Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a good old
Speaker 1: archival episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one
Speaker 1: about the black Stone of Mecca. Yeah, this was a
Speaker 1: really fun episode because it allowed us to discuss uh
Speaker 1: Islam and Islamic culture, but also meteorites, yeah, impact heights.
Speaker 1: This one originally published February. We're gonna just launch right
Speaker 1: into it now, go on the journey with us. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Today
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking a little bit about religion, a
Speaker 1: little bit about geology, a little bit about about space
Speaker 1: and science. But I wanted to start off thinking about
Speaker 1: the idea of sacred places. For some reason, they're there
Speaker 1: are always central places that people want to go to
Speaker 1: and experience personally and stand in. All I think about
Speaker 1: the in the secular version, they're like, you know, museums
Speaker 1: and stuff like this. Oh yeah, when I went to
Speaker 1: the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I
Speaker 1: remember feeling a kind of church like sensation, even though
Speaker 1: those bonkers of people running all over and making all
Speaker 1: kinds of noise. Uh, I had this sense of like
Speaker 1: I'm in a special place. Oh yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: different place. Yes, well, I think I think museums are
Speaker 1: a great example because I feel the same way about
Speaker 1: the MET And absolutely yeah, like it's it's so fils
Speaker 1: like just you just as a place. It's very much
Speaker 1: the place of pilgrimage for individuals are interested in history
Speaker 1: and art and religion. And and then you go in
Speaker 1: and you have all of these pieces that themselves are
Speaker 1: from all of these distant sacred places and sacred times.
Speaker 1: Oh totally yeah, it's great. Like you get to go
Speaker 1: to the it's almost like the catch net for for
Speaker 1: sacred places throughout history. But when you go to a
Speaker 1: sacred place like this the you know, these places that
Speaker 1: have a history, I almost feel like you are you're
Speaker 1: playing on the same kind of awe that you might
Speaker 1: experience if you went to and believed in a haunted
Speaker 1: house that like that that some somehow a kind of
Speaker 1: energy has collected there over time and it it gives
Speaker 1: you this sense of the sense of being part of history.
Speaker 1: To be there. Yeah, I mean we we sort of
Speaker 1: map out our worlds with these with these pin points, uh,
Speaker 1: that that all the energy seems to converge around. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then when we visit those places, we're we're taking
Speaker 1: part in that energy. We have all these expectations, and
Speaker 1: then we're engaging in sort of the collective expectations of
Speaker 1: that place. Now, this is certainly something we've covered on
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow of Mind in the past, that being
Speaker 1: a Stendahl syndrome or Jerusalem syndrome, the idea where when
Speaker 1: someone finally visits one of these places that means a
Speaker 1: lot to them personally. Be it Jerusalem, uh, be it,
Speaker 1: in the case of today's episode, Mecca, or be it
Speaker 1: just a museum or to stand before a particular piece
Speaker 1: of art that that carries a lot of weight with you.
Speaker 1: You enter into it with all these expectations. Then you're
Speaker 1: finally there, and it can be overwhelming. It can be
Speaker 1: mentally overwhelming and physically overwhelming to actually be there at
Speaker 1: at this lynch pin of your life. Yeah, despite having
Speaker 1: lived in the world your whole life, suddenly you feel
Speaker 1: that you have connected with with again the sense of history,
Speaker 1: like here's a place that that will continue to be
Speaker 1: visited and written about and now I'm here. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: it could be an historical cathedral, it could be Stonehenge,
Speaker 1: it could be a restaurant that was used as a
Speaker 1: filming location from movie you like, but whatever it is, like,
Speaker 1: this is a place that that has value that seems
Speaker 1: to extend beyond your life. Now, of course we've been
Speaker 1: talking about you know, our our favorite secular examples, museums
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I'd say you probably have to amplify
Speaker 1: this feeling of importance connected to place, even more so
Speaker 1: for religious believers and the sites that are sacred to
Speaker 1: their personal religious beliefs. And of course one of the
Speaker 1: sites that is sacred to millions of people around the
Speaker 1: world will be found in Mecca in Saudi Arabia. That's right.
Speaker 1: As far as sacred places go, and the and the
Speaker 1: collective capital of belief that goes into attributing them as such,
Speaker 1: the Haram Mosque or the Grand Mosque in Mecca is
Speaker 1: easily one of the most sacred places on earth. Uh
Speaker 1: is one of the five pillars of Islam. Every able
Speaker 1: bodied Muslim has to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca,
Speaker 1: and this is known as the Hodge. On the way,
Speaker 1: you conduct a series of rituals, including the stoning of
Speaker 1: the devil in Mina, and finally you conduct seven revolution
Speaker 1: san's within the Haram Mosque circling the Holy Kabba building,
Speaker 1: which is this essentially, this this dark cube. It's featured
Speaker 1: in the art for this episode, and I'm sure everyone
Speaker 1: out there seeing the images of it. Of course, if
Speaker 1: you haven't, you should go look it up because you
Speaker 1: should have this in mind, this this dark stone building
Speaker 1: with with the tapestries draped on it versus from the Koran.
