1235
01:12:18,320 --> 01:12:20,840
Speaker 1: and equality for all. In the twenty one century, SPAKE

1236
01:12:20,920 --> 01:12:24,040
Speaker 1: champions such values as separation of religious and state authorities,

1237
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:27,760
Speaker 1: freedom of speech, universal human rights, and gender equality. And

1238
01:12:27,800 --> 01:12:31,400
Speaker 1: another group is the Muslim Alliance for Sexual Engender Diversity

1239
01:12:31,760 --> 01:12:36,600
Speaker 1: and that's at Muslim Alliance dot org. Uh So they

1240
01:12:36,680 --> 01:12:40,280
Speaker 1: work to support, empower and connect lgb t Q Muslims.

1241
01:12:40,320 --> 01:12:43,800
Speaker 1: They seek to challenge root causes of oppression, including misogyny

1242
01:12:43,840 --> 01:12:46,920
Speaker 1: and xenophobia, and aim to increase the acceptance of gender

1243
01:12:46,920 --> 01:12:50,400
Speaker 1: and sexual diversity within Muslim communities and to promote a

1244
01:12:50,479 --> 01:12:54,240
Speaker 1: progressive understanding of Islam that is centered on inclusion, justice

1245
01:12:54,240 --> 01:12:56,519
Speaker 1: and equality. Yeah. And one of the things that I

1246
01:12:56,560 --> 01:13:00,639
Speaker 1: hope always comes through, um whenever we talk out religions

1247
01:13:00,640 --> 01:13:03,040
Speaker 1: on this podcast, as we do fairly often because I

1248
01:13:03,080 --> 01:13:06,800
Speaker 1: think we all sort of find them very interesting, uh,

1249
01:13:06,920 --> 01:13:09,320
Speaker 1: is it can be very easy to talk about religions,

1250
01:13:09,400 --> 01:13:12,799
Speaker 1: especially a religion that you don't personally hold, in ways

1251
01:13:12,880 --> 01:13:17,479
Speaker 1: that are sort of over generalized and overdetermined. Uh. And

1252
01:13:17,520 --> 01:13:19,760
Speaker 1: So one thing I hope you always take away from

1253
01:13:19,760 --> 01:13:23,880
Speaker 1: our discussions is is the the incredible room for diversity

1254
01:13:23,920 --> 01:13:27,679
Speaker 1: of opinion that exists within all these faith traditions around

1255
01:13:27,720 --> 01:13:29,680
Speaker 1: the world. Uh. There are a lot of ways to

1256
01:13:29,720 --> 01:13:31,639
Speaker 1: be a Christian, a lot of ways to be a Muslim,

1257
01:13:31,680 --> 01:13:33,200
Speaker 1: a lot of ways to be a Hindu or a

1258
01:13:33,320 --> 01:13:37,280
Speaker 1: Jew or anything. Indeed, and you know, I know we

1259
01:13:37,320 --> 01:13:39,120
Speaker 1: have some Muslim listeners out there, So I'd love to

1260
01:13:39,160 --> 01:13:41,519
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on this, and certainly if you have

1261
01:13:41,640 --> 01:13:44,479
Speaker 1: gone on the Hodge and you have seen the black

1262
01:13:44,520 --> 01:13:47,120
Speaker 1: Stone with your own eyes or touched it with your

1263
01:13:47,200 --> 01:13:50,240
Speaker 1: with your own body, uh, we would love to hear

1264
01:13:50,600 --> 01:13:53,120
Speaker 1: your account of that. Yeah, what was it like? What? What?

1265
01:13:53,120 --> 01:13:55,800
Speaker 1: What do you think? And what color is it? Really? Yeah? Yeah,

1266
01:13:55,840 --> 01:13:58,400
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on that? You can find its

1267
01:13:58,439 --> 01:14:01,320
Speaker 1: online as always, It's stuffed Blow your Mind dot com.

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