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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. We have another vault for you. This is

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Speaker 1: going to be part three in our series from last year.

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Speaker 1: Originally published five sixteen, twenty twenty four Meteoric Metal and

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Speaker 1: Alien Iron, Part three. Let's jump right in.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 3: And we're back with part three of our series on

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Speaker 3: human uses of iron from space. I think we had

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Speaker 3: a little interlude there where. On Tuesday of this week

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Speaker 3: we ran an unrelated interview, But today we're back to

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Speaker 3: finish off the series with Part three. Now, if you

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Speaker 3: haven't heard the first two parts yet, you should probably

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Speaker 3: go back check those out first, But to do a

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Speaker 3: quick recap. In Part one, we focused largely on the

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Speaker 3: iron dagger of Tutin Common, a blade found wrapped up

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Speaker 3: with the pharotutin Common inside his coffin from before the

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Speaker 3: time of large scale smelting of iron in Egypt, and

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Speaker 3: we discussed chemical and mineral analysis showing that this dagger

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Speaker 3: was almost certainly made out of iron that came not

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Speaker 3: from Earth, but from a piece of iron meteorite that

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Speaker 3: fell from space. And it turns out that a lot

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Speaker 3: of iron artifacts like ambulets, beads, tools, and trinkets. A

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Speaker 3: lot of these iron artifacts from before the various regional

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Speaker 3: iron ages have this in common. They come from meteorites.

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Speaker 3: So ancient peoples were taking alien metal that fell from

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Speaker 3: the sky and shaping it to their uses. In Part two,

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Speaker 3: we talked about a few more specific artifacts believed to

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Speaker 3: be made from meteorite iron, such as the Shang Dynasty

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Speaker 3: axes from ancient China, and a meteorite iron sculpture known

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Speaker 3: as the Iron Man or sometimes in the media as

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Speaker 3: the Space Buddha, which was at one point alleged to

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Speaker 3: be a Tibetan depiction of a divine figure in Buddhism

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Speaker 3: known as vice Ravana, but according to some experts in

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Speaker 3: Buddhist art, was actually a twentieth century European design, amounting

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Speaker 3: to a forgery or at least a crude imitation of

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Speaker 3: Tibetan imagery. And then I ended up getting into some

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Speaker 3: of the speculation about who could have actually made this sculpture,

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Speaker 3: which is a somewhat wild story if true, Big if true.

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Speaker 3: We also talked about the history of knowledge that meteorites

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Speaker 3: come from space. So it took scientists of the European

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Speaker 3: Enlightenment until around the beginning of the nineteenth century to

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Speaker 3: really agree on this, But there is some evidence that

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Speaker 3: people in ancient China, in ancient Egypt and other cultures

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Speaker 3: knew that this metal came from above. And some of

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Speaker 3: the indications of this are linguistic, for example, in the

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Speaker 3: fact that in the ancient Egyptian language there's a convention

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Speaker 3: to refer to iron as iron of the sky or

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Speaker 3: metal of the sky. And so today we're back to

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Speaker 3: talk about more possible uses of meteorite iron in technology

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Speaker 3: and artifacts from human history. And you know, one thing

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Speaker 3: that's interesting this has sort of come up a little

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Speaker 3: so far, is that meteoric iron still retains a strong power,

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Speaker 3: a sense of power, and a mystical appeal, even after

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Speaker 3: the spread of tools and artifacts made from earth based iron.

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Speaker 3: So even after iron as an element becomes common and mundane,

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Speaker 3: and you know, it's smelted out of iron ore from

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Speaker 3: the earth and we use it to make all kinds

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Speaker 3: of things, including including steel products, there's still something undeniably

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Speaker 3: appealing and even perhaps mystical about iron from the stars.

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Speaker 1: That's right, and that's why in this next section I

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Speaker 1: want to get out of the Bronze Age and get

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Speaker 1: into the post Bronze Age Islamic world, where we see

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Speaker 1: various mentions of what may be meteoric iron. So a

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Speaker 1: lot of this is going to concern swords at least

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Speaker 1: in the outset here. Swords have of course played a

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Speaker 1: significant role in human history and take on various meanings

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Speaker 1: across various cultures that use them, which is pretty much

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Speaker 1: any culture with access to the prerequisite metals. As we've

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Speaker 1: discussed on Stuff to Blow your Mind and the Artifact

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Speaker 1: the short form episodes we were on Wednesday before, we

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Speaker 1: see sword like weapons in cultures that did not have

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Speaker 1: access to the prerequisite metal work, though their functionality is

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Speaker 1: ultimately perhaps more comparable to a club. Thinking here about

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Speaker 1: you know, particular examples of essentially wooden clubs that are

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Speaker 1: that to the untrained eye might look like a sword.

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Speaker 1: May even be you may even have bits of stone

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Speaker 1: embedded in them, you know, given this the swordlike appearance,

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Speaker 1: So there is something like even when you cannot make

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Speaker 1: swords because you don't have the prerequisite materials. There is

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Speaker 1: something about the form and to the extension of the

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Speaker 1: human arm as a weapon that seems to lock up

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Speaker 1: in various cultures. At any rate, wherever the sword was known,

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Speaker 1: the sword increasingly took on various literal, symbolic, metaphorical meanings.

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Speaker 1: And this of course means that swords factor into various

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Speaker 1: religious traditions in a number of ways, like, for instance,

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Speaker 1: in Christianity, Jesus mentions the sword as a metaphor for conflict,

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Speaker 1: and I believe the particular passage is widely interpreted to

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Speaker 1: refer to social division rather than armed conflict. But like

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Speaker 1: anything in a religious text, people will take it and

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Speaker 1: apply whatever meaning they want to it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of ways you could read

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Speaker 3: I come not to bring peace, but a sword.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Now you'll find swords, even flaming swords, and Buddhist

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Speaker 1: iconography and Hinduism, and the sword of course also factors

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Speaker 1: into Islam. And I bring up these other religious examples

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Speaker 1: in part because, based on some of the sources I

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Speaker 1: was looking at, it does that there is often a

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Speaker 1: Western bias in interpreting sword iconography and references in Islam.

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Speaker 1: As more overtly tied to armed conflict than perhaps in

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Speaker 1: other religions. This is not to say that the sword

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Speaker 1: in Islamic traditions isn't, but as with other cultures, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't always refer to armed conflict or violence.

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Speaker 3: Could be literal, could be metaphorical exactly so.

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Speaker 1: Islamic swords may stand for religious or political authority, they

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Speaker 1: may stand for mystical knowledge and more in addition to

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Speaker 1: military victory. But moving on to specific swords, there are

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Speaker 1: a number of them of note from Islamic history. The

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Speaker 1: prophet Muhammad is held to have possessed nine swords during

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Speaker 1: his life, and the most famous of which is the

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Speaker 1: Dul Fakhari or dual Fakhar, and may be pronouncing this incorrectly.