Speaker 1: And then at one corner of the building something very special. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the eastern exterior corner includes something that is known as
Speaker 1: the black Stone or the al Hajar alha squad. Uh.
Speaker 1: This uh, this, it's this is going to be the
Speaker 1: object that we're talking about here. As you pass it,
Speaker 1: you touch, you touch it, if you can, you kiss
Speaker 1: it if you can. If you can't reach it, you
Speaker 1: you point at it. But to touch the stone, it
Speaker 1: is said, is to enter into a contract with God.
Speaker 1: And I've seen translations that indicate that the black Stone
Speaker 1: itself is the right hand of God on Earth. Now,
Speaker 1: later in this episode, we're going to be exploring what
Speaker 1: the black Stone might be from a geological standpoint, what
Speaker 1: it's it's history and significance is within the religion. But
Speaker 1: I guess first maybe we should just take a look
Speaker 1: at the site itself at large, the Kabba. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Coba itself is a very holy place in Islamic tradition,
Speaker 1: and it's it's uh. We're gonna in all of this,
Speaker 1: as we do with any religion, We're gonna we discuss,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna sort of divide between the mythic history,
Speaker 1: the religious ideas of what this is and where it
Speaker 1: came from, as well as what we actually know from history.
Speaker 1: But according to uh, to tradition, the Kaaba was constructed
Speaker 1: by Abraham, and its four corners a line with the
Speaker 1: four compass points. It's made of great blocks of granite.
Speaker 1: But the the holy black stone itself burns with an
Speaker 1: even greater mysticism. So this black stone here, that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's set in this in cement and surrounded by
Speaker 1: silver here and again the eastern corner of the Cabba stone.
Speaker 1: It's not a single stone or at least, it's not
Speaker 1: actually a single stone anymore. Rather, it consists of eight
Speaker 1: pieces of various size, seemingly the same rock, seemingly the
Speaker 1: same origin, and they're submitted together surrounded by a silver frame.
Speaker 1: And the largest fragment is said to be about the
Speaker 1: size of a date. So that's not very big, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's these things go. So sometimes you just hear about
Speaker 1: the black stone eager to match something larger. I must
Speaker 1: say that I always thought before reading about this for
Speaker 1: for the episode today, that it was a single stone,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was sort of like one very
Speaker 1: large jet black stone. And the reason for that is
Speaker 1: that there are not very good pictures of it out there,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh, So you know, generally this is not
Speaker 1: something that people photograph very much. The photographs of it
Speaker 1: that do exist or kind of sometimes grainy or low
Speaker 1: quality or from a distance. Uh, there's just not ideal
Speaker 1: documentation conditions. But which is crazy, considering this is probably
Speaker 1: of the most viewed objects on the planet. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's it's something that you know, millions and millions of
Speaker 1: people have personally laid eyes on. But but it's very
Speaker 1: hard to find a good picture of it. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so what you see in most of these pictures is
Speaker 1: there is this silver It almost looks like a like
Speaker 1: a like a basin turned sideways or something. It's this
Speaker 1: silver collar that's built into the corner of the building.
Speaker 1: And then inside this silver bowl there is just this
Speaker 1: dark abyss. Generally is all you can see from the outside.
Speaker 1: So if I had to guess before I started reading
Speaker 1: the research on it what this was, I would think
Speaker 1: it was like a large piece of obsidian or something
Speaker 1: like that, just a large flat black surface that is
Speaker 1: is smooth and dark and people uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: people pass by and and touch it and kiss it.
Speaker 1: But no, it turns out that there's actually a good
Speaker 1: bit more texture going on inside, which makes identifying the
Speaker 1: geology of the of the black stone all the more interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the pieces that are set in the cement, they've
Speaker 1: been touched so many times they have there's a smoothness
Speaker 1: to them. Um, and uh, it's all the worth worth noting,
Speaker 1: like these are pieces of something that was once whole.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into that in a bit. Various authors
Speaker 1: have commented on it and tried to you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're varying figures that have come out over the years,
Speaker 1: over the centuries, really Westerners getting a glimpse of it,
Speaker 1: looking at it, trying to figure out how how big
Speaker 1: it is the pieces are now and how big it
Speaker 1: might have been when it was a one piece. Um.
