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

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a good old

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Speaker 1: archival episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one

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Speaker 1: about the black Stone of Mecca. Yeah, this was a

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Speaker 1: really fun episode because it allowed us to discuss uh

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Speaker 1: Islam and Islamic culture, but also meteorites, yeah, impact heights.

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Speaker 1: This one originally published February. We're gonna just launch right

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Speaker 1: into it now, go on the journey with us. Welcome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the MET And absolutely yeah, like it's it's so fils

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

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Speaker 1: the place of pilgrimage for individuals are interested in history

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Speaker 1: and art and religion. And and then you go in

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Speaker 1: and you have all of these pieces that themselves are

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Speaker 1: from all of these distant sacred places and sacred times.

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Speaker 1: Oh totally yeah, it's great. Like you get to go

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

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

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Speaker 1: sacred place like this the you know, these places that

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Speaker 1: have a history, I almost feel like you are you're

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Speaker 1: playing on the same kind of awe that you might

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Speaker 1: experience if you went to and believed in a haunted

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Speaker 1: house that like that that some somehow a kind of

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Speaker 1: energy has collected there over time and it it gives

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Speaker 1: you this sense of the sense of being part of history.

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Speaker 1: To be there. Yeah, I mean we we sort of

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Speaker 1: map out our worlds with these with these pin points, uh,

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Speaker 1: that that all the energy seems to converge around. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then when we visit those places, we're we're taking

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Speaker 1: part in that energy. We have all these expectations, and

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

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Speaker 1: that place. Now, this is certainly something we've covered on

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow of Mind in the past, that being

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Speaker 1: a Stendahl syndrome or Jerusalem syndrome, the idea where when

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Speaker 1: someone finally visits one of these places that means a

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Speaker 1: lot to them personally. Be it Jerusalem, uh, be it,

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

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Speaker 1: just a museum or to stand before a particular piece

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Speaker 1: of art that that carries a lot of weight with you.

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Speaker 1: You enter into it with all these expectations. Then you're

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Speaker 1: finally there, and it can be overwhelming. It can be

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Speaker 1: mentally overwhelming and physically overwhelming to actually be there at

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Speaker 1: at this lynch pin of your life. Yeah, despite having

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

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Speaker 1: that you have connected with with again the sense of history,

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Speaker 1: like here's a place that that will continue to be

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Speaker 1: visited and written about and now I'm here. Yeah. And

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: easily one of the most sacred places on earth. Uh

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Speaker 1: is one of the five pillars of Islam. Every able

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Speaker 1: bodied Muslim has to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca,

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

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

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Speaker 1: the devil in Mina, and finally you conduct seven revolution

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Speaker 1: san's within the Haram Mosque circling the Holy Kabba building,

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Speaker 1: which is this essentially, this this dark cube. It's featured

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Speaker 1: in the art for this episode, and I'm sure everyone

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Speaker 1: out there seeing the images of it. Of course, if

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Speaker 1: you haven't, you should go look it up because you

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Speaker 1: should have this in mind, this this dark stone building

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the black Stone or the al Hajar alha squad. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This uh, this, it's this is going to be the

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Speaker 1: object that we're talking about here. As you pass it,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: But according to uh, to tradition, the Kaaba was constructed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: same origin, and they're submitted together surrounded by a silver frame.

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Speaker 1: And the largest fragment is said to be about the

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

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

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Speaker 1: the black stone eager to match something larger. I must

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that's right. Uh, So you know, generally this is not

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Speaker 1: something that people photograph very much. The photographs of it

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

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Speaker 1: quality or from a distance. Uh, there's just not ideal

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

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Speaker 1: of the most viewed objects on the planet. Yeah, it's amazing.

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

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Speaker 1: people have personally laid eyes on. But but it's very

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Speaker 1: hard to find a good picture of it. Um. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: so what you see in most of these pictures is

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

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Speaker 1: a like a basin turned sideways or something. It's this

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Speaker 1: silver collar that's built into the corner of the building.

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Speaker 1: And then inside this silver bowl there is just this

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Speaker 1: dark abyss. Generally is all you can see from the outside.

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Speaker 1: So if I had to guess before I started reading

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Speaker 1: the research on it what this was, I would think

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Speaker 1: it was like a large piece of obsidian or something

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Speaker 1: like that, just a large flat black surface that is

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Speaker 1: is smooth and dark and people uh, and you know,

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Speaker 1: people pass by and and touch it and kiss it.

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Speaker 1: But no, it turns out that there's actually a good

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Speaker 1: bit more texture going on inside, which makes identifying the

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Speaker 1: geology of the of the black stone all the more interesting. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So the pieces that are set in the cement, they've

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Speaker 1: been touched so many times they have there's a smoothness

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Speaker 1: to them. Um, and uh, it's all the worth worth noting,

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Speaker 1: like these are pieces of something that was once whole.

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Speaker 1: And we'll get into that in a bit. Various authors

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Speaker 1: have commented on it and tried to you know, they're

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Speaker 1: they're varying figures that have come out over the years,

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Speaker 1: over the centuries, really Westerners getting a glimpse of it,

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Speaker 1: looking at it, trying to figure out how how big

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Speaker 1: it is the pieces are now and how big it

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Speaker 1: might have been when it was a one piece. Um.

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Speaker 1: There is a paper by Elizabeth Thompson which we're gonna

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Speaker 1: refer to several times here. She was from the University

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Speaker 1: of Copenhagen. She wrote a paper in in Meteoritics in

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty titled New Light on the Origin of the

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Speaker 1: Holy Black Stone of the Kabba, and she did some

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Speaker 1: some figuring here, and she says that the the possible

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Speaker 1: original size of the stone would have been by twenty

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Speaker 1: or nine eight inches by seven point eight by seven

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Speaker 1: point eight, which would have made it what possibly about

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Speaker 1: the size of a cantaloupe originally basically cannel And I

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Speaker 1: rough estimate estimate here. I've never measured a cantaloupe. Robert Well,

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Speaker 1: I I did some I was at home when I

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Speaker 1: was doing this portion of the notes, and I was like,

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Speaker 1: all right, well, how big is that? Let me think

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Speaker 1: is that what fruit does that align with? And the

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Speaker 1: best I can tell, possibly candaloupe? Uh fruit or um

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Speaker 1: Islamic history esque experts may have may differ on that. Now,

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Speaker 1: as for the color, this is another interesting thing because

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Speaker 1: again you look at it, you just see darkness surrounded

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Speaker 1: called the black stone. So what color is it? That

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Speaker 1: is actually kind of difficult to decide on as well,

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Speaker 1: because various accounts have described it as brownish black or

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Speaker 1: blackish brown, or reddish black or deep reddish brown, and

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Speaker 1: some accounts also speak to a coal like matrix to it.

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Speaker 1: I think I've read that that was only one account

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Speaker 1: that actually said at least one account yeah, then said

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Speaker 1: coal like matrix, But most accounts point out that they're

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Speaker 1: yellow spots pointed white crystals. There's also a possible interior

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Speaker 1: that is described as gray, so it's not just this

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Speaker 1: obsidian or charcoal like stone, but rather something that has

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Speaker 1: you know, flex of other color in them. Right there

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Speaker 1: there are these little pieces of yellow or white. And

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Speaker 1: then there are also some reports that inside the stone

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Speaker 1: it is white, or that like covered parts of the

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Speaker 1: stone that are not exposed in the in the cemented,

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Speaker 1: cemented paved surface are white. Another claim we should probably

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Speaker 1: deal with because it does figure big into scientists trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out what type of rock or mineral this is,

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Speaker 1: is that it allegedly, according to very old reports, floats

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Speaker 1: in water. Yes, this is this is something that comes

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Speaker 1: up with time or two in the actual in the

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Speaker 1: historical record of the stone where supposedly this was used

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Speaker 1: to authenticated after it has been stolen in return. And

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Speaker 1: we'll get into that story in a bit that was

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Speaker 1: in like the tenth century. Yes, yeah, So the idea

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Speaker 1: that they could tell it's the stone by placing it

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Speaker 1: in water and seeing it would float, well, not many

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Speaker 1: stones float, so that would be a unique identifier. But

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

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

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Speaker 1: one of the problems, the challenges, the tantalizing aspects of

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Speaker 1: this whole exercise and discussing what this stone actually consists

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

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

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Speaker 1: you know, observational data about the stone. Yeah, I mean

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

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Speaker 1: the things about observing the stone that you have to

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

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

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Speaker 1: this and there. You know, there might be thousands of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: not being able to get up close to it. Or

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Speaker 1: they're also guards there, and sometimes guards will push you along,

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Speaker 1: move you out of the way. Uh. You can sort

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Speaker 1: of understand why, I mean that they don't want to

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Speaker 1: have a case of crowd crush or something like that

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Speaker 1: with the people there. Yeah. I mean, so you have

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

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Speaker 1: you're sort of religious expectations. You have the whole Stendahl

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Speaker 1: syndrome coming into play here. As you're beholding it now, Robert,

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Speaker 1: I think you had a couple of accounts you were

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Speaker 1: reading of people talking about visiting the Kabba, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I just I tend to find the idea of early

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Speaker 1: Westerners visiting Mecca and seeing the Kabba in the stone.

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Speaker 1: I find those really fascinating. And so I just had

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Speaker 1: had had mainly two here I wanted to to highlight.

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Speaker 1: And there's a third one that that we end up

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Speaker 1: referencing later. So the first one that to reference here,

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Speaker 1: Swiss traveler and Arabic speaker Johann Ludwig Burkhardt, visited Mecca

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Speaker 1: in eighteen fourteen, so he was very much an Arabic

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Speaker 1: speaker enthusiast. He was he converted to Islam. This is

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Speaker 1: also the guy who rediscovered the ruins of Petra, which

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Speaker 1: if you're if you're if you're still foggy on what

264
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Speaker 1: Petra is, think to what Indiana Jones in the last

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Speaker 1: year said that is that the treasury building of Petra,

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Speaker 1: that's the one set in the cliff fool. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: tomb of the grail. There were not the tomb, the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: guy to pin down and it sounds like I'm being

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Speaker 1: vague here. So he spoke twenty five distinct languages, not

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Speaker 1: counting dialects. He was something of a bisexual, hedonist, a

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

288
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Speaker 1: the way your brain operates, and even to fake, like

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

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

291
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Speaker 1: to go on the hodge like to fake that, you

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

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Speaker 1: understanding of the culture the rights entailed there, Like your

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Speaker 1: cover would be so deep. How would you keep it

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

296
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Speaker 1: you almost want to say that to fully understand someone

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

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

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Speaker 1: to try to see what it looks like from the inside, right,

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Speaker 1: And then at the same time, like Burton again as

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Speaker 1: fascinating character, we can't get to everything he did here,

302
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Speaker 1: but he wrote a lot about his his travels and

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Speaker 1: his ideas and his his observations, and at times too

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Speaker 1: he kind of waffles back and forth. Sometimes he sounds

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Speaker 1: you know, very much uh, you know, at one with

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Speaker 1: his lam and and and intrigued by it. Other times

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00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:20,840
Speaker 1: he still still see some of that English colonial um

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Speaker 1: mentality rising to the surface, and he sounds a bit dismissive,

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Speaker 1: Like I said, very very fascinating guy. Difficult guy to

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Speaker 1: to nail down. But here's a quick quote from his

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Speaker 1: writings about beholding the stone. He said, after thus reaching

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Speaker 1: the stone, despite popular indignation, testified by impatient shouts, we

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Speaker 1: monopolize the use of it for at least ten minutes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is quite a lot. When you see the crowd

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Speaker 1: pictures right whilst kissing it and rubbing hands and forehead

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Speaker 1: upon it. I narrowly observed it and came away persuaded

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Speaker 1: that it is an aerial light. Other travelers, including Burkhardt,

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Speaker 1: had thought it volcanic in origin. Right, So here we're

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Speaker 1: starting to get to the question of what the stone

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

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Speaker 1: assumed that it was that it was lava of some

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

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Speaker 1: that it's an aero light, that it is a type

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

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Speaker 1: this idea is so appealing, we have to discuss the

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Speaker 1: mythic the religious history of the stone a little bit.