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Speaker 1: If so, I apologize, But the name's meaning is largely uncertain,

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Speaker 1: but may relate to concepts of splitting, and is often

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Speaker 1: depicted as a wronged, split or double bladed sword. You

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Speaker 1: can look up images of various images of the sword

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Speaker 1: in iconography, and depending on how it's presented, the blade

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Speaker 1: may split near the tip or I've seen examples of

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Speaker 1: the blade splitting close to the hilt, so I guess

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Speaker 1: it kind of runs the gamut from like the highly

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Speaker 1: symbolic to the believable and practical. And again we're talking

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Speaker 1: about largely about imagery here. Actual symbolic swords have been produced.

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Speaker 1: But the sword in question here, the dual fora car,

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Speaker 1: is I think, largely understood to be a mystical and

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Speaker 1: or mythological item. The story goes, however, that the prophet

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Speaker 1: acquires the sword at the Battle of baut in six

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Speaker 1: twenty four, and then ultimately passes the sword onto his

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Speaker 1: son in law, Ali, the fourth Caliph now Califf's by

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Speaker 1: the way, if you're not familiar, these were the Muslim

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Speaker 1: civil and religious rulers who succeeded Muhammad. So the sword

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Speaker 1: in question here, the Dulafakar, is strongly associated with Ali.

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Speaker 1: There are various legends about his military exploits with this

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Speaker 1: mystical weapon and its ability to cut through his enemies.

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Speaker 1: Though it is also a symbol of political and spiritual authority.

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Speaker 1: It is in many ways said to be the sword

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Speaker 1: of swords, as Islamic blades were traditionally inscribed with the

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Speaker 1: phrase there is no sword but dul Fokar, and there

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Speaker 1: is no hero but Ali.

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Speaker 3: Okay, some superlatives right.

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Speaker 1: Right, and you can find examples of this. I was

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Speaker 1: looking around and like, various museums inevitably have swords of

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Speaker 1: Islamic origin that have that do mention the Dulfakar on them,

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Speaker 1: So you can find examples of this, perhaps even in

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Speaker 1: your own museum within your own region. Now, some say

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Speaker 1: that the actual sword in question here, among other relics,

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Speaker 1: is currently in the possession of the Tope Copy Museum

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Speaker 1: in Turkey. But it also seems that in twelve verse Sheism,

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Speaker 1: the sword is believed to be in heaven and or

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Speaker 1: in the possession of Muhammad Almabi, the Imam believed to

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Speaker 1: return at the end of time. So again there's this

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Speaker 1: idea that, again a highly mystical sword that is held

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Speaker 1: in tradition to not even be perhaps on this earth anymore.

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Speaker 1: Now I say all this to sort of going to

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Speaker 1: get into the idea of Islamic swords, but this is

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Speaker 1: not the sword that I wanted to talk about in

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Speaker 1: connection to today's episode. Like, I've seen no discussion that

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Speaker 1: this sword or anything any artifact that is connected to

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Speaker 1: this sword containing meteoric iron. And I guess we should

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Speaker 1: also clarify that any sword in the possession of beings

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Speaker 1: not on this earth any longer cannot be analyzed. However,

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Speaker 1: we do see at least some mention of possible meteoric

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Speaker 1: iron weapons in Islamic traditions. I'll get to specific example

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Speaker 1: in just a second, but you know, we should remember

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Speaker 1: that medieval Arab astronomy was extremely advanced prior to the

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Speaker 1: rise of Islam in the seventh century. Pre Islamic Arabs

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Speaker 1: depended on empirical observations of constellations, and then with the

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Speaker 1: rise of Islam we see the emergence of this tradition

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Speaker 1: of five daily prayers, prayers that need to be directed

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Speaker 1: toward Mecca. And this creates a true incentive based on

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Speaker 1: religion for better charting of time and location. Thus, you know,

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Speaker 1: there's a reason to focus more on the movements of

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Speaker 1: the stars, and this ends up helping to foster a

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Speaker 1: more robust cultural understanding of astronomy, drawling upon other traditions

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Speaker 1: in the ancient world and building out new knowledge. Now,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, I was reading a survey of

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Speaker 1: Muslim materials on comets and meteors by David Cook. According

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Speaker 1: to Cook, comets and meteors during the for a very

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Speaker 1: long time, traditions were not considered astronomical phenomenon. They were

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Speaker 1: held to occur within the atmosphere and therefore they were terrestrial,

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Speaker 1: so they were largely omitted from astronomical works, while mentions

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Speaker 1: would still be found in other forms of literature, especially

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Speaker 1: when they were held as portents or lined up with

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Speaker 1: important deaths or events, such as the death of the

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Speaker 1: Prophet in six thirty two, as well as events in

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Speaker 1: the lives of the Third and fourth Caliphs. Now in

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Speaker 1: the past, I think this was when I was writing

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Speaker 1: for How Stuff Works and I was writing or applying

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Speaker 1: some edits to an article that dealt with iron, and

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Speaker 1: I remember reading that blades of possible meteoric iron had

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Speaker 1: been associated with seventh century Caliphs, and I look back,

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Speaker 1: I tried to get into this because I really wanted

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Speaker 1: to figure out where is this coming from, what specifically

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Speaker 1: is this referring to? What are the sources? And the

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Speaker 1: initial source was a nineteen forty one paper published in

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Speaker 1: the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain

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Speaker 1: and Ireland titled the Use of Meteoric Iron by ta Rickard,

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Speaker 1: and at one point in the text he discusses the

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Speaker 1: possibility that Zeus's thunderbolts were a quote poetic expression for

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Speaker 1: the use of meteoric iron, and that later I'm going

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Speaker 1: to read a quote here from it. In later times

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Speaker 1: we read that Attila, timur Antar and other devastating conquerors

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Speaker 1: had swords from heaven. So also the caliphs, whose swords

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Speaker 1: were made of the same meteoric material as the Cobbastone

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Speaker 1: that lies in the Holy Sanctuary at Mecca. Avajo's, an

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Speaker 1: Arab philosopher of the twelfth century, states that excellent swords

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Speaker 1: were made from a meteor weighing one hundred pounds that

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Speaker 1: fell near Cordoba in Spain. Now, if you've listened to

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Speaker 1: the show for a while, you know that we did

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Speaker 1: in an episode on the Cobbastone the Blackstone of Mecca

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Speaker 1: a while back, probably a few years at this point.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that we did cover there

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Speaker 1: that maybe wasn't as apparent to the author of this

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Speaker 1: paper is that the origins of the Cobbastone are far

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Speaker 1: from a settled matter.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't remember. It's been a while, so I

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Speaker 3: don't remember exactly what we concluded there, but it seemed

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Speaker 3: like there was still plenty of room for uncertainty there,

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Speaker 3: though there were suggestions of reasons for thinking it may

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Speaker 3: have been a stone created by an impact of some sort,

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Speaker 3: whether it came from above, or maybe whether it was

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Speaker 3: created of like one of those types of glasses created

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Speaker 3: by impacts.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I think ultimately it's just all observational

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Speaker 1: because it's a sacred relic. It's not going to be

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Speaker 1: scientifically analyzed, which is the case with many relics around

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Speaker 1: the world. In getting into this whole business about the sort,

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Speaker 1: so that was what I really wanted an answer to,

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Speaker 1: and I've got to admit that I was able to

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Speaker 1: find out precious little about Islamic swords alleged to have

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Speaker 1: been forged from meteoric iron. Rickard here was citing British

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Speaker 1: geologists Lazarus Fletcher, who lived eighteen fifty four through nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty one, but rooting around in available texts by this author,

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Speaker 1: I didn't really find any answers to my questions either.