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Speaker 1: So if you if you dive into Islamic tradition and

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Speaker 1: Islamic belief. There's a basic kind of a Damic origin

329
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Speaker 1: story and play here. So depending on how you interpret

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Speaker 1: this origin story, the black Stone dates back to either

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

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Speaker 1: is that Adam built the first Kaba on earth, and

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

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Speaker 1: that turned black with the all of man. And the

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00:19:01,359 --> 00:19:03,879
Speaker 1: first Kaba was then destroyed in the Great Flood, and

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

337
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Speaker 1: it or building the first cabin, depending on the telling.

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Speaker 1: H Another idea here is that this was a meteorite

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

340
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Speaker 1: side where it had fallen, or that it originally was

341
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Speaker 1: one of the stars of Paradise. Yeah. Now, one of

342
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Speaker 1: the reasons they're they're kind of varying takes on this

343
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Speaker 1: is because the black Stone, as I understand it, is

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

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

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

347
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Speaker 1: you find in any religion is the stuff that's not

348
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Speaker 1: necessarily straight in the middle of the cannon, but but

349
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Speaker 1: not necessarily out of the mainstream cannon either. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of like it comes from additional traditional material the the

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Speaker 1: you know, the metadata of the religion, right. I think

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

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

354
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Speaker 1: ideas come from, because certainly, if you're looking for a

355
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Speaker 1: strict definition of those things within the older New Testament, uh,

356
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Speaker 1: those details are not really forthcoming. No, you get a

357
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Speaker 1: few hints, but you're not going to find Dante in

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

359
00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:23,280
Speaker 1: Already mentioned that it's it's it's considered the right hand

360
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Speaker 1: of God. To touch it is to enter into a

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

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00:20:30,800 --> 00:20:33,280
Speaker 1: been attributed to it. Oh, and I believe this comes

363
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Speaker 1: from the writings of one Heinrich von Maltson Well visited

364
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Speaker 1: this the Mecca as well in eighteen fifty eight, coming

365
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Speaker 1: after the two individuals we already mentioned. Yes, supposedly so

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Speaker 1: so von maltzon Um. I want to be careful about

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Speaker 1: citing him because he strikes me as perhaps unreliable and

368
00:20:54,560 --> 00:20:59,359
Speaker 1: definitely unsympathetic. Like he wrote this eighteen sixty five book

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00:20:59,400 --> 00:21:04,360
Speaker 1: in German called Mina walfartnc Mecha, which means My Pilgrimage

370
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Speaker 1: to Mecca. The books in German. I've not found an

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00:21:07,400 --> 00:21:12,359
Speaker 1: official published translation, but using Google Translate, I did a

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Speaker 1: little uh looking through this book and he um, he

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Speaker 1: strikes me as an sort of unsympathetic and perhaps uncomprehending outsider.

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Speaker 1: So I wouldn't use him as a as a very

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Speaker 1: reliable account of what the people on the Hajj in

376
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Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century we're actually believing. But he at

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00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:37,040
Speaker 1: least claims, possibly wrongly, that the Pilgrims at the time

378
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Speaker 1: believed that it was impossible to destroy the Kabba and

379
00:21:40,840 --> 00:21:45,359
Speaker 1: the and impossible to destroy the black Stone itself. Uh

380
00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:48,160
Speaker 1: so he said that you know, they were attributing these

381
00:21:48,160 --> 00:21:52,119
Speaker 1: miraculous powers to it. Now I know, um, you know,

382
00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:55,320
Speaker 1: within every religion there's always going to be plenty of

383
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Speaker 1: diversity of opinion and different ideas. But I know one

384
00:21:58,520 --> 00:22:01,480
Speaker 1: strong tradition, and it's mom probably not adhered to by

385
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Speaker 1: all Muslims, is the idea that you know that that

386
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:09,160
Speaker 1: there aren't miraculous objects you know that that that essentially

387
00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:12,720
Speaker 1: people aren't going to do miracles for you. Objects aren't

388
00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:17,160
Speaker 1: going to be miraculous. But if this account of is correct,

389
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:21,960
Speaker 1: there are at least some slightly miraculous uh properties attributed

390
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:24,280
Speaker 1: to the stone at some points in history. But then again,

391
00:22:24,320 --> 00:22:26,920
Speaker 1: as I say, this guy kind seems like a jerk

392
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Speaker 1: and like he's maybe not understanding things correctly, Like he

393
00:22:30,280 --> 00:22:34,639
Speaker 1: seems disgusted by the rituals. He doesn't at one point

394
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Speaker 1: he's like, I had to go and kiss the stone,

395
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:41,159
Speaker 1: and he calls it the monster, So he's he's perhaps

396
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:45,480
Speaker 1: not looking at the stone from the perspective of of

397
00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:48,639
Speaker 1: an outsider who has converted to it to Islam and

398
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:53,480
Speaker 1: is fully uh fully accepting any of the ideas and

399
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:55,960
Speaker 1: traditions around it. Yeah, or even just trying for the

400
00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:58,880
Speaker 1: sake of understanding, to get into that headspace and what

401
00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:01,359
Speaker 1: what does this mean to the insider, to the believer.

402
00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:04,639
Speaker 1: And then as far as the future is concerned, there

403
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:07,479
Speaker 1: are tales that are on the Day of Judgment, uh,

404
00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:10,399
Speaker 1: it is said that the stone will grow eyes, mouth,

405
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:13,040
Speaker 1: and tongue, and that it will see and speak, and

406
00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:16,119
Speaker 1: it will witness in favor of all those who touched

407
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:19,640
Speaker 1: it with sincere hearts, which I think is wow, quite

408
00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:21,720
Speaker 1: a visual that one kind of gives me a chill bumps.

409
00:23:21,760 --> 00:23:24,800
Speaker 1: The idea of the stone sort of becoming this floating

410
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:31,080
Speaker 1: face that then speaks on behalf to God of those

411
00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:34,240
Speaker 1: who actually touched it and entered into that contract with

412
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 1: with with it not just a mouth but a tongue.

413
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:41,440
Speaker 1: That's good. Well, maybe we should take a break, yeah,

414
00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:44,080
Speaker 1: and then when we do, we can discuss a little

415
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:47,919
Speaker 1: bit more about the supposed history of this stone and

416
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 1: then get into some of the geological ideas about what

417
00:23:51,280 --> 00:23:59,440
Speaker 1: it is and where it came from. Than alright, we're back.

418
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 1: So the stone, the black Stone here, it actually predates Islam.

419
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:09,680
Speaker 1: So it was it was there when Mohammed the Prophet

420
00:24:09,800 --> 00:24:13,320
Speaker 1: came into Mecca. And this is the fact that's acknowledged

421
00:24:13,359 --> 00:24:16,400
Speaker 1: by Islamic tradition, not contrary to it. Right right, Yeah,

422
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:19,359
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty settled as far as I

423
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: understand it. So in Persian legend it was supposedly a

424
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 1: symbol of the planet Saturn. That was a tip that

425
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 1: I read in a Brewer's dictionary phrase and fable. Now,

426
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:33,119
Speaker 1: according to Oliver C. Farrington's writings. In nineteen hundred, he

427
00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: wrote an article that the worship and folklore of Meteorites.

428
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: He says that the worship of the stone by Arabian

429
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:43,119
Speaker 1: tribes is first spoken spoken of by Greek writers of

430
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:47,720
Speaker 1: early times, and that the Kabba definitely existed as a

431
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 1: as a shrine as early as two hundred CE, and

432
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 1: the black Stone was part of it. So this would

433
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 1: have been, you know, a shrine that entailed venerated objects

434
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:03,480
Speaker 1: div ooted to different deities and among them was the

435
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,560
Speaker 1: black Stone. Yeah, and so like having idols there, like

436
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: I know, part of the Islamic tradition is the idea

437
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:12,920
Speaker 1: of removing the idols from the Kaba, right right, And

438
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened in UH six thirty C. That's

439
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:21,640
Speaker 1: when when the prophet entered Mecca, purged the Kabba of idols,

440
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:26,679
Speaker 1: reportedly destroying something like three three hundred sixty idols. But

441
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:29,600
Speaker 1: as often is the case with holy places in history,

442
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:33,919
Speaker 1: the Kaaba and the stone retained their sacred aspects. We

443
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 1: see this in Islamic history all the time as well,

444
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:39,159
Speaker 1: such as the function of the Greek Parthenon as a

445
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: mosque during Ottoman occupation. This was something I really didn't

446
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:45,640
Speaker 1: know a lot of a lot about until recently when

447
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:50,400
Speaker 1: I attended a talk at at Emory University. How they

448
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:52,920
Speaker 1: you had? They had it was converted into a mosque

449
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,919
Speaker 1: the Parthenon, and then when the Parthenon was put was

450
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:59,639
Speaker 1: partially destroyed, you had sort of the gutted Parthenon, and

451
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 1: in the at all they had this, uh, this this

452
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:06,040
Speaker 1: kind of cubicle mosque that actually reminds one a little

453
00:26:06,040 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 1: bit of the Kabba. Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. I've never

454
00:26:09,080 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 1: heard that before. Now, there was a lot of turmoil

455
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:17,960
Speaker 1: even during Mohammed's life. Mohammed lived five seventies through six

456
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:22,040
Speaker 1: thirty two, and the Kabo was was burnt during this time,

457
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:25,399
Speaker 1: and this may have caused some of the fragmentation that

458
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:28,120
Speaker 1: we see. That's the thing. We don't know exactly when

459
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 1: this fragmentation of the of the stone occurred. Yeah, this

460
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 1: history of the uh, the stone as an object becoming

461
00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 1: many objects does seem kind of fuzzy. Like there's this

462
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:41,200
Speaker 1: general idea that it was once a single stone or

463
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:45,240
Speaker 1: fewer number of stones, and then broke into smaller parts,

464
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:50,679
Speaker 1: and then now there are apparently fewer visible pebbles in

465
00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: the stone than there were, say in the nineteenth century, right.

466
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:55,439
Speaker 1: And one of the ideas here is that that the

467
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:58,119
Speaker 1: pieces could either have been removed or lost, or they

468
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: could still be there. We just can't see all that

469
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:04,160
Speaker 1: well because a we can't really see the stone fragments

470
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: all that well anyway, where they might be partially obscured

471
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: by the by the cement and the silver and repeated

472
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 1: attempts to you know, hold everything together. So what were

473
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: the circumstances under which it was burned? So this was

474
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: during the civil war between the caliph Abd al Malik

475
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:27,600
Speaker 1: and Iban Zubar, who controlled Mecca at the time the

476
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: Kaba was set on fire. This would have been in

477
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:33,400
Speaker 1: six eight three and report by some accounts, the black

478
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 1: Stone broke into three pieces and then was reassembled with silver.

479
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:43,440
Speaker 1: So that's a that's an opportunity, let's say, for the

480
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: stone to have been broken certainly. Um. Now, another opportunity

481
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,640
Speaker 1: that comes up is in nine thirty and that's when

482
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 1: Mecca was sacked by the Carmathians led by Abu Terar

483
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: al Janabi, who apparently used the hag as an excuse

484
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:05,679
Speaker 1: uh to demand entry into the city with his troops. Now,

485
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: a number of you're probably wanting, well, who are the Karmathians. Uh.

486
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:11,760
Speaker 1: They were an heretical sect of Islam that considered the

487
00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: Koran allegory. They refuted various rights and entailed a mix

488
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:22,200
Speaker 1: of uh of of of Islamic and Persian mysticism. They

489
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:26,280
Speaker 1: sacked and looted Mecca, They desecrated holy sites. They mascuared

490
00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: pilgrims around the Kaba, and removed the black Stone and

491
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: took it out of Mecca, apparently in hopes of moving

492
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: the destination of the Hojj to Hajar in what we

493
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:42,080
Speaker 1: now call Bahrain. So they were trying to get everybody

494
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 1: to come to them from now on. That That is

495
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: the that that is how I understand it. Yeah, based

496
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: on the material I was reading, Um, this ended up

497
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 1: not working all that well. And uh, I mean it's

498
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 1: worth it's also worth noting here that of course history

499
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: is written by the victors, so you know to what

500
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 1: extended some of this color by the fact that the

501
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: that even though the Carmatheans were very powerful at the time,

502
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 1: they ended up fading into history. So they tried to

503
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 1: change the point of the hodge didn't work. The black

504
00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: Stone is a return to Mecca around or nine fifty two,

505
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 1: but for a hefty ransom fee. Well, now, hold on

506
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 1: a second, how do you know it's really the stone

507
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 1: when you return it. Well, you've got to test its buoyancy, right,

508
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:29,240
Speaker 1: You've got to see if it floats in water, and

509
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: apparently it did. So that's where this idea comes from,

510
00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 1: right in the tenth century, that that this was returned,

511
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 1: and one thing that was known about the stone somehow

512
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:41,959
Speaker 1: was that it would float in water. Yes, and some

513
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:45,719
Speaker 1: accounts indicate that it was returned and of shattered into pieces.

514
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 1: So whether it was whether it was shattered during extraction

515
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 1: or during the return, that's kind of you know, up

516
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: in the air. Now, there's a an additional account that

517
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 1: is sometimes brought up as a as a possible incident

518
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 1: in which it was shattered, and that's around ten fifty

519
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 1: the caliph Al Hakim byam and Allah allegedly sent an

520
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 1: agent to smash the stone, but this only inflicted slight

521
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: damage and the agent was killed on the spot. Who's

522
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 1: to say, I only found one account where someone was

523
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:21,600
Speaker 1: speculating on the nature of the stone, who thought that

524
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 1: this might have been an incident that could have resulted

525
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 1: in serious damage, and the details on these accounts were

526
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 1: from Mecca, a Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land

527
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 1: by Francis E. Peters. So if any of these didn't

528
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 1: do the trick, though, there was also a six flood

529
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:40,720
Speaker 1: that toppled three of the Cabal walls, so that also

530
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: could have contributed to the fracturing of the black Stone. Right. So,

531
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 1: if you have a you have an object that is

532
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: susceptible to damage and it plays such a vital role

533
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: for such a long period of time, Um, it's it's

534
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 1: it's there's there's a high possibility it's gonna result in damage.

535
00:30:58,120 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: You know. One of the other things we should mention

536
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 1: is that this is a stone that you can quite

537
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 1: well expect to be undergoing a certain amount of wear

538
00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: and tear, with millions of people from around the world

539
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:13,239
Speaker 1: coming to this stone and trying to touch it and

540
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: kiss it. Um, I mean, there is there's all. There's

541
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: all manner of which, uh, you know, handling of things

542
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 1: leads to their deterioration over time, even if you think

543
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 1: you're being gentle. I mean, there's a reason museums don't

544
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 1: let you touch stuff, right, Like, what if what if

545
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: the statue of David. What if everyone got to touch David. Yeah,

546
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 1: you know that would that would erode the statue over time.

547
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 1: And certains and certainly accounts of the black stone indicate

548
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: that there is a certain amount of erosion that has

549
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 1: taken place, a smoothing of the stones from all of that,

550
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: all of those human touches, all of those kisses, all

551
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,760
Speaker 1: of that, you know, the oil from from human skin. Yeah,

552
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 1: but one can imagine that, I don't know, all manner

553
00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 1: of various handling, touching and stuff like that could also

554
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,480
Speaker 1: maybe have contributed to fracturing. I mean, it wouldn't have

555
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:06,560
Speaker 1: to be a highly destructive event. Uh, even gentle caresses

556
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:10,680
Speaker 1: over the centuries can add up. Indeed. All right, and

557
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:13,280
Speaker 1: that basically brings us up to modern times. So we're

558
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,

559
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss the possible scientific origins of the stone.

560
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: What is it? Where did it come from? And how

561
00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: how limited are we in our ability to answer that question?

562
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: Than all right, we're back. So we're gonna be talking

563
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:39,600
Speaker 1: about scientific inquiry into the geologic nature of the black

564
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: Stone of the Kabba. What what kind of rock is it?

565
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: Did it come from space, did it come from Earth?

566
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:48,880
Speaker 1: What's it made of? And there's one thing we should

567
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: note at the outset here, which is that it is

568
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: hard to know the answer to this question because the

569
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 1: rock has not been removed to a scientific lab where

570
00:32:59,840 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 1: you can do tests on it. This is one of

571
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: these strange situations where people are trying to do science

572
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: from a distance, sort of through the intermediary of people's

573
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: subjective accounts. Right we have, scientists have not examined the

574
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 1: black Stone, and really scientists are probably not going to

575
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:21,440
Speaker 1: get to analyze the black Stone at any point in

576
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future. Uh, Like I kind of have to

577
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,520
Speaker 1: think of sci fi scenarios in which the black Stone

578
00:33:27,520 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 1: could possibly be analyzed. It's uh, it's it's They're simply like,

579
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: why would you do it? Why would you allow it? Uh?

580
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 1: Why why would you submit it for scientific analysis? There?

581
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: Because because there's really nothing quite like the black Stone

582
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:45,240
Speaker 1: in any other religious tradition that I can think of.

583
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, an object that is so central, like

584
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:54,760
Speaker 1: literally central to the belief system. Like the closest thing

585
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:58,320
Speaker 1: I can think of in Christian and specifically Catholic traditions

586
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: is the shroud of Turin. But even that, it's not

587
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 1: you know, I would not say the shout of turn

588
00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: as an article of faith or or you know, in

589
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: any way associated with a pillar of Christianity. Yeah, there

590
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:14,759
Speaker 1: are definitely in other religions holy objects, holy sites, but

591
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 1: I feel like nothing as central as this and as

592
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: as hard to get at, because because as hard to

593
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: get out in a in a scrutinizing way, obviously it's

594
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:26,360
Speaker 1: not hard to get at just in general, and that,

595
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:29,239
Speaker 1: like we said, millions of people go in touch and

596
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 1: look at this thing, but you can't remove it, you

597
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 1: can't take it away with you, and you can't spend

598
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:37,160
Speaker 1: some time scrutinizing it. Right, So we end up with

599
00:34:37,600 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 1: it was generally intellectuals geologists looking at a pictures such

600
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: as they are looking at sketches, analyzing descriptions of it,

601
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:52,239
Speaker 1: and then using their knowledge of material science is to

602
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:55,319
Speaker 1: try and figure out what it can be, which can

603
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 1: be very interesting. So one of the standard things this

604
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: is probably not a very interesting hypothesis, but for you know,

605
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:05,239
Speaker 1: years people have said, well, it's probably some kind of

606
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:10,280
Speaker 1: lava or basalt something like that. Uh, generally, now people

607
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:14,279
Speaker 1: don't think that's the answer. Uh So. Another one of

608
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 1: the main theories that's been offered over the years is

609
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:23,399
Speaker 1: that the Blackstone is meteoritic in origin, that it came

610
00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:27,360
Speaker 1: from space. And you know, it makes sense, right because

611
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:31,240
Speaker 1: this this aligns with the cosmic origins that are presented

612
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: in a mythic history as a gift of a primordial God.

613
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 1: What better origin than outer space? Right, And there's also

614
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 1: a long history of two important factors here, one the

615
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 1: worship or at least veneration of meteorites and to the

616
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 1: use of meteor media meteoric iron. Now, I think a

617
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:53,279
Speaker 1: lot of Muslims would probably want to emphasize the distinction

618
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:56,360
Speaker 1: that the Kabba Stone is not something that is worshiped,

619
00:35:56,600 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 1: but it's a more like symbolic object that is, uh

620
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:03,480
Speaker 1: that is playing a role in what they would describe

621
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:07,320
Speaker 1: as their relationship with God. But even if the object

622
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: is not itself a point of worship, you can easily

623
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: see how objects that fall from space would take on

624
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:18,520
Speaker 1: some kind of sacred or venerable dimension. Yeah. Like, one

625
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: cool example of this is that Native Americans from the

626
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ruined Community of Oregon continue

627
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:31,839
Speaker 1: to make annual ceremonial visits to the famous Willamette meteorite

628
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: at the American Museum of Natural History. Yeah. So, while

629
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: scientists believe the rock is the the iron core of

630
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:42,799
Speaker 1: a shattered planet, uh, the Clackamas tribes people knew it

631
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,800
Speaker 1: as tom and Owa's a representative of the sky people

632
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: and a source of healing and cleansing. I mean, if

633
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:54,320
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of this meteorite, and you should, Yeah,

634
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:57,080
Speaker 1: it looks like something that was sent by the gods.

635
00:36:57,120 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: Of course it does. This thing looks insanean it's got

636
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:03,880
Speaker 1: these caverns in it. Robert, do you know what it

637
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:07,880
Speaker 1: looks like. I've seen pictures. Yes, it looks like you

638
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,719
Speaker 1: get a sense of topography, like it's a maze, or

639
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 1: even like a little of former living thing. There are

640
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 1: like coral aspects to it. Yes, it looks like a

641
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 1: large piece of iron. Uh, parts of which have come

642
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: alive and slithered away. Now the iron is interesting too,

643
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:32,400
Speaker 1: because that comes back to this, this use of meteoric iron. So,

644
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 1: before mining technology allowed for the ready harvesting of iron ore,

645
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:40,239
Speaker 1: one of the few sources of this durable metal was

646
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:42,960
Speaker 1: the was bits of it that plummeted from the sky

647
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: in the form of the meteorites. The ancient Egyptians knew

648
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: about it. They dubbed black copper. That's a cool name

649
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 1: it is. It's very very very cool. Uh. And uh,

650
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:56,759
Speaker 1: you know, it's generally spread then across vast distances. You're

651
00:37:56,760 --> 00:37:58,319
Speaker 1: gonna find little bits of fit here and there. So

652
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:01,359
Speaker 1: it was a rare commodity. You could not cannot arm

653
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:03,800
Speaker 1: an army with it, correct, you could, Yeah, you couldn't

654
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:06,359
Speaker 1: make enough swords for an army, but you could make

655
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:09,359
Speaker 1: if you scratch, scratch enough of it together, you could

656
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 1: make a single sword and it would have you know,

657
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:16,120
Speaker 1: obviously would have holier or at least um, you know,

658
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 1: ceremonial significance. Um. So this this relegated most meteoric iron

659
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 1: creations to the realm of decorative or significance or ceremony.