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Speaker 1: I did consult a couple of sources about the history

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Speaker 1: of metallurgy in the region, and it is key to

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Speaker 1: note that we've already touched on islam arises after the

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Speaker 1: end of the Bronze Age in the Middle East and

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Speaker 1: the Islamic world had access to Damascus steel, so any

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Speaker 1: meteoric weapons would be largely symbolic and or relics of

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Speaker 1: the past, and they clearly had access to what is

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Speaker 1: often held up is the best steel of the day.

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Speaker 3: Right, steel being a product of iron, So it would

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Speaker 3: not be a question like we talked about with the

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Speaker 3: King tut example, with this being a product from before

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Speaker 3: the regional iron age, from before people before there was

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Speaker 3: large scale smelting of iron in the area. There's plenty

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Speaker 3: of smelting of iron and production of iron artifacts. These

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Speaker 3: would just be iron from a different source in a

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Speaker 3: place that was already rich with iron, exactly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, interestingly enough, interestingly enough here, I don't know

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Speaker 1: to what extent, or any extent this ends up coloring

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Speaker 1: these older writings by Western writers, if this factors into

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Speaker 1: the analysis at all. But there is actually a line

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Speaker 1: in the Quran fifty seven twenty five that refers to

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Speaker 1: iron in a way that is sometimes interpreted as having

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Speaker 1: some connection to meteoric iron. I'm going to read the

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Speaker 1: passage here. This is of course in translation. Indeed, we

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Speaker 1: sent our messengers with clear proofs, and with them we

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Speaker 1: sent down the scripture and the balance of justice, so

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Speaker 1: that people may administer justice. And we sent down iron

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Speaker 1: with its great might, benefits for humanity and means for

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Speaker 1: Allah to prove who is willing to stand up for

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Speaker 1: him and his messengers without seeing him. Surely Allah is

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Speaker 1: all powerful, almighty ah.

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Speaker 3: So I imagine some interpretation is hinging there on the

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Speaker 3: phrase we sent down iron, with the idea of iron

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Speaker 3: somehow coming from above exactly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I was reading paper talk titled Basic Concepts of

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Speaker 1: Physics and the Perspective of the Quran by M. M. Karashi.

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Speaker 1: This was in a nineteen eighty nine edition of Islamic Studies,

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Speaker 1: and the author here rights that quote the implication of

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Speaker 1: the words has become fully apparent only through historical investigation

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Speaker 1: of the earliest use of meteoric iron. So I could

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Speaker 1: be wrong on this end. As always I invite correction

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Speaker 1: or clarity, But I believe some commentators argue that these

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Speaker 1: lines in the Quran reference on historical understanding of iron

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Speaker 1: media rights, you know, perhaps drawing on again as we've

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Speaker 1: touched on knowledge that already existed in the ancient world

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Speaker 1: in different parts, and to different degrees, that there was

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Speaker 1: a connection between iron and Metea rights between iron and

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Speaker 1: the sky. Again, it makes perfect sense given everything we've discussed,

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Speaker 1: but isn't also also isn't necessarily guaranteed. Some also seem

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Speaker 1: to interpret this verse as just stating that iron in

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Speaker 1: the earth was a creation of Allah, and consideration of

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Speaker 1: meteors doesn't seem to always serve as part of that conversation.

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Speaker 1: You know, it was sent down just a way of

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Speaker 1: saying it came from God, which you know fair enough,

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Speaker 1: you can say anything was sent down. You could, I

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Speaker 1: guess you could say a giraffe was sent down, but

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it actually had a re entry into

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Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere.

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Speaker 3: Well, everything in this passage is said to be sent down,

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Speaker 3: and the other cases of sent down here don't necessarily

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Speaker 3: seem to imply a physical dissent from space.

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Speaker 1: Right, So again I invite direction or clarity on these points,

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Speaker 1: especially from anyone who has Garonic knowledge and so forth.

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Speaker 1: But I did find it interesting that in this passage

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Speaker 1: we see a possible reference to meteoric iron, and then

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Speaker 1: we also have these other like more perhaps dubious mentions

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Speaker 1: in Western ridings about meteoric swords meteoric iron swords that

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Speaker 1: were used by the Klobs.

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Speaker 3: All right, Well, I wanted to begin this next section

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Speaker 3: by looking at how big chunks of meteorc iron arrive

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Speaker 3: on Earth. Already we've mentioned several examples of meteoroids that

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Speaker 3: at some point entered Earth's atmosphere and fragmented or shattered

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Speaker 3: in the air, separating into a series of smaller meteorite

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Speaker 3: fragments which can be found across an impact field. For example,

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Speaker 3: in the last episode, we talked about the Chinga meteorite,

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Speaker 3: one piece of which was probably used to make the

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Speaker 3: so called space Buddha sculpture that we talked about. And

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Speaker 3: while the artistic origins of that sculpture are highly suspect,

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Speaker 3: the physical origin are not. Really it does seem to

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Speaker 3: be agreed upon that this is a piece of iron meteorite.