660
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:31,920
Speaker 1: In fact, in Islamic history, the seventh century Caliphs were

661
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: said to have brandish swords made from meteoric iron, while

662
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:37,880
Speaker 1: such iconic figures as a Till of the Hun and

663
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 1: tamer Lane reportedly wielded other cosmic blades against their enemies.

664
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:47,719
Speaker 1: And you know, also their bowls, plows and stirrups that

665
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 1: have been observed to have been made from it as well.

666
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: So maybe sometimes you just ended up making what you

667
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:54,920
Speaker 1: needed out of the iron, But for the most part

668
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:58,800
Speaker 1: it tended to take on a sacred significance. Weapons from space, Yeah,

669
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 1: that should be a whole episd so it on its

670
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:02,840
Speaker 1: own sometimes could be is there enough there? Could we

671
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:05,040
Speaker 1: do it? Weapons from space? I mean, has anybody ever

672
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,239
Speaker 1: tried to make like a like a I don't know.

673
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 1: Oh what do you call it? A morning star? I

674
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:13,879
Speaker 1: don't know. Why would you make a morning star out

675
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: of it when you can make a sword? Terry Pratchett,

676
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:19,320
Speaker 1: by the way, before he died, I believe had obtained

677
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 1: a sword made from er o'kirn. Know what I meant

678
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:26,239
Speaker 1: was make a morning star with a moon rock? Yeah?

679
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,600
Speaker 1: I like the idea. Yeah, who does that mean? If

680
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:32,759
Speaker 1: you have to be brain to death with a medieval

681
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 1: blunt weapon, why not? Why not? Moon rock makes it

682
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: a little special. So it's easy to fall into this thinking,

683
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 1: all right, it's a meteorite. Maybe it's it's it's it's

684
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:47,799
Speaker 1: meteoric iron, and that's why all this, uh this, uh,

685
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 1: the significance is given to it. However, as Thompson points

686
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: out we mentioned her, We mentioned her earlier, Elizabeth Thompson. Yes,

687
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 1: as she points out, this isn't necessarily a slam dunk theory.

688
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: And iron meteorite, she wrote, would not break into fragments,

689
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:06,439
Speaker 1: nor would it float in water because it is a

690
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 1: piece of iron and so, but that doesn't alule out

691
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:12,320
Speaker 1: all meteorites. There's also the idea that it's a stony

692
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:15,800
Speaker 1: meteor rite. But it would a stony meteorite float in water?

693
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:22,040
Speaker 1: Would it be able to withstand centuries of human erosion? Um?

694
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: Probably not. Yeah. So here I think we should actually

695
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:27,239
Speaker 1: get into a few of the papers that have been

696
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:31,239
Speaker 1: published on this subject. Uh. And the first big one

697
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:35,319
Speaker 1: and that tried to get at the after after the

698
00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:37,799
Speaker 1: meteorite theory had been dominant for a long time in

699
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:40,439
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. The first one that I think really

700
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: tried to dig in and and look at the descriptions

701
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 1: and figure out what it would what it could be

702
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy four in the journal Meteoritics. And

703
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 1: so they're looking at it and saying, okay, pretty much

704
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:55,720
Speaker 1: everybody thinks this thing is a meteorite. Are they onto

705
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 1: something or are they wrong, and this was by Robert

706
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:03,360
Speaker 1: Diaz and John McCoy own And in this paper, Dietz

707
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 1: and McCone argued that the Kabba Stone, the black stone,

708
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: is probably not a meteorite but an agate. So why

709
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:15,279
Speaker 1: do they get to age it. Well, let's follow them

710
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 1: through their reasoning. So first of all, they say, the

711
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:21,440
Speaker 1: fact that it appears to have been cracked and fractured,

712
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,400
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, Robert sort of rules out the

713
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:27,319
Speaker 1: possibility that it's a nickel iron meteorite. You you've seen

714
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:30,360
Speaker 1: these types of meteorites before that are that are essentially

715
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: like a big metal sponge. You know, if you have

716
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: tripped to phobia, these things really should set you off

717
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 1: with these patterns of holes. But a nickel iron meteorite,

718
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:44,239
Speaker 1: it's not brittle like most earth rocks. It's more like

719
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:46,800
Speaker 1: a piece of metal. Un Thus, we would not expect

720
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 1: to see a meteorite like this with a crack or

721
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: cracked into multiple pieces. But they say, okay, well, maybe

722
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 1: it could be a stony meteorite. There's a different kind

723
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 1: of meteorite. It's more like earth rocks. And from description

724
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:03,840
Speaker 1: and the stone they say is quote hummocky and muscled

725
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:08,480
Speaker 1: so what does this mean and why is it relevant? Well, hummocky,

726
00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:11,240
Speaker 1: that's not just like a cute British word or something

727
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: that does kind of sound like, you know, lord hummocky twizzled.

728
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: I was thinking it sounds like a great description for

729
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 1: for a wine. It's like, what do you what do

730
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 1: you think of this particular Wine's? Okay, well it's it's

731
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:26,600
Speaker 1: it's hummocky and and muscled, well muscled wine. Yeah, with

732
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 1: notes of elderberry. Uh yeah, So hummocky actually means something

733
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:35,040
Speaker 1: in geology. It means highly uneven or irregular in surface.

734
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:40,319
Speaker 1: So they say, you know, literally millions of people have

735
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,520
Speaker 1: touched this thing over the centuries, and yet they haven't

736
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:47,880
Speaker 1: worn away these apparent irregular features of the surface of

737
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:50,799
Speaker 1: the stone. So for that to be the case, the

738
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: authors suggests that the stone needs to have a pretty

739
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 1: good Mose scale rating, which they estimate should be a

740
00:42:57,440 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 1: minimum of a seven. So you know about the mo

741
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: A scale, right, That's that's how you answer no mo

742
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:07,799
Speaker 1: m o H. The most scale geological hardness scale. It's

743
00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 1: how you rate how hard is it? You want to

744
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: know how hard it is? You give a most scale rating.

745
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,000
Speaker 1: Um and a ten on the most scale is a

746
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 1: diamond that's super hard. I think. I think talc is

747
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 1: like a one or two. A seven is quartz. So

748
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:28,520
Speaker 1: they think for this thing to have withstood all of

749
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 1: the touching and kissing over the years and still have

750
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:35,120
Speaker 1: this uneven, hummocky surface, it needs to be at least

751
00:43:35,120 --> 00:43:37,359
Speaker 1: a seven on the most scale, So that gives them

752
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:41,839
Speaker 1: one clue to work with. Another conclusion from the descriptions

753
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:45,759
Speaker 1: is that the black stone supposedly has this highly reflective

754
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 1: almost mirror like polish. You know, you can you can

755
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: put your makeup on in it. I would advise against

756
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 1: doing that now, I don't know. People probably would not

757
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:58,280
Speaker 1: have the patience for that. Uh no, and you probably

758
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 1: actually couldn't. It's uh it's but they say that it

759
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:05,279
Speaker 1: is almost mirroral like, it's highly reflective. Um and they

760
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:09,560
Speaker 1: claim that this indicates the stone must be a fanitic

761
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: and monomineralic. Oh god, more terminology. So what does that mean?

762
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:17,560
Speaker 1: A Ponitic is a geology term that means very fine

763
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 1: grained minerals, So a fanitic rocks are those where you

764
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 1: can't see the individual mineral crystals with the naked eye

765
00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: and This usually happens in igneous rocks, you know, fire

766
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:33,880
Speaker 1: formed rocks that are formed from molten rock cooling and

767
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: solidifying pretty quickly. You know, that often happens near the surface.

768
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: One common example would be basalt. Uh. The other word

769
00:44:43,160 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: was monomineralic. That means exactly what it sounds like, rocks

770
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 1: that are made of just one type of mineral. If

771
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,279
Speaker 1: the rock is a fanitic and monomineralic, they think it's

772
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: more likely that it could be polished down to this

773
00:44:54,719 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 1: reflective surface by people touching it over the years. Already, though,

774
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 1: I think we should know this is something we we

775
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:05,320
Speaker 1: sort of warned about earlier, the awkwardness of doing science

776
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 1: this way because listen to what's going on. They're having

777
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: to work from secondhand descriptions of the features of the

778
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:17,560
Speaker 1: stone without examining it themselves. So there's just a lot

779
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 1: of room for problems to creep into this kind of analysis.

780
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:23,880
Speaker 1: So we should definitely take their conclusions with a large grain,

781
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 1: large crystal grain of salt. Anyway, to continue, how about

782
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:31,280
Speaker 1: the color of the stone. Can that tell us anything

783
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 1: about it? Well, their description says, you know, it's called

784
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:37,960
Speaker 1: the black stone. The stones black, maybe even jet black.

785
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 1: Now they don't know whether black is the original color

786
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:45,360
Speaker 1: of the stone or whether it has turned black through handling,

787
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 1: because again, the mythic idea here is that it was

788
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 1: originally white and human sin has turned it black or

789
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:56,760
Speaker 1: mostly black. And this this on top of the differing

790
00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: opinions of just how black it actually is now referenced earlier. Yeah,

791
00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 1: and so back when this article was first published, the

792
00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:06,240
Speaker 1: author has managed to get in contact with the keeper

793
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:09,720
Speaker 1: of the Kaba, who in turn got a Muslim scholar

794
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:14,279
Speaker 1: named Mohammed alui Uh to offer a sort of concurrently

795
00:46:14,320 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 1: published reply that gives some theological and historical context to

796
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:23,320
Speaker 1: their article. And Uh and this scholar had among his claims,

797
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 1: I guess is the idea that the stone was originally white.

798
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 1: He goes with that idea, and he says, various descriptions

799
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: have called it quote whiter than snow, as white as silver,

800
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:37,000
Speaker 1: or charmingly as white as yogurt. And I guess they

801
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:39,720
Speaker 1: what they have in mind is not that gray purple

802
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 1: tricks yogurt that oh goodness, I forgot about tricks tricks

803
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 1: yogurt yogurt in name only, Why would you make gray yogurt?

804
00:46:50,760 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: That is a crime against nature. Yeah, yeah, I mean

805
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:55,920
Speaker 1: the fruit needs to stay on the bottom or is

806
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: added after the fact. It should It should not come

807
00:46:58,280 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 1: pre mixed. Okay, tricks. Tricks are for kids, I guess. Anyway,

808
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 1: one explanation for the change in color, if in fact

809
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 1: what happened is that it was originally white and it

810
00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:13,560
Speaker 1: darkened over time, is that whenever the pieces of the

811
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:18,359
Speaker 1: stone become loosened or dislodged from the inset over the years,

812
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:20,000
Speaker 1: you know, they started to come out of the cement

813
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:24,240
Speaker 1: they were reattached with this kind of putty or cement

814
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 1: made by kneading together wax, musk and amber grease. Yeah,

815
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:33,719
Speaker 1: and so exposure to this putty is said to have

816
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:37,439
Speaker 1: turned the stones black over the time over time, and

817
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:42,279
Speaker 1: supposedly the historian Iban Nafi al Kazi, while writing a

818
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: history of the Kabba, got to see the stone inset

819
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 1: completely exposed while the Kabba was being rebuilt, so out

820
00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:51,759
Speaker 1: of the frame where it's usually kept, and he reported

821
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:54,160
Speaker 1: that the part of the stone usually kept covered by

822
00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:57,640
Speaker 1: the wall, the part that's usually hidden is white. So

823
00:47:57,680 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: if he's correct about that, um, then it's not just

824
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 1: a jet black stone, but a white stone. That is

825
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 1: either black on one part that's exposed, or has turned

826
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:12,600
Speaker 1: black over time due to possibly multiple factors. But in

827
00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:15,919
Speaker 1: any case, if the stone were originally black, it could

828
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 1: be a type of stony meteorites, such as chondrite condrite

829
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:22,520
Speaker 1: as a stony meteorite. Um. And remember that the stony

830
00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:26,360
Speaker 1: meteorites different from that that solid metal sponge meteorite, the

831
00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: iron nickel meteorite. But then again, a chondrite meteorite probably

832
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: would not have been able to maintain it's quote hummocky

833
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 1: character with all those years of rubbing. So you put

834
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:40,960
Speaker 1: a stony meteorite in there, people touch it for a

835
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:44,920
Speaker 1: thousand years, it would get ground down. And the authors

836
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:47,680
Speaker 1: also say that a chondrite meteorite probably would not be

837
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:51,880
Speaker 1: described as having a mirror like reflective polish. Now here's

838
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:57,320
Speaker 1: one other option. How about a howardite meteorite. Good name again, um,

839
00:48:57,440 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 1: Howard It's the authors don't think it's going to be

840
00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 1: because Howards are very rare. They think it's an unlikely candidate. Also,

841
00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 1: Howard it tends to be light colored, and this would

842
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:10,359
Speaker 1: not fit in with an originally black cobba stone. But

843
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:13,239
Speaker 1: then it might fit if the original stories of original

844
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 1: whiteness are true. Uh so a little bit more, some

845
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 1: legends about the stone point to the possibility of it

846
00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:23,840
Speaker 1: being a sapphire or an amethyst, which is interesting, but

847
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:27,160
Speaker 1: the authors think neither of those minerals really fit. Sapphires

848
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:29,520
Speaker 1: are not big enough to be you know, the date

849
00:49:29,600 --> 00:49:34,560
Speaker 1: sized pebbles we see now, and uh and amethysts are

850
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:38,799
Speaker 1: they quote they say, quote too readily cleaved. I'm not

851
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 1: quite sure I understand why that would disqualify. Maybe they're

852
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 1: saying that that doesn't meet the hardness characteristics that just

853
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:47,360
Speaker 1: come apart. Yeah, because because again I have to have

854
00:49:47,360 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: a sweet spot here between something that is hard enough

855
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:56,560
Speaker 1: to withstand all that human erosion but also traction. Yeah. Uh,

856
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:59,319
Speaker 1: and so I I don't know. It sounds like what

857
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:02,120
Speaker 1: you would want is something that is readily cleaved but

858
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:05,000
Speaker 1: is not ground down by touching. Yeah. Maybe they mean

859
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:08,399
Speaker 1: it would have just it's just just too fragile. Maybe yeah,

860
00:50:08,440 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 1: it could be. So what do they conclude? While the

861
00:50:11,640 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 1: authors suggest the simplest explanation would be to think of

862
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:19,719
Speaker 1: visually attractive stones that are somewhat unusual but also not

863
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:24,239
Speaker 1: things that are considered precious, gems. So they say obsidian

864
00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: might fit, but they say it's too brittle and delicate

865
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:29,440
Speaker 1: to have survived the years of handling and abuse that

866
00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 1: the Cobba stone has. And in the end they settle

867
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:35,520
Speaker 1: on age. They think agged is the most likely candidate,

868
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:40,200
Speaker 1: especially black agg it. Why well, it's monomineralic. Uh, it's

869
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: hard a Mose scale seven, it's tough, and it's fine grained,

870
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:49,600
Speaker 1: meeting a fanitic in that fun word from earlier. So age,

871
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 1: when polished by years of rubbing, should also show a

872
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:56,919
Speaker 1: fairly reflective surface, you know, kind of mirror. Like one

873
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:59,000
Speaker 1: last thing that they sawed in their favor. They sighted

874
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:02,520
Speaker 1: an anonymous Arab geologist who went to view the stone

875
00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: for himself while he was on the Hajj, and the

876
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:09,879
Speaker 1: scholar said that he observed what's called diffusion banding within

877
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:13,640
Speaker 1: the Kabba stone. If you've ever looked inside a cross

878
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:15,799
Speaker 1: section of an aggot, you see these things that are

879
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:19,120
Speaker 1: kind of like tree rings, you know what I'm talking about,

880
00:51:19,400 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 1: And these are the band's diffusion banding. And the authors

881
00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:25,919
Speaker 1: claimed that this would be consistent with the stone being

882
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:30,879
Speaker 1: an agot um. One note is they seem absolutely unconcerned

883
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 1: with or unaware of the idea that the stone maybe

884
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 1: should float. Yes, and that's that's something that Elizabeth Thompson

885
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:42,040
Speaker 1: commented on when in her paper which came afterwards, she

886
00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 1: argued that that this choice, uh, the agot wouldn't wouldn't float,

887
00:51:47,160 --> 00:51:50,920
Speaker 1: and it also lacked a cosmic origin story. Now, now, personally,

888
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:54,320
Speaker 1: I think that last bit especially is short sighted, because

889
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:56,759
Speaker 1: I think human history shows us that an object or

890
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:00,200
Speaker 1: place need not be verifiably heaven touched to reson aid

891
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:03,839
Speaker 1: with with cosmic potency. Yeah, I'm not very convinced by

892
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:07,440
Speaker 1: that either. I don't see why you couldn't conclude that

893
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 1: a regular Earth rock was a supernatural gift from heaven,

894
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:13,719
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't literally have to come from space for

895
00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 1: people to venerate it as a gift from heaven. Yeah,

896
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:18,719
Speaker 1: Because I mean, essentially, you could boil it down to

897
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 1: two different ways of looking at this stone and it's

898
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:24,240
Speaker 1: in its origin. Either it was a really cool looking

899
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:27,880
Speaker 1: stone that someone came across and and it kind of

900
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:30,760
Speaker 1: went from there, or it was a perfectly normal stone

901
00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 1: but there was enough capital belief that was put into it,

902
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:38,160
Speaker 1: be it's something situational or just the right people saying

903
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:41,440
Speaker 1: this is this is it? This is tied to to

904
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 1: some something larger than ourselves. I mean, you can just

905
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:47,279
Speaker 1: look around your house and you can find examples of

906
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:50,400
Speaker 1: two of those things in action. Right Um, I have.

907
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: I'm on my desk right now, I have just a

908
00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:56,719
Speaker 1: normal like gravel pete rock. I don't know, probably came

909
00:52:56,719 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 1: from from asphalt or something. But my son brought it

910
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:01,719
Speaker 1: to me one day and say and wanted me to

911
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: keep it because it was special. It's not special, it

912
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: doesn't look special at all, but the fact that he

913
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:10,200
Speaker 1: gave that No, No, I took it in. For the

914
00:53:10,280 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: life of me, I can't quite get rid of it,

915
00:53:12,560 --> 00:53:16,560
Speaker 1: because because I have this small attachment to it, and likewise,

916
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: we all have various do dads around where that we have,

917
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: be it a stone or some minor decoration where we

918
00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:27,799
Speaker 1: just it just looks too interesting to get rid of. Well,

919
00:53:27,840 --> 00:53:31,000
Speaker 1: I think maybe now we should go to the next paper,

920
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:33,400
Speaker 1: the one we've been talking about several times already, that

921
00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:37,800
Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Thompson, who has a different theory about where

922
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:41,760
Speaker 1: this stone comes from. And her theory is an interesting hybrid,

923
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:44,200
Speaker 1: I think, or I guess we should say it's a hypothesis.

924
00:53:44,239 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 1: It's an interesting hybrid of the meteoric uh or the

925
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:53,319
Speaker 1: meteoritic origin story and UH and dealing with some of

926
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:56,640
Speaker 1: the problems with that. Right. So, as as you can

927
00:53:56,680 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 1: tell by that that earlier criticism she had, she put

928
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:02,320
Speaker 1: a lot of stock in the cosmic origin aspect that

929
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:08,280
Speaker 1: this is somehow connected to to a meteorite. Uh. However,

930
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 1: it need not be an actual meteorite. According to her theory,

931
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:16,240
Speaker 1: it could be uh what is known as impact tight glass.

932
00:54:17,560 --> 00:54:20,319
Speaker 1: So I've attached for Robert for you to look at

933
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:26,720
Speaker 1: here a couple of pictures of of wabar impact type glass.

934
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:29,400
Speaker 1: So cool looking. Yeah, wish I had some of this.

935
00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:31,879
Speaker 1: These look these look super cool. Yeah. And and there

936
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:33,880
Speaker 1: are there are examples of what maybe we'll try to

937
00:54:33,880 --> 00:54:36,600
Speaker 1: include some links to these images on the landing page

938
00:54:36,640 --> 00:54:38,160
Speaker 1: for this episode of Stuff to Build Your Mind dot

939
00:54:38,200 --> 00:54:41,400
Speaker 1: com um, because they are kind of how would you

940
00:54:41,440 --> 00:54:43,680
Speaker 1: describe them that I actually I was trying to think

941
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:45,879
Speaker 1: of the best way to put this. They don't look

942
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 1: like normal rocks. That do look again sort of like

943
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:51,280
Speaker 1: the iron meteorite. They look like something that could plausibly

944
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:54,239
Speaker 1: have come from a supernatural realm. It looks sort of

945
00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: like a fistful of cottage cheese was wrapped up in

946
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:03,600
Speaker 1: a bunch of seaweed, in a wad of seaweed, and

947
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:08,800
Speaker 1: then turned into stone. Which that sounds about right, Yeah,

948
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 1: essentially the idea here. I'll get into it more. But

949
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:16,120
Speaker 1: imagine what happens when a meteorite uh impact occurs in

950
00:55:16,160 --> 00:55:19,320
Speaker 1: a sandy region. All right, Okay, so there's silica sand,

951
00:55:19,600 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 1: and what happens when sand is heated up turns to glass? Yeah?