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Speaker 3: So many fragments of the Chinga meteorite have been found

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Speaker 3: in the region of Tuva, which is in southern Siberia,

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Speaker 3: since the first recorded discovery by miners in the early

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Speaker 3: nineteen hundreds. This scattering of iron meteorite chunks over a

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Speaker 3: large area is the result of some original object coming

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Speaker 3: apart into pieces somewhere in the atmosphere above roughly ten

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Speaker 3: to twenty thousand years ago.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 3: There are different ways for meteoroids to come apart or

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Speaker 3: lose their structural integrity in the atmosphere. In some cases

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Speaker 3: they land roughly intact, in some cases they split up

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Speaker 3: into some number of smaller pieces from the original, and

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Speaker 3: in some cases they basically just explode or vaporize, and

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Speaker 3: on the explosion end of the scale, the explosions before

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Speaker 3: the meteoroids reach the ground these explode are referred to

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Speaker 3: as air bursts. In many such cases, the entire object,

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Speaker 3: or nearly the entire object, is burned up or reduced

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Speaker 3: to dust in the process. In the case of the

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Speaker 3: relatively recent Cheliabinsk meteoroid, which exploded over Russia in February

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Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, an asteroid that was originally like twenty meters

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Speaker 3: or sixty five feet in diameter when it entered the

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Speaker 3: Earth's atmosphere, it exploded a few tens of kilometers above

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Speaker 3: the ground. For some reason, I've seen different estimates about

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Speaker 3: the altitude. Some say twenty three kilometers up, others say

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Speaker 3: thirty kilometers up. But wherever it was, this explosion released

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Speaker 3: a huge amount of energy, expressed in the hundreds of

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Speaker 3: kilotons of TNT, maybe like four hundred or five hundred

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Speaker 3: kilotons of T and T. The explosion way up there,

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Speaker 3: damaged thousands of buildings on the ground, blew out glass,

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Speaker 3: and sent some fifteen hundred people to the hospital, though

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Speaker 3: thankfully no deaths were reported.

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Speaker 1: The footage of this, like the ashboard footage that was

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Speaker 1: going around, is quite incredible, so if you haven't seen it,

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Speaker 1: definitely seek it out.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely that is worth looking at. It is awe inspiring,

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Speaker 3: and this is a particularly big air burst in the

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Speaker 3: modern era, not of course the biggest that can happen,

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Speaker 3: but very big and recent memory, though, I was reading

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Speaker 3: if the object had impacted the ground instead of exploding

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Speaker 3: high up in the atmosphere, if it had hit the

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Speaker 3: ground or exploded lower in the atmosphere, the damage the

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Speaker 3: damage could have been much much worse. So in a way,

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Speaker 3: the outcome was rather lucky. But despite the fact that

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Speaker 3: the Cheliubinsk metioroid entered the atmosphere as an asteroid the

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Speaker 3: size of a house, I've read estimates that well below

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Speaker 3: one percent of its mass reached the ground in the

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Speaker 3: form of solid meteorites. Again, this is something where I've

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Speaker 3: seen different numbers on the estimate. I've read like zero

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Speaker 3: point one percent of its mass or like zero point

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Speaker 3: zero five percent of its mass. Some very small percent

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Speaker 3: of its mass actually reached the ground in solid chunks,

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Speaker 3: and the rest evaporated or was turned to dust as

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Speaker 3: the object broke apart and burned up. So this got

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Speaker 3: me wondering what actually causes a fast moving meteoroid to

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Speaker 3: just blow up or even vaporize like that. A key

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Speaker 3: factor is speed. So the original object, which might be

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Speaker 3: a chunk of asteroid or comet material at least a

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Speaker 3: few meters in diameter, maybe up to tens of meters,

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Speaker 3: typically enters Earth's atmosphere at great speed. According to the

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Speaker 3: American meteor Society, meteors tend to enter the atmosphere going

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Speaker 3: anywhere between eleven kilometers per second and seventy two kilometers

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Speaker 3: per second. And there's actually an interesting fact concerning this

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Speaker 3: variability that you might not think about it first. The

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Speaker 3: speed with which a meteor enters Earth's atmosphere depends not

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Speaker 3: only on the speed of the comet or the asteroid's

379
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Speaker 3: orbit relative to the Sun, so it has its own

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Speaker 3: intrinsic speed as it's orbiting the Sun, but it's also

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Speaker 3: affected by the movement of the Earth, which is simultaneously

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Speaker 3: orbiting the Sun at about thirty kilometers per second, and

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Speaker 3: is also though this is less important, rotating at about

384
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Speaker 3: one thy six hundred and seventy kilometers per hour. Of course,

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Speaker 3: speed is always, you know, it's relative to an observer.

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Speaker 3: So even though we use language like the speed at

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Speaker 3: which a meteor enters our atmosphere, that could give the

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Speaker 3: false impression that our atmosphere is stationary and the media

389
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Speaker 3: is moving, in reality, both are moving, and they're moving

390
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Speaker 3: in their own directions, and so the speed of entry

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Speaker 3: is determined by the relative velocity of both objects to

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Speaker 3: each other, you know. So it could be kind of

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Speaker 3: trying to catch up with the part of the atmosphere

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Speaker 3: it hits, or it could be like slamming into more

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Speaker 3: kind of a head on kind of collision with the

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00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:51,600
Speaker 3: part of the atmosphere it hits. And then of course,

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Speaker 3: other things about other things about the way a meteor

398
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:59,960
Speaker 3: enters the atmosphere will determine, will determine its ultimate fail

399
00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:03,159
Speaker 3: whether it burns up, what the resistance is, and so

400
00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:06,880
Speaker 3: that would include things like the angle of entry anyway,

401
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:10,399
Speaker 3: whatever the speed is. At that incredible speed, the air

402
00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:14,200
Speaker 3: directly in front of the meteoroid once it enters the

403
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:20,040
Speaker 3: atmosphere becomes greatly compressed. It's squeezing a lot of atmospheric

404
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 3: gas in its path into a very small space, very rapidly.

405
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:27,359
Speaker 3: So you can imagine it kind of like a like

406
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Speaker 3: a pneumatic piston that is moving so fast it doesn't

407
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:33,840
Speaker 3: need a cylinder to squeeze the air in front of it.

408
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:37,680
Speaker 3: If you're traveling a dozens of kilometers per second, you're

409
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Speaker 3: going to squeeze a lot of air into a thin

410
00:24:40,320 --> 00:24:42,919
Speaker 3: layer at your bow before it has the chance to

411
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Speaker 3: move out of the way. And as a result of

412
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Speaker 3: being so violently compressed, this air gets extremely hot, and

413
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Speaker 3: then this layer of hot compressed gas flows around the

414
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:56,919
Speaker 3: sides of the object as it travels. This fast movement

415
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 3: not only compresses the gas in front, but it also

416
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:03,879
Speaker 3: creates a relative vacuum in the space directly behind the meteoroid,

417
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:07,360
Speaker 3: and these forces put a lot of stress on the object,

418
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Speaker 3: heating it up by thousands of degrees celsius, melting or

419
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Speaker 3: vaporizing parts of it, causing pieces of it to break off.