952
00:55:23,360 --> 00:55:27,520
Speaker 1: So Thompson points to the meteorite impact craters of a

953
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:31,840
Speaker 1: region known as Wabar. This is six eight four miles

954
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: or kilometers from Mecca, so it's reasonably close. It's in

955
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: the Ruble Collie Desert and here several iron meteorites have

956
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:45,360
Speaker 1: turned up. But the bedrock here is pure pale sandstone

957
00:55:45,400 --> 00:55:49,680
Speaker 1: composed mostly of quartz. Crater walls are composed of block

958
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:53,520
Speaker 1: glass that are formed from fuse silica and infused with

959
00:55:53,640 --> 00:55:58,319
Speaker 1: billions of sphere ules of of nickel and iron. So

960
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:01,600
Speaker 1: this is impact tight glass us. Yeah. And it occurs

961
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:05,719
Speaker 1: in in what they call porous bombs uh so, and

962
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:08,680
Speaker 1: often with a white interior and a glossy black shell,

963
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:13,360
Speaker 1: sometimes as black droplets. So she theorizes that the observed

964
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:16,480
Speaker 1: yellow white specks in the stone are remnants of glass

965
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:19,240
Speaker 1: and or sandstone, and that the hardness of the glass

966
00:56:19,400 --> 00:56:22,600
Speaker 1: would make it resistant to all that human erosion. Meanwhile,

967
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 1: the poorous nature of the glass would make it would

968
00:56:25,160 --> 00:56:28,399
Speaker 1: would make it float, and that the black color would

969
00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:31,920
Speaker 1: be due to the nicoliferous iron sphere rules captured from

970
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:35,000
Speaker 1: an explosion of nickel and iron. And she adds that

971
00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:38,320
Speaker 1: these qualities mash up with other examples of Wabbar glass,

972
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:41,960
Speaker 1: as well as reports of meteorites used as memorials to

973
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:44,760
Speaker 1: the prophet. Now, I think this is a really interesting theory.

974
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:48,440
Speaker 1: Uh may I might be sort of favoring it just

975
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 1: because I love the pictures of this impact type glass

976
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:54,839
Speaker 1: so much. It looks really cool. It looks so cool.

977
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:57,879
Speaker 1: I want this to be the answer. Yes, it it's

978
00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:00,239
Speaker 1: It very much matches up with that classification and of

979
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:03,440
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine somebody coming across this stone

980
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:07,080
Speaker 1: and realizing this looks really cool. What's the story of this.

981
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:11,520
Speaker 1: It's also I'm I'm persuaded, but not persuaded. I shouldn't

982
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:14,640
Speaker 1: say that I'm I'm unfairly biased by this being a

983
00:57:14,719 --> 00:57:19,280
Speaker 1: very geologically cool origin story that an object from the

984
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:24,400
Speaker 1: heavens came down and literally melted the earth to form

985
00:57:24,440 --> 00:57:29,120
Speaker 1: these these objects that later become objects of reverence. One

986
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 1: thing that's probably not necessarily I don't know, an influence,

987
00:57:33,320 --> 00:57:36,560
Speaker 1: but just a very interesting legendary parallel is the idea

988
00:57:36,720 --> 00:57:39,120
Speaker 1: of the destruction of the city of Iram of the

989
00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:43,720
Speaker 1: Pillars by fire from heaven. Yeah. I've seen this referred

990
00:57:43,720 --> 00:57:48,080
Speaker 1: to as the Atlantis of the Sands. Yeah, because it's

991
00:57:48,200 --> 00:57:50,400
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lost city. And I think it's

992
00:57:50,400 --> 00:57:53,120
Speaker 1: also called is it Ubar? Is that right? I'm not

993
00:57:53,120 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 1: sure I've seen it referred to it either I I

994
00:57:55,880 --> 00:57:58,880
Speaker 1: Ram with an eye or a Ram with an a

995
00:57:58,880 --> 00:58:01,200
Speaker 1: at least in the the copy of the Koran that

996
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 1: I was looking at, because it is mentioned in the

997
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:08,760
Speaker 1: Koran chapter eighty nine, verse six to fourteen. It reads,

998
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 1: hast thou not considered how thy Lord dealt with ad

999
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 1: of Aram, having lofty buildings, the like of which are

1000
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:18,560
Speaker 1: not created in the land, And of Famide, who hewed

1001
00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 1: out rocks in the valley, and the Pharaoh, the Lord

1002
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:24,000
Speaker 1: of Hosts, who exceeded limits in the cities and made

1003
00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:27,400
Speaker 1: great mischief therein so thy Lord poured on them a

1004
00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 1: portion of chastisement. Surely thy Lord is watchful. WHOA yeah, alright,

1005
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 1: So Thompson has made uh an interesting uh speculation here

1006
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:39,640
Speaker 1: that that it could be this impact type glass. But

1007
00:58:39,640 --> 00:58:42,720
Speaker 1: there was another scientific paper on it by H. J.

1008
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:46,560
Speaker 1: Asson published in the Journal of Material Science Letters in

1009
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:50,800
Speaker 1: nine two called the Blackstone of Kabba Suggestions as to

1010
00:58:50,880 --> 00:58:54,200
Speaker 1: its constitution, And he looks at the research we've already

1011
00:58:54,200 --> 00:58:57,640
Speaker 1: talked about and tries to draw some conclusions from it,

1012
00:58:57,800 --> 00:59:01,240
Speaker 1: critique it, and then offer some ideas of zone. So

1013
00:59:01,600 --> 00:59:04,880
Speaker 1: he reacts to to that original discussion of Dietz and

1014
00:59:04,960 --> 00:59:08,680
Speaker 1: McCone who said it was an agate, and so he says, okay,

1015
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:11,840
Speaker 1: their reasoning rests on some assumptions that the stone is

1016
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 1: jet black, that it's mirror like in reflective power, uh,

1017
00:59:15,840 --> 00:59:19,520
Speaker 1: and that it's got these apparent banded regions that there

1018
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:22,400
Speaker 1: that their friend the geologists saw when he went and

1019
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 1: visited it, that they attribute to diffusion banding. So it

1020
00:59:26,280 --> 00:59:30,840
Speaker 1: makes them think agat on this basis. They say that

1021
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:34,840
Speaker 1: it's not a stony meteorite of the chondrite variety because

1022
00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:37,880
Speaker 1: those crumble too easily and the word here is friable.

1023
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 1: They're too easily friable. Uh So they're looking for something

1024
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:45,080
Speaker 1: that's a fanitic and monomineralic, you remember that, And they

1025
00:59:45,120 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: conclude that it's ago. But Acton claims that even though

1026
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:51,919
Speaker 1: agat is readily available in the Middle East, he thinks

1027
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:54,840
Speaker 1: the authors overlooked the importance of the fact that the

1028
00:59:54,880 --> 00:59:59,880
Speaker 1: stone is a collection of pebble like fragments cemented together

1029
01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:04,920
Speaker 1: rather than a single stone with a well preserved hummocky surface.

1030
01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:07,640
Speaker 1: So he he thinks that they may be sort of

1031
01:00:07,920 --> 01:00:14,400
Speaker 1: um mistaking the textured appearance of this cemented together piece

1032
01:00:14,440 --> 01:00:18,880
Speaker 1: of pavement essentially for the surface of what a stone

1033
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:24,160
Speaker 1: itself should look like. And in defense of stony meteorites,

1034
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:28,520
Speaker 1: he says, okay, chondrites, those are stony meteorites actually vary

1035
01:00:28,560 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 1: a whole lot and exactly how crumbly they are, you know,

1036
01:00:32,200 --> 01:00:34,840
Speaker 1: some of them might be more crumbly than others. How

1037
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:38,480
Speaker 1: friable they are also, Accon says, you know, cond rites

1038
01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:42,640
Speaker 1: that have been subjected to what he calls extraterrestrial shock,

1039
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:46,600
Speaker 1: which is also the medical condition induced by watching the

1040
01:00:46,640 --> 01:00:49,960
Speaker 1: movie Mac and Me. He says, they quote tend to

1041
01:00:50,000 --> 01:00:55,080
Speaker 1: be compacted and contain dark veins which might be mistaken

1042
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:59,720
Speaker 1: for banding under unfavorable conditions of observation. So he says,

1043
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 1: you know, if you're just coming up at this thing

1044
01:01:02,080 --> 01:01:03,520
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day and you're trying to

1045
01:01:03,520 --> 01:01:07,760
Speaker 1: peek in at it, you might mistake these these veins

1046
01:01:07,880 --> 01:01:11,080
Speaker 1: that we would often see in certain types of condrites

1047
01:01:11,520 --> 01:01:13,760
Speaker 1: for the kind of banding you'd see in an agate.

1048
01:01:14,240 --> 01:01:17,640
Speaker 1: So that's in defense of it being a meteorite. On

1049
01:01:17,680 --> 01:01:21,920
Speaker 1: the other hand, against the condrite hypothesis, Accent says, Uh,

1050
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:25,840
Speaker 1: it's common for chondrites to have these metallic iron nickel

1051
01:01:26,200 --> 01:01:30,600
Speaker 1: pieces distributed evenly throughout, which should be obvious when you

1052
01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:33,160
Speaker 1: look at this thing. Uh, this is something that people

1053
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:36,040
Speaker 1: would have observed about it. On the other hand, he

1054
01:01:36,080 --> 01:01:39,760
Speaker 1: says that metal can disappear by way of oxidation i e.

1055
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:44,200
Speaker 1: Rusting if exposed to your earth weather for long periods

1056
01:01:44,200 --> 01:01:47,200
Speaker 1: of time. So it maybe maybe it's just rusting. But

1057
01:01:47,240 --> 01:01:49,760
Speaker 1: if this were the case, you'd expect to see rust,

1058
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:53,360
Speaker 1: you'd expect to see like a reddish you. Now that

1059
01:01:53,440 --> 01:01:57,480
Speaker 1: being said, there are some accounts have said brownish or reddish, yeah,

1060
01:01:57,600 --> 01:01:59,480
Speaker 1: and here we get back to the problem with like

1061
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:02,120
Speaker 1: come by all these different accounts that seem to differ

1062
01:02:02,160 --> 01:02:04,720
Speaker 1: from one another. Uh, it's hard to know which one

1063
01:02:04,800 --> 01:02:07,320
Speaker 1: to go on if you're trying to draw the best conclusions.

1064
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:09,919
Speaker 1: But yeah, I have seen that too. Some people say

1065
01:02:10,040 --> 01:02:14,960
Speaker 1: reddish brown, others say black. So that's a little confusing. Um.

1066
01:02:15,000 --> 01:02:18,040
Speaker 1: But also he says, we would expect to see in

1067
01:02:18,120 --> 01:02:22,680
Speaker 1: a chondrite quote light colored con drools of silicate So

1068
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:26,640
Speaker 1: what is that? Well, con drools are these visually striking,

1069
01:02:27,160 --> 01:02:31,760
Speaker 1: colorful spherical minerals that are found in some meteorites. You

1070
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:34,800
Speaker 1: should look this up. We could go Google search con drools.

1071
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:38,600
Speaker 1: They have a distinctive appearance and people would probably have

1072
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:41,840
Speaker 1: noticed and reported them if they'd been present in the stone,

1073
01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:46,840
Speaker 1: because they're these like colored spheres. You would see them.

1074
01:02:47,080 --> 01:02:51,800
Speaker 1: So Accent says, okay, okay, what about a carbonaceous meteorite.

1075
01:02:52,240 --> 01:02:55,520
Speaker 1: These are rare condrites that are low in density, they're

1076
01:02:55,560 --> 01:03:01,200
Speaker 1: free of obvious medical medical metal particles, and sometimes they

1077
01:03:01,240 --> 01:03:04,320
Speaker 1: don't have these big cond rules that are really obvious.

1078
01:03:04,880 --> 01:03:07,880
Speaker 1: But these are rare meteorites. They're not a major candidate,

1079
01:03:07,960 --> 01:03:10,160
Speaker 1: and Accent thinks maybe we should just keep them in

1080
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:12,800
Speaker 1: the back of the mind, you know. And we've had

1081
01:03:12,800 --> 01:03:16,440
Speaker 1: a two different authors here discussed like rarity being an issue.

1082
01:03:16,920 --> 01:03:20,800
Speaker 1: I keep thinking, though, we're talking about a rare stone,

1083
01:03:20,920 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: like you no, in no classification. It's not like black stone. Yeah,

1084
01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 1: like this is a singular stone. So can we really

1085
01:03:31,440 --> 01:03:34,440
Speaker 1: count out the possibility of rare meteorites? Well, I mean

1086
01:03:34,440 --> 01:03:38,480
Speaker 1: it just it lowers the probability that anybody in history

1087
01:03:38,520 --> 01:03:43,040
Speaker 1: would have found things, but it maybe increases the probability

1088
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:44,959
Speaker 1: that if they had found it, they would have kept

1089
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:48,280
Speaker 1: it and revered it. Um. So you're just sort of

1090
01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:54,000
Speaker 1: like adjusting the selection dials in two different ways. Um.

1091
01:03:54,200 --> 01:03:57,080
Speaker 1: What about Thompson's hypothesis. He comes to that, you know

1092
01:03:57,120 --> 01:04:00,760
Speaker 1: that it's this fused silical glass. There's an impact event

1093
01:04:00,800 --> 01:04:02,959
Speaker 1: in the sand and the desert, a bunch of sand

1094
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:06,720
Speaker 1: gets melted along with some pieces of the meteorite into

1095
01:04:06,720 --> 01:04:11,760
Speaker 1: these crazy wads of spinach and cottage cheese, uh turned

1096
01:04:11,800 --> 01:04:15,880
Speaker 1: into stone. Well. Thompson obviously, as we said, likes this

1097
01:04:15,960 --> 01:04:19,520
Speaker 1: hypothesis because it means the stone could feasibly float, and

1098
01:04:19,720 --> 01:04:22,320
Speaker 1: there are those stories from the past of it floating

1099
01:04:22,360 --> 01:04:26,640
Speaker 1: in brine or water or even concentrated brine, and this

1100
01:04:26,680 --> 01:04:30,040
Speaker 1: would this would also explain the white stone inside the

1101
01:04:30,080 --> 01:04:34,800
Speaker 1: black stone. Um. But Accent says, it's hard to see

1102
01:04:34,800 --> 01:04:39,040
Speaker 1: how a large peat piece of this impactite glass would

1103
01:04:39,080 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 1: form the smooth pebble shapes that are described by observers.

1104
01:04:43,040 --> 01:04:46,440
Speaker 1: Again back to what people say. You see these smooth pebbles,

1105
01:04:46,520 --> 01:04:49,320
Speaker 1: you know, no bigger than a date in in the cement.

1106
01:04:50,080 --> 01:04:51,960
Speaker 1: If you look at these things, Accent says, if the

1107
01:04:52,000 --> 01:04:55,760
Speaker 1: black stone fragments really are this fused silical glass from

1108
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:58,800
Speaker 1: an impact, they shouldn't look like these smooth pebbles. They

1109
01:04:58,800 --> 01:05:02,919
Speaker 1: should uh, they should have different surface features, including things

1110
01:05:02,960 --> 01:05:08,600
Speaker 1: like bubbles and vesicles. Um. And so one last thought

1111
01:05:08,600 --> 01:05:11,280
Speaker 1: he offers is, you know, perhaps the original body was

1112
01:05:11,320 --> 01:05:15,400
Speaker 1: what he calls a concreteation of pebbles. And so this

1113
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:19,480
Speaker 1: originally this original stone, when when it fractured, what it

1114
01:05:19,560 --> 01:05:21,840
Speaker 1: was was a bunch of pebbles stuck together and it

1115
01:05:21,960 --> 01:05:25,280
Speaker 1: was just the pebbles coming off, if that makes any sense.

1116
01:05:25,560 --> 01:05:28,120
Speaker 1: So if you imagine the original stone was not like

1117
01:05:28,160 --> 01:05:30,760
Speaker 1: a solid stone that broke into pieces and then the

1118
01:05:30,800 --> 01:05:34,760
Speaker 1: pieces got smoothed down, what if it was a solid

1119
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:38,440
Speaker 1: stone that was more like a cluster of grapes in shape,

1120
01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:41,680
Speaker 1: and he cites one example of a piece of lunar

1121
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:44,640
Speaker 1: material that had been hit by a shock media write

1122
01:05:44,680 --> 01:05:48,640
Speaker 1: bombardment that actually showed this type of this shape that

1123
01:05:48,720 --> 01:05:51,640
Speaker 1: it looked sort of like a cluster of grapes. And

1124
01:05:51,720 --> 01:05:56,760
Speaker 1: so that's one possibility in his mind. But ultimately he concludes,

1125
01:05:56,800 --> 01:05:59,680
Speaker 1: you know what, we don't know, and even though we've

1126
01:05:59,720 --> 01:06:03,000
Speaker 1: got better scientific knowledge to work with, we really need

1127
01:06:03,080 --> 01:06:06,240
Speaker 1: better access if we're going to make a conclusion, just

1128
01:06:06,320 --> 01:06:08,560
Speaker 1: better access to the primary data. We'd have to be

1129
01:06:08,640 --> 01:06:11,960
Speaker 1: able to look at this thing closely and make some measurements. Yeah.

1130
01:06:12,000 --> 01:06:13,920
Speaker 1: I really like that point that he made in the paper,

1131
01:06:14,040 --> 01:06:15,600
Speaker 1: saying that you know, even at the time it was

1132
01:06:15,600 --> 01:06:20,280
Speaker 1: this ad two, that the material sciences had advanced so much, uh,

1133
01:06:20,840 --> 01:06:23,640
Speaker 1: even from some of the previous studies in the prior decades,

1134
01:06:24,480 --> 01:06:28,320
Speaker 1: and yet our information about the black Stone itself has

1135
01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:34,280
Speaker 1: remained relatively the same. Uh, just you know, a few

1136
01:06:34,280 --> 01:06:38,880
Speaker 1: more subjective observations of what it consists of. But but

1137
01:06:38,880 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 1: but ultimately no new information, certainly no scientific, scientifically analytic information. Yeah.

1138
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:48,000
Speaker 1: That that is a good point. And I think one

1139
01:06:48,040 --> 01:06:52,520
Speaker 1: thing that I come away from this discussion with is Um.

1140
01:06:52,560 --> 01:06:57,040
Speaker 1: This attempt to investigate the material or geological character of

1141
01:06:57,040 --> 01:06:59,680
Speaker 1: of the black Stone strikes me as kind of similar

1142
01:07:00,240 --> 01:07:03,120
Speaker 1: to our episode from a couple of years ago, or

1143
01:07:03,160 --> 01:07:05,240
Speaker 1: I guess, let yeah, almost a couple of year and

1144
01:07:05,280 --> 01:07:07,360
Speaker 1: a half ago, maybe on the Will of the Wisp

1145
01:07:08,160 --> 01:07:11,000
Speaker 1: uh in the same way, it encapsulates some of the

1146
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:14,880
Speaker 1: difficulties of doing what you might call second hand science.

1147
01:07:15,400 --> 01:07:18,280
Speaker 1: In both cases, you've got scientists trying to apply their

1148
01:07:18,320 --> 01:07:22,920
Speaker 1: knowledge of natural phenomena to match this wide range of

1149
01:07:23,080 --> 01:07:27,480
Speaker 1: disparate subjective reports. Now, I think the reports of the

1150
01:07:28,120 --> 01:07:31,840
Speaker 1: black Stone of the Kabba are much more substantive than

1151
01:07:31,880 --> 01:07:33,640
Speaker 1: those of the Will of the Wisp. Obviously, in the

1152
01:07:33,640 --> 01:07:36,120
Speaker 1: case of the black Stone, it actually exists, and we

1153
01:07:36,160 --> 01:07:38,520
Speaker 1: know for a fact that it actually exists. It's not

1154
01:07:39,200 --> 01:07:43,480
Speaker 1: something that maybe people are just imagining. We know millions

1155
01:07:43,480 --> 01:07:45,560
Speaker 1: of people see it all the time. It's not an

1156
01:07:45,560 --> 01:07:49,800
Speaker 1: ephemeral phenomenon. It's like a thing that's there. It's widely observed,

1157
01:07:50,280 --> 01:07:53,360
Speaker 1: and we know that it's one unified phenomenon and not

1158
01:07:53,440 --> 01:07:57,960
Speaker 1: like different phenomena being reported under the same name. So

1159
01:07:58,200 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 1: these are all not the case for the Will of

1160
01:07:59,840 --> 01:08:02,200
Speaker 1: the Isp. But like the will of the whisp, we

1161
01:08:02,240 --> 01:08:05,720
Speaker 1: have to make judgments based on a host of variable

1162
01:08:05,840 --> 01:08:10,440
Speaker 1: descriptions and characteristics. What color is it? Different reports and

1163
01:08:10,520 --> 01:08:13,560
Speaker 1: different things. Are there flecks of other colors within it?

1164
01:08:13,720 --> 01:08:16,599
Speaker 1: What color was it originally? Does it float in water?

1165
01:08:17,000 --> 01:08:19,679
Speaker 1: How reflective is it? Even in the cases where there's

1166
01:08:19,720 --> 01:08:22,360
Speaker 1: only one major answer to these, sometimes we don't know

1167
01:08:22,479 --> 01:08:24,640
Speaker 1: if we should trust that answer or just throw out

1168
01:08:24,680 --> 01:08:27,800
Speaker 1: the question entirely. You know, does it float in water?

1169
01:08:28,080 --> 01:08:30,600
Speaker 1: Are our evidence that the stone floats in water? Is

1170
01:08:30,640 --> 01:08:33,559
Speaker 1: some report from a thousand years ago? Yeah? Like, should

1171
01:08:33,600 --> 01:08:36,360
Speaker 1: we give it? Give that more weight than the question, Well,

1172
01:08:36,479 --> 01:08:40,160
Speaker 1: could it conceivably you know, spout a mouth and start talking?

1173
01:08:40,560 --> 01:08:42,840
Speaker 1: You know, uh, you know, at what point you just

1174
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:44,639
Speaker 1: cut off and say, all right, we're only gonna We're

1175
01:08:44,680 --> 01:08:48,519
Speaker 1: only gonna look at these three qualities. What class of

1176
01:08:48,560 --> 01:08:55,240
Speaker 1: meteorite most commonly sprouts a tongue? I can't, I can't

1177
01:08:55,240 --> 01:08:57,880
Speaker 1: think I think of one offhand. We'll have to what

1178
01:08:58,000 --> 01:08:59,800
Speaker 1: we'll have to have to have to reach out to

1179
01:08:59,800 --> 01:09:03,000
Speaker 1: our audience on that one. Maybe the in meteorites. Yeah, well,

1180
01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:06,040
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you do make a distinction between um,

1181
01:09:06,080 --> 01:09:11,320
Speaker 1: you know, subjective religious beliefs and just subjective direct observational reports.