420
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Speaker 3: As just a huge amount of stress on a solid

421
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Speaker 3: chunk of material, These pieces that might be broken off

422
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Speaker 3: of the object are in turn subjected to extreme forces

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Speaker 3: of heat and pressure, and a sudden breakup of the

424
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Speaker 3: main mass of the meteoroid can release just a lot

425
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Speaker 3: of energy quite suddenly and resemble an explosion. Also, in

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Speaker 3: addition to all this, I came across a paper from

427
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Speaker 3: twenty eighteen adding another interesting mechanism, another piece of information

428
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:47,440
Speaker 3: to the puzzle here. So this paper was by Tabita

429
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Speaker 3: and Malash published in Mediaridtics and Planetary Science in the

430
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Speaker 3: Air twenty eighteen, and the paper is called Air Penetration

431
00:25:54,720 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 3: Enhances Fragmentation of Entering Meteoroids. So this paper is discussing

432
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Speaker 3: an attempt to model the physics of a fragmenting meteoroid

433
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Speaker 3: with reference to the example of Chellibinsk and the authors

434
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 3: here argue that their model reveals a previously unrecognized but

435
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 3: very important mechanism in how this breakup occurs, and that

436
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 3: is the penetration of high pressure air inside the body

437
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 3: of the object through permeability of the material or through

438
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 3: tiny cracks and pores in the rock or the metal,

439
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 3: and as this air percolates into the solid body of

440
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 3: the meteoroid, it decreases its material strength. That weakens it

441
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:38,280
Speaker 3: and makes it more likely to want to split apart.

442
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:42,879
Speaker 3: One of the authors, Purdue University professor j. Malash, described

443
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 3: the process in a press release, saying, quote, there's a

444
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 3: big gradient between the high pressure air in front of

445
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 3: the meteor and the vacuum of air behind it. If

446
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 3: the air can move through the passages in the meteorite,

447
00:26:56,320 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 3: it can easily get inside and blow off pieces. So

448
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 3: air bursts are aided by this percolation, which every time

449
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 3: I say that, I do think of coffee as a

450
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:11,440
Speaker 3: kind of kitchen first thinking. But this percolation of superheated

451
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:15,400
Speaker 3: compressed gas into the body of the meteoroid through these

452
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:19,960
Speaker 3: tiny holes and gaps in its structure. But not all

453
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:25,800
Speaker 3: meteoroids are equally vulnerable to this process. Size and density

454
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:32,360
Speaker 3: help protect a meteoroid from fragmentation and vaporization. Iron meteoroids

455
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:35,359
Speaker 3: are not completely immune, but since they are denser on

456
00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 3: average than stony meteoroids, they are less likely to result

457
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 3: in an air burst, and thus it is more likely

458
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 3: that large solid chunks reach the Earth's surface intact, and

459
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:50,880
Speaker 3: so I would like to talk about one such meteorite,

460
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,399
Speaker 3: iron meteorite that did reach the surface of the Earth

461
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 3: in several very large pieces, and that is the inogenic meteorite,

462
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 3: also known as the Cape York meteorite, three large pieces

463
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:06,359
Speaker 3: of which are now on display at the American Museum

464
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 3: of Natural History in New York. There's one that is enormous,

465
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:13,479
Speaker 3: you know, it's like sort of car sized, and even

466
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:17,239
Speaker 3: the other two that are smaller are very big. So

467
00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 3: some thousands of years ago, we don't know exactly when

468
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 3: a meteoroid weighing possibly like two hundred tons about one

469
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:27,200
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty metric tons, but we don't know for sure,

470
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:32,560
Speaker 3: entered the atmosphere and fragmented into pieces in the Arctic

471
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 3: over North America. But as several still very large pieces

472
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 3: of iron meteorite did make it to the ground. They

473
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 3: landed in what is today northwestern Greenland, probably before it

474
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 3: was inhabited by people, after people first arrived in the area.

475
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 3: Again we don't know for sure when this was. They

476
00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 3: found these large caches of solid iron and began using

477
00:28:56,200 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 3: them to make iron tools through a process called cold forging.

478
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 3: Essentially using heavy objects such as stones to hammer pieces

479
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 3: of the iron meteorite until they broke off, and then

480
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 3: you would hammer these pieces until they reached the shape

481
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 3: you wanted, such as a knife blade or a harpoon tip.

482
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:20,920
Speaker 3: And this cold forging process was very energy intensive. It

483
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 3: took a lot of human labor. These sources of meteorite

484
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 3: iron became a vital mineral resource for the Inuit peoples

485
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 3: of the region.

486
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: It is telling that once more we're talking about a

487
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 1: culture that would often be interacting with a landscape upon

488
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:45,800
Speaker 1: which little bits of meteorites would potentially show up a

489
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:47,959
Speaker 1: lot easier and be easier to find, you know, in

490
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 1: this case the snowscape, but in other cases we've been

491
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: talking about desert environments.

492
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 3: Ice is actually a great surface for finding meteorites. This

493
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:02,000
Speaker 3: came up in that documentary that watched by the Verner

494
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 3: Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer documentary where they are looking for

495
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 3: meteorites on the surface of ice sheets by helicopter in Antarctica,

496
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 3: and it was a great place to look for them

497
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 3: because otherwise, you know, you not expecting to see rocks

498
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:17,640
Speaker 3: on the top of these ice sheets.

499
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: That is, fireball visitors from Darker Worlds from twenty twenty,

500
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 1: and yeah, we actually interviewed Herzog and Oppenheimer for the show.

501
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:31,719
Speaker 1: I believe it it was an anticipation of this, right,

502
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: or was it about their volcano documentary. I'm blanking because

503
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: I watched them both around the same time. At any rate,

504
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 1: we talked to Verner Herzog and it was.

505
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:44,160
Speaker 3: Terrifying, though I do want to have a caveat there.

506
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 3: I've seen some pictures, I believe, of how these particular

507
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 3: iron meteorites were as they were originally in the places

508
00:30:53,280 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 3: where the Inuit people's found them, and from what I

509
00:30:57,360 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 3: recall seeing, it seemed like they were not just like

510
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 3: on top of bare ice sheets, but they were positioned

511
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 3: among a landscape more like nestled in among rocks and earth.

512
00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 3: So I think they still would have really stood out.

513
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 3: They would have looked weird because they were iron meteorites,

514
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 3: but not just not so much like the things that

515
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:17,640
Speaker 3: these scientists were looking for in Antarctica, where it's just

516
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 3: like a black rock on otherwise unbroken white ice sheet.