1182
01:09:11,320 --> 01:09:14,320
Speaker 1: Even the direct observational reports, they're giving us all this

1183
01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:18,000
Speaker 1: conflicting info, and and none of it's very solid. Like

1184
01:09:18,040 --> 01:09:20,360
Speaker 1: you you're you're not taking a measurement of it. You're

1185
01:09:20,400 --> 01:09:23,240
Speaker 1: just saying like, yeah, here's generally what I saw. But

1186
01:09:23,280 --> 01:09:26,920
Speaker 1: then there's one other interesting parallel, at least it seemed

1187
01:09:26,960 --> 01:09:31,759
Speaker 1: interesting to me here in talking about a religious object,

1188
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:34,800
Speaker 1: is that I think it's kind of funny how the

1189
01:09:34,840 --> 01:09:38,519
Speaker 1: practice of trying to do a geological or material science

1190
01:09:38,560 --> 01:09:43,560
Speaker 1: analysis on the black Stone based on these subjective descriptions

1191
01:09:44,360 --> 01:09:47,880
Speaker 1: almost reminds me of something that often happens in our

1192
01:09:47,920 --> 01:09:51,160
Speaker 1: faith traditions, which is the process of trying to draw

1193
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:55,679
Speaker 1: clarity of theology from just what amounts to a large

1194
01:09:55,720 --> 01:09:59,599
Speaker 1: collection of stories. You know. So when theologians of almost

1195
01:09:59,680 --> 01:10:03,360
Speaker 1: any religion try to come up with the systematic theology

1196
01:10:03,400 --> 01:10:06,720
Speaker 1: of that religion, the systematic theology being here are beliefs,

1197
01:10:06,760 --> 01:10:09,520
Speaker 1: here in the rules, here's what happens in the metaphysics

1198
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:13,920
Speaker 1: of our religion, essentially the science of the religion. Uh,

1199
01:10:13,960 --> 01:10:17,520
Speaker 1: they often have to draw these conclusions based on sources

1200
01:10:17,560 --> 01:10:20,360
Speaker 1: that are not originally written to be clear and systematic

1201
01:10:20,400 --> 01:10:25,360
Speaker 1: descriptions of rules and theological principles, but they're based on stories,

1202
01:10:26,200 --> 01:10:28,840
Speaker 1: and so you have to sift through the stories to

1203
01:10:28,880 --> 01:10:32,919
Speaker 1: try to pull out this clear, systematic understanding of it all. Anyway,

1204
01:10:32,960 --> 01:10:35,639
Speaker 1: I thought that was kind of interesting. No, No, I think, yeah,

1205
01:10:35,680 --> 01:10:39,280
Speaker 1: that's that's that's fair. It has a yeah, the idea

1206
01:10:39,320 --> 01:10:42,320
Speaker 1: of of taking all of these either tales or these

1207
01:10:42,360 --> 01:10:45,920
Speaker 1: accounts and trying to build something concrete out of it,

1208
01:10:46,240 --> 01:10:48,680
Speaker 1: or just to say what does it mean? Yeah, yeah,

1209
01:10:48,720 --> 01:10:50,920
Speaker 1: what is the what is the shape of this? Or indeed,

1210
01:10:50,960 --> 01:10:52,280
Speaker 1: what is the meaning of this? Well? What am I

1211
01:10:52,320 --> 01:10:56,760
Speaker 1: supposed to take home from this? Right? But it's but again,

1212
01:10:56,800 --> 01:11:00,560
Speaker 1: so it's fascinating to to look at these different scientific

1213
01:11:01,720 --> 01:11:06,000
Speaker 1: hypotheses about the black Stone. It's also interesting just to

1214
01:11:06,040 --> 01:11:11,000
Speaker 1: look at the history and in mythology surrounding it and

1215
01:11:11,000 --> 01:11:13,000
Speaker 1: try and figure out what that means as well. It's

1216
01:11:13,479 --> 01:11:16,880
Speaker 1: it's really an enigma on several different levels. And I

1217
01:11:16,920 --> 01:11:19,080
Speaker 1: hope that we've been able to relate some of that

1218
01:11:19,439 --> 01:11:22,759
Speaker 1: to you today. And on that note, hey, we're thinking

1219
01:11:22,760 --> 01:11:27,040
Speaker 1: about doing more episodes in this series looking at sacred

1220
01:11:27,080 --> 01:11:31,000
Speaker 1: places or objects, so we should throw out the question,

1221
01:11:31,560 --> 01:11:34,200
Speaker 1: what sacred objects or places would you like us to

1222
01:11:34,360 --> 01:11:36,080
Speaker 1: cover in the future. We already have a few ideas

1223
01:11:36,120 --> 01:11:39,920
Speaker 1: kicking around obviously, especially if there's some interesting scientific angle

1224
01:11:40,120 --> 01:11:42,439
Speaker 1: it can be discussed about it. One of the things

1225
01:11:42,479 --> 01:11:44,160
Speaker 1: that I might want to talk about in the future

1226
01:11:44,280 --> 01:11:48,920
Speaker 1: is is the Ganges. Oh, yes, that's a good one. Uh.

1227
01:11:49,240 --> 01:11:51,960
Speaker 1: More of an object than a place that comes to

1228
01:11:51,960 --> 01:11:54,679
Speaker 1: my mind, as of course the Ark of the Covenant. Um,

1229
01:11:54,720 --> 01:11:58,479
Speaker 1: it's like nothing we've gone after before. We should at

1230
01:11:58,560 --> 01:12:02,080
Speaker 1: least consider it u huh. But I'm sure there are

1231
01:12:02,120 --> 01:12:04,479
Speaker 1: some other examples out there that our listeners can think of,

1232
01:12:04,560 --> 01:12:06,639
Speaker 1: and certainly you can get in touch with us about those.

1233
01:12:08,200 --> 01:12:12,200
Speaker 1: And finally, you know, we've covered Islamic history, Islamic myth,

1234
01:12:12,400 --> 01:12:16,439
Speaker 1: Islamic scientific contributions on the show before and will again,

1235
01:12:16,960 --> 01:12:19,400
Speaker 1: and you know, it's all part of our shared global culture.

1236
01:12:19,439 --> 01:12:22,040
Speaker 1: And at the same time, we recognize that discussions of

1237
01:12:22,040 --> 01:12:25,320
Speaker 1: Islamic culture continue to resonate with particular potency in today's

1238
01:12:25,320 --> 01:12:29,200
Speaker 1: political climate. So we encourage everyone out there to expand

1239
01:12:29,200 --> 01:12:31,439
Speaker 1: their understanding of what it means to be a mussliment

1240
01:12:31,520 --> 01:12:34,360
Speaker 1: today society. And as the starting point, we just wanted

1241
01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:36,559
Speaker 1: to highlight two organizations you might want to check out.

1242
01:12:37,200 --> 01:12:41,360
Speaker 1: First off, there's Muslims for Progressive Values at www dot

1243
01:12:41,479 --> 01:12:44,479
Speaker 1: mp V USA dot org. This is a um a

1244
01:12:44,520 --> 01:12:48,600
Speaker 1: faith based, grassroots international human rights organization organization that embodies

1245
01:12:48,760 --> 01:12:52,960
Speaker 1: and advocates for the traditional chronic values of social justice

1246
01:12:52,960 --> 01:12:55,360
Speaker 1: and equality for all. In the twenty one century, so

1247
01:12:55,400 --> 01:12:58,639
Speaker 1: they championed such values as separation of religious and state authorities,

1248
01:12:58,680 --> 01:13:01,840
Speaker 1: freedom of speech you versaal, human rights, and gender equality.

1249
01:13:02,320 --> 01:13:04,960
Speaker 1: And another group is the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and

1250
01:13:05,040 --> 01:13:10,639
Speaker 1: Gender Diversity and that's at Muslim Alliance dot org. Uh So,

1251
01:13:11,160 --> 01:13:14,920
Speaker 1: they work to support, empower and connect lgb t Q Muslims.

1252
01:13:14,960 --> 01:13:18,480
Speaker 1: They seek to challenge root causes of oppression, including misogyny

1253
01:13:18,479 --> 01:13:21,200
Speaker 1: and xenophobia, and the aim to increase the acceptance of

1254
01:13:21,240 --> 01:13:24,799
Speaker 1: gender and sexual diversity within Muslim communities and to promote

1255
01:13:25,000 --> 01:13:28,400
Speaker 1: a progressive understanding of Islam that is centered on inclusion,

1256
01:13:28,479 --> 01:13:31,000
Speaker 1: justice and equality. Yeah. And one of the things that

1257
01:13:31,080 --> 01:13:34,800
Speaker 1: I hope always comes through UM whenever we talk about

1258
01:13:34,800 --> 01:13:37,559
Speaker 1: religions on this podcast, as we do fairly often because

1259
01:13:37,600 --> 01:13:41,439
Speaker 1: I think we all sort of find them very interesting, uh,

1260
01:13:41,600 --> 01:13:44,000
Speaker 1: is it can be very easy to talk about religions,

1261
01:13:44,080 --> 01:13:47,439
Speaker 1: especially a religion that you don't personally hold in ways

1262
01:13:47,560 --> 01:13:52,120
Speaker 1: that are sort of over generalized and overdetermined. Uh. And

1263
01:13:52,200 --> 01:13:54,400
Speaker 1: so one thing I hope you always take away from

1264
01:13:54,400 --> 01:13:58,640
Speaker 1: our discussions is is the incredible room for diversity of

1265
01:13:58,680 --> 01:14:02,320
Speaker 1: opinion the that exists within all these faith traditions around

1266
01:14:02,360 --> 01:14:04,320
Speaker 1: the world. Uh. There are a lot of ways to

1267
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:06,280
Speaker 1: be a Christian, a lot of ways to be a Muslim,

1268
01:14:06,320 --> 01:14:08,200
Speaker 1: a lot of ways to be a Hindu or Jew

1269
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Speaker 1: or anything. Indeed, and you know, I know we have

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Speaker 1: some Muslim listeners out there, So I'd love to hear

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Speaker 1: your thoughts on this. And certainly if you have gone

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Speaker 1: on the Hodge and you have seen the black Stone

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Speaker 1: with your own eyes or touched it with your with

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Speaker 1: your own body, Uh, we would love to hear your

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Speaker 1: account of that. Yeah, what was it like? What? What

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Speaker 1: what do you think? And what color is it? Really? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on that? You can find us

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01:14:33,080 --> 01:14:35,679
Speaker 1: online as always it's stuff to blow your mind. Dot

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01:14:35,720 --> 01:14:37,800
Speaker 1: com that is the mothership. That's where we'll find all

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Speaker 1: the podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, and links out to

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01:14:41,000 --> 01:14:44,040
Speaker 1: our various social media accounts, which is Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,

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01:14:44,360 --> 01:14:47,360
Speaker 1: Instagram it set, and if you want to get in

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01:14:47,400 --> 01:14:50,200
Speaker 1: touch with us directly, as always, you can email us

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01:14:50,240 --> 01:15:02,880
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

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01:15:05,360 --> 01:15:17,439
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com The pay big believe

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Speaker 1: I think by Man are doing