517
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 3: Right right, Anyway, the tools made out of these cold

518
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 3: forged chunks of iron meteorite were they entered circulation They

519
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 3: were sourced from these locations and then eventually traded with

520
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 3: the communities surrounding the Inuit peoples of northwestern Greenland. Eventually

521
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 3: they made it even farther. There's some evidence that some

522
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 3: iron tools made out of pieces of this meteorite were

523
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 3: traded with Norse Vikings sometime before in the eleventh century

524
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 3: or before. But by the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, explorers

525
00:31:55,280 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 3: from Europe started to make repeated contact with various Inuit

526
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:02,960
Speaker 3: peoples in voting. The Inhuit of the Far North and

527
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 3: the Inuit are a group of Inuit people also known

528
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 3: sometimes as the polar Inuit. They speak a language called

529
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 3: Inukton and their homeland is in northwestern Greenland. These European

530
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 3: and US explorers, such as the Scottish naval officer John Ross,

531
00:32:19,280 --> 00:32:22,959
Speaker 3: recorded that in speaking to these people, they were told

532
00:32:23,160 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 3: about some kind of mountain of iron that the Inhuit

533
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 3: were using to make their iron tools, but for a

534
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:34,200
Speaker 3: long time they never saw. The explorers never saw these

535
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 3: iron sources for themselves. This was until the expeditions led

536
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 3: by the US explorer Robert Peiri beginning around eighteen ninety four.

537
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 3: Piri is mainly known for trying to reach the North Pole.

538
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 3: There's some dispute about whether Pery ever actually did make

539
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 3: it to the geographic North Pole. He certainly claimed he

540
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:56,960
Speaker 3: did in April nineteen oh nine, but it's difficult to

541
00:32:57,040 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 3: verify since the ice would have been over water and

542
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:02,840
Speaker 3: his constantly moving, so the marker he placed in the

543
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 3: ice can't confirm it. Also, some later analysis of the

544
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:11,000
Speaker 3: records of the expedition cast doubt on the physical plausibility

545
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 3: of their journey and also if Pieri did make it

546
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 3: to the geographic North Pole. There's an account from Matthew Henson,

547
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 3: an African American explorer who lived from eighteen sixty six

548
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 3: to nineteen fifty five and served on multiple expeditions with Peery,

549
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 3: indicating that he was actually the one who made it

550
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:31,280
Speaker 3: there first. If they did make it so, a lot

551
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 3: of questions remain about that, but anyway, after living among

552
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 3: the Inuit and learning from them and trading with them,

553
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 3: Pieri eventually removed three large chunks of iron meteorite from

554
00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 3: Inhuit lands, the largest of which is known as Anihito,

555
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 3: or the tent, and this one is more than thirty

556
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 3: metric tons and it required the construction of a rail

557
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:57,960
Speaker 3: system just to get it to his ship in order

558
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:00,880
Speaker 3: to be transported to New York. But there were also

559
00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 3: two other smaller but still quite sizable iron masses, known

560
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:09,239
Speaker 3: as the Woman and the Dog. Later and Pieri's plan

561
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,359
Speaker 3: was to sell these objects in order to finance his

562
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:15,800
Speaker 3: future expeditions to the Arctic, and they remain on display

563
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:19,279
Speaker 3: today at the American Museum of Natural History. Now, in

564
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 3: addition to taking away these meteorites that were so important

565
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 3: to the Inhuit, not just practically as tools. More on

566
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 3: that in a minute, there is also an incredibly tragic

567
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:33,279
Speaker 3: story of how Peery took away six Inuit people and

568
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 3: delivered them back to the American Museum as well, under

569
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 3: the false pretense that they would soon be sent back

570
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:43,600
Speaker 3: home with many gifts and supplies. But in crowded New York,

571
00:34:43,640 --> 00:34:47,440
Speaker 3: they were quickly exposed to unfamiliar pathogens and most of

572
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 3: them died of respiratory diseases. So in the end that

573
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:54,319
Speaker 3: story is very sad. I think one man from the

574
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 3: group was able to return to Greenland, and there was

575
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 3: a boy among the group named Minic who did grow

576
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 3: up in the United States for some time. And then

577
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 3: I believe it. Sometime later tried to return to Greenland

578
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:07,239
Speaker 3: and then also at some point came back to the

579
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 3: United States, but he passed away in the nineteen eighteen

580
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 3: flu pandemic. But regarding the Inuit beliefs about these meteorites

581
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 3: that had provided them with iron tools for so many

582
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 3: hundreds of years, I wanted to mention a really interesting

583
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 3: episode of another podcast that I came across while researching

584
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 3: this subject. So this other podcast is called Endless Thread

585
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 3: and it's put out by Boston's public radio station WBUR.

586
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 3: I previously wasn't familiar with it, but this one episode

587
00:35:44,200 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 3: I listened to was really great. And this podcast generally

588
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 3: discusses uses of meteorite among the Inuit people. But my

589
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:55,800
Speaker 3: favorite thing about it is that it includes interview material

590
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:59,400
Speaker 3: with an Inuit shaman named his Shoe, and it's definitely

591
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:01,680
Speaker 3: worth checking out that episode in full. I think the

592
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:04,760
Speaker 3: main title before a colon and subtitle is a meteorite

593
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 3: in Greenland, But I wanted to mention one interesting and

594
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 3: important thing that sort of comes up in it. So

595
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:16,080
Speaker 3: Hisshu is from a place in northwestern Greenland called hira Paluk,

596
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:20,800
Speaker 3: where the Inuit people have this long relationship with meteorite

597
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 3: fragments and in hisshu says that in their language these

598
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:28,279
Speaker 3: are known as the excrement of the stars.

599
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 1: That sounds like an entirely different take on.

600
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,400
Speaker 3: What these are, but it doesn't have the connotations you

601
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:41,520
Speaker 3: might bring to it thinking of it as excrement, because

602
00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 3: these objects are quite sacred. In fact, I've read in

603
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:50,279
Speaker 3: other contexts that a justification given for Peri's removal of

604
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 3: the iron meteorites from Inuit lands is that the Inhuit

605
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:57,800
Speaker 3: acquired other sources of iron and steel for practical uses

606
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 3: through trade and so forth. So the thinking is like, oh,

607
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 3: they can get iron from other sources now, so they

608
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 3: don't really need these meteorites anymore. Now, I think there

609
00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 3: are even if they were. Even if these meteorites were

610
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 3: only significant for practical uses as a source of iron,

611
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 3: I think there would be reasons for doubting that that

612
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,920
Speaker 3: way of thinking that justification. But in this interview Hisshue

613
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:26,439
Speaker 3: makes clear that these meteorites have significance beyond simply being

614
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 3: utilitarian sources of metal. Though they were that as well,

615
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 3: their significance was sacred, and he mentions that cutting off

616
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:38,240
Speaker 3: a piece of metal from the source involves a ritual.

617
00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 3: There is a ritual to that sort of giving the

618
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 3: people access to the metal from this sacred object. And

619
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 3: the tools made from it are not simply viewed as tools.

620
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:51,160
Speaker 3: He calls them partners because in a way, he says,

621
00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:54,240
Speaker 3: everything in their view of the world is life. Everything

622
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,880
Speaker 3: is infused with life. So a tool made from this

623
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:00,799
Speaker 3: meteorite is not just simply a dead object to get

624
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 3: some use out of it is a partner in your work.

625
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 3: So anyway, if you want to check out that other

626
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,480
Speaker 3: podcast episode again, the show is called Endless Thread. The

627
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:12,839
Speaker 3: title of the episode is a meteorite in Greenland. But

628
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 3: to continue on this subject, I was reading around and

629
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:19,359
Speaker 3: I found other accounts of Inuit people explaining that they

630
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 3: view these meteorites as having a sacred power and that

631
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:28,760
Speaker 3: in fact, religious significance and material utility are not mutually

632
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 3: exclusive in their view. So just one example I came

633
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:36,839
Speaker 3: across was a paper published in the journal Meteoritics by

634
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:41,799
Speaker 3: Mardin at All called Contemporary Inuit Traditional Beliefs concerning Meteorites.

635
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:44,319
Speaker 3: This is from the year nineteen ninety two and it

636
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:47,840
Speaker 3: records what was said about meteorites by Inuit elders in

637
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 3: the High Canadian Arctic in nineteen eighty eight, so a

638
00:38:51,560 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 3: few details of what the authors here were told. They

639
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:59,000
Speaker 3: were told that Inuit people have long come across rocks

640
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 3: in the landscape that the interpret as being not natural,

641
00:39:02,200 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 3: sort of not the same as everything else around them,

642
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 3: and in some cases these are meteorites, and meteorite pieces

643
00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:13,839
Speaker 3: that are discovered or possessed by a person can give

644
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 3: people special powers in some cases, or have some kind

645
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:20,200
Speaker 3: of special link to the fate of the person who

646
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:23,319
Speaker 3: owns them. They mentioned that these iron meteorites have been

647
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 3: sources of metal for the fashioning of effective tools and weapons,

648
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:30,480
Speaker 3: but contrary to what might be a common Western assumption,

649
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:33,319
Speaker 3: this does not mean that they are not viewed as

650
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 3: sacred or spiritual objects. Quote. The one evident thing that

651
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 3: became clear to the author is that the Inuit distinctly

652
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:45,439
Speaker 3: believed that these meteorites are religious objects of the highest order,

653
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 3: and it brings into question the current academic practice of

654
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:53,600
Speaker 3: sending meteorites south to research institutes. Any seeming conflict with

655
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 3: the traditional use of meteoric iron is more apparent than real.

656
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:01,839
Speaker 3: The animals, the hunt, the active, all being bound up

657
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:05,360
Speaker 3: in the mystic patterns of animistic belief. So what I

658
00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 3: take from this is it's sort of pushing back against

659
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:12,000
Speaker 3: an assumption that many Westerners might have that, oh, if

660
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 3: people are just using this metal to make tools that

661
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 3: they use for everyday chores, you know, for hunting and

662
00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:20,440
Speaker 3: other things that must be done to survive, and you know,

663
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 3: and maybe if you compensate them by trading with them

664
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:28,000
Speaker 3: some other objects that are useful for survival, then there's

665
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:30,960
Speaker 3: nothing wrong with taking this stuff away. And you might

666
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:33,960
Speaker 3: not feel the same way about an artifact that is

667
00:40:34,239 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 3: that has religious significance but maybe was crafted by humans

668
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:40,400
Speaker 3: and kept in a sacred special place and has no

669
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 3: role in the ongoing work of everyday life. But I

670
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 3: think they're saying that's wrong. Even though this is used

671
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 3: to make materials that are used in regular work, it

672
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 3: still is also sacred. And that kind of raises questions

673
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 3: for me about like, why would we have the contrary

674
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 3: assumption to begin with? Why would we naturally assume that

675
00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:04,680
Speaker 3: if a material is broken off of a mother load

676
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:07,720
Speaker 3: and hammered into blades or harpoon tips or other tools

677
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 3: used for everyday survival, that material is not sacred or

678
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:15,960
Speaker 3: is not a religious object. The conclusion doesn't actually follow

679
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:20,360
Speaker 3: from that premise. It implies there's some other unstated premise

680
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 3: that is driving the intuition, and that premise could be

681
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 3: something like things you see every day aren't sacred, or

682
00:41:27,560 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 3: things you use to accomplish work are not sacred, which, again,

683
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:34,520
Speaker 3: like where would such a belief come from?

684
00:41:35,080 --> 00:41:38,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot to unwrapped there, because on one hand,

685
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: you could see this kind of viewpoint being rooted in

686
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: like clear examples of highly ornate objects that were non

687
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: intended for actual functional use, such as some sort of

688
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:50,560
Speaker 1: a ritualistic weapon that was clearly not intended for use

689
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:55,200
Speaker 1: on the battlefield, or some sort of ritualistic item that

690
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:57,720
Speaker 1: essentially has the role of a scepter where it becomes

691
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:01,080
Speaker 1: a symbol of power, but it is some divorced from

692
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: practical applications that it may have had in its sort

693
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:10,640
Speaker 1: of artifact based history, like for instance, the traditional traditional

694
00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: scepters and Chinese tradition. I've seen some discussion that they

695
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: they may have in origin been backscratchers. It's one theory,

696
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:21,720
Speaker 1: you know. So it's like, Okay, you have a practical

697
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:25,400
Speaker 1: item that then ultimately becomes a thing that is completely

698
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: divorced from that tradition. And so if you're looking for

699
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 1: those kinds of like clear examples like Okay, well this

700
00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 1: is clearly a sacred item because it doesn't look like

701
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: it could be used every day. So you have that

702
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: going on. But then yeah, I don't know. It is

703
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:43,920
Speaker 1: weird to think about this idea of thinking that everyday items,

704
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: every day things cannot be held up as sacred because

705
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 1: I think, for one thing, you can see various plenty

706
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:54,399
Speaker 1: of examples from history where things people encountered every day

707
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 1: still took on sacred meaning. One example that comes to

708
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:01,319
Speaker 1: mind is the horse. Like the horse is you know,

709
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 1: during times of its domestication to be clear here, you know,

710
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 1: it takes on sacred connotations, mystical connotations. Like the horse.

711
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:11,880
Speaker 1: The skull of the horse is often held up in

712
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: different societies, is having some sort of a you know,

713
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:17,280
Speaker 1: peculiar meaning or are to it. And yet the horse

714
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:20,279
Speaker 1: was every day. The horse was something that that was

715
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 1: just part of your daily life and you depended upon.

716
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:25,040
Speaker 1: And then on the other end of things, like there's

717
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:28,440
Speaker 1: just our personal experience, like a beloved tool. We may

718
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:32,440
Speaker 1: not really be in the mindset of thinking about things

719
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: in our immediate vicinity as being you know, mystical or

720
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:37,839
Speaker 1: magical or sacred, because maybe we just don't apply that

721
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:42,439
Speaker 1: mindset to our immediate world. But I don't think that

722
00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 1: the way we consider our tools and consider our our

723
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:50,439
Speaker 1: knickknacks are completely divorced from that thinking either. I mean,

724
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 1: just think about, like, whatever, if you do engage in

725
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 1: some sort of a craft or a handy work, like

726
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: do you have a beloved tool? And and how much

727
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:03,560
Speaker 1: would you have to lean into the idea of it

728
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 1: being important to get to the level of it being sacred.

729
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 3: Or the source of the material from which it is

730
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:11,799
Speaker 3: made being sacred. Yeah.

731
00:44:11,960 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, this also comes back to It reminds me we

732
00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: were talking earlier about excrement in the idea of meteoric

733
00:44:19,120 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 1: iron as being the excrement of the sky or so forth.

734
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: This brings me back to something that came up in

735
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: our episodes on Dust about how there's sort of like

736
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 1: a modern understanding of excrement. You know, it's just pure waste, right,

737
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 1: But for people that were actually engaged in like working

738
00:44:36,680 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 1: the land and all like, there would have been more

739
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 1: of an understanding that this is not like a valueless byproduct.

740
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:46,959
Speaker 1: This is something that then can be used to grow

741
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 1: something new. You know, it can be used as a fertilizer.

742
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:53,120
Speaker 1: There are various traditions where of course it's also used

743
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: and typically you know, I think we're dealing with animal

744
00:44:57,200 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 1: excrement in these cases, but it can be used also

745
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:02,840
Speaker 1: as fuel for fire, So you don't have to like

746
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: lean far in that direction to see this is something

747
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:08,879
Speaker 1: that can be that new life can be breathed.

748
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:09,919
Speaker 3: Into, you know, mm hmm.

749
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: But again, just coming back to the idea of sacred

750
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,399
Speaker 1: items in everyday life. I mean, yeah, I think most

751
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 1: of us can easily admit that we very easily imbue

752
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: physical items with meaning. I mean, it becomes a problem

753
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:26,320
Speaker 1: for people. So it's they're not necessarily, you know, hoarders

754
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: are not making everything sacred, I guess necessarily, But you know,

755
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it's you know, beyond the

756
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:37,600
Speaker 1: realm of of our understanding that that a tool, especially

757
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: when you depend upon could could you know, take on

758
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 1: a sacred quality. Now as we begin to close out

759
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: these episodes, I guess we're closing out these episodes on iron,

760
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:49,319
Speaker 1: I don't know, do you think you have another one

761
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:49,880
Speaker 1: in you, Joe.

762
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:52,319
Speaker 3: Well, there certainly are plenty more examples we could talk about,

763
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,319
Speaker 3: but I feel like maybe we're ready to move on

764
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 3: for for our purposes, but we could come back to it,

765
00:45:57,000 --> 00:45:59,280
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, yeah, come up again.

766
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of examples out there. I

767
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: would love to hear from listeners about it. I mean,

768
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:07,360
Speaker 1: for ins as we didn't touch on much in the

769
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:11,279
Speaker 1: way of modern meteoric weapons that have been produced very

770
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:14,920
Speaker 1: much with the understanding that these are meteors, these meteorites

771
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:18,719
Speaker 1: and this this is metal from the sky, and you

772
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:22,560
Speaker 1: see various examples of this. The late Terry Pratchett, for example,

773
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 1: had a meteoric blade forged for himself using I believe

774
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 1: bits of meteorite that he himself had collected. This was

775
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:33,240
Speaker 1: for when he was knighted.

776
00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 3: Oh boy.

777
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:36,759
Speaker 1: He wanted to make sure you had the right sword.

778
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:38,680
Speaker 3: For it, really making it an occasion.

779
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:42,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, make a feast of it, there's all. There

780
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 1: are also various other blades. I was reading about a

781
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: Japanese blade. This is a Japanese Samurai sword forged by

782
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: modern day swordsmith Yoshindo Yoshiwara. It is called the Tintatsuto

783
00:46:57,080 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 1: or the Sword of Heavenly Iron. And this particular sword

784
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:06,240
Speaker 1: which you can see is on display. It uses iron

785
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:10,880
Speaker 1: from the Gibeon meteorite that fell in Namibia during prehistoric times.

786
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:13,560
Speaker 1: You can look up images of it. Looks pretty cool

787
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:16,919
Speaker 1: and I also read that fragments of this meteorite were

788
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: also traditionally used by the Nama people of Namibia for

789
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,719
Speaker 1: many centuries in tools and in weapons. And you'll find

790
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 1: various meteoric swords in fiction. I don't believe this is

791
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:33,880
Speaker 1: in the core books, this may be in the additional matter,

792
00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 1: but apparently a couple of these blades show up in

793
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: the works of J. R. Tolkien and also on Avatar

794
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:43,360
Speaker 1: the Last Airbender. I'd totally forgotten about this, but a

795
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: meteoric sword does come into play on that show as well.

796
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:50,759
Speaker 1: Those are just a couple of the fictional examples, but

797
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are plenty more. So yes, we would

798
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:55,239
Speaker 1: love to hear from you out there. Write in with

799
00:47:55,320 --> 00:48:00,440
Speaker 1: your favorite examples of fictional meteoric weapons, as well as

800
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 1: various examples or potential examples. With that huge caveat you

801
00:48:04,239 --> 00:48:06,960
Speaker 1: know that we get into in the first episode regarding

802
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 1: actual weapons that may include iron of meteoric origin. Please do.

803
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 3: We're gonna get a lot of the fictional ones, Robin,

804
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 3: I think this is a rich vein to exploit here.

805
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's have it all right, We're gonna go ahead

806
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:24,879
Speaker 1: and close out the show here. But hey again, we'd

807
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there, and if you

808
00:48:27,680 --> 00:48:29,320
Speaker 1: would like to help us out, if you want to

809
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 1: support the show, I tell you, one of the best

810
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:32,839
Speaker 1: things you can do is make sure that you are

811
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:36,359
Speaker 1: subscribed to the show. So wherever you get your podcasts,

812
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 1: be it Apple, various other places, just make sure that

813
00:48:40,120 --> 00:48:41,920
Speaker 1: you've hit subscribe if you have the power.

814
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 3: To do so.

815
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 1: Above and beyond that, throw us some ratings, you know,

816
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:48,560
Speaker 1: give us a nice collection of stars, maybe say a

817
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 1: few kind words, and you know, share the share the show,

818
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: share a word of the show with people.

819
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:55,800
Speaker 3: You know, that's right to invoke a cliche. We depend

820
00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 3: upon the support of listeners like you, But all you

821
00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 3: got to do is listen and share it. So huge

822
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 3: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

823
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

824
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:10,160
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

825
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:12,759
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello. You

826
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

827
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:23,640
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828
00:49:24,120 --> 00:49:27,080
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829
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:29,919
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830
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