Speaker 1: There is a paper by Elizabeth Thompson which we're gonna
Speaker 1: refer to several times here. She was from the University
Speaker 1: of Copenhagen. She wrote a paper in in Meteoritics in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty titled New Light on the Origin of the
Speaker 1: Holy Black Stone of the Kabba, and she did some
Speaker 1: some figuring here, and she says that the the possible
Speaker 1: original size of the stone would have been by twenty
Speaker 1: or nine eight inches by seven point eight by seven
Speaker 1: point eight, which would have made it what possibly about
Speaker 1: the size of a cantaloupe originally basically cannel And I
Speaker 1: rough estimate estimate here. I've never measured a cantaloupe. Robert Well,
Speaker 1: I I did some I was at home when I
Speaker 1: was doing this portion of the notes, and I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, how big is that? Let me think
Speaker 1: is that what fruit does that align with? And the
Speaker 1: best I can tell, possibly candaloupe? Uh fruit or um
Speaker 1: Islamic history esque experts may have may differ on that. Now,
Speaker 1: as for the color, this is another interesting thing because
Speaker 1: again you look at it, you just see darkness surrounded
Speaker 1: called the black stone. So what color is it? That
Speaker 1: is actually kind of difficult to decide on as well,
Speaker 1: because various accounts have described it as brownish black or
Speaker 1: blackish brown, or reddish black or deep reddish brown, and
Speaker 1: some accounts also speak to a coal like matrix to it.
Speaker 1: I think I've read that that was only one account
Speaker 1: that actually said at least one account yeah, then said
Speaker 1: coal like matrix, But most accounts point out that they're
Speaker 1: yellow spots pointed white crystals. There's also a possible interior
Speaker 1: that is described as gray, so it's not just this
Speaker 1: obsidian or charcoal like stone, but rather something that has
Speaker 1: you know, flex of other color in them. Right there
Speaker 1: there are these little pieces of yellow or white. And
Speaker 1: then there are also some reports that inside the stone
Speaker 1: it is white, or that like covered parts of the
Speaker 1: stone that are not exposed in the in the cemented,
Speaker 1: cemented paved surface are white. Another claim we should probably
Speaker 1: deal with because it does figure big into scientists trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what type of rock or mineral this is,
Speaker 1: is that it allegedly, according to very old reports, floats
Speaker 1: in water. Yes, this is this is something that comes
Speaker 1: up with time or two in the actual in the
Speaker 1: historical record of the stone where supposedly this was used
Speaker 1: to authenticated after it has been stolen in return. And
Speaker 1: we'll get into that story in a bit that was
Speaker 1: in like the tenth century. Yes, yeah, So the idea
Speaker 1: that they could tell it's the stone by placing it
Speaker 1: in water and seeing it would float, well, not many
Speaker 1: stones float, so that would be a unique identifier. But
Speaker 1: I guess that that does just depend on taking that
Speaker 1: story as accurate, right, And that's one of the that's
Speaker 1: one of the problems, the challenges, the tantalizing aspects of
Speaker 1: this whole exercise and discussing what this stone actually consists
Speaker 1: of from a scientific standpoint, because you're you're left to
Speaker 1: draw on all these varying accounts and very limited uh
Speaker 1: you know, observational data about the stone. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: one of the features of the stone. So one of
Speaker 1: the things about observing the stone that you have to
Speaker 1: understand is that it is sort of the mechanics of
Speaker 1: how the ritual the Kaba works. People are constantly circling
Speaker 1: this and there. You know, there might be thousands of
Speaker 1: people in there, all trying to get up to the
Speaker 1: stone to kiss it, or to point at it, or
Speaker 1: to touch it. And so you are not in a
Speaker 1: situation where you can sit there and look at it
Speaker 1: and take notes. Right. This is not a museum, right. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: it might be more like in the louver where you
Speaker 1: try to get a good look at the Mona Lisa,
Speaker 1: but there's just people cramming in from all sides and
Speaker 1: pushing you. I mean, I've read reports about people trying
Speaker 1: to get a good look at the stone and and
Speaker 1: they're they're always reports mentioning just the crowd pushing you along,
Speaker 1: not being able to get up close to it. Or
Speaker 1: they're also guards there, and sometimes guards will push you along,
Speaker 1: move you out of the way. Uh. You can sort
Speaker 1: of understand why, I mean that they don't want to
Speaker 1: have a case of crowd crush or something like that
Speaker 1: with the people there. Yeah. I mean, so you have
Speaker 1: and on top of all of this, you have your
Speaker 1: you're sort of religious expectations. You have the whole Stendahl
Speaker 1: syndrome coming into play here. As you're beholding it now, Robert,
Speaker 1: I think you had a couple of accounts you were
Speaker 1: reading of people talking about visiting the Kabba, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I tend to find the idea of early
Speaker 1: Westerners visiting Mecca and seeing the Kabba in the stone.
Speaker 1: I find those really fascinating. And so I just had
Speaker 1: had had mainly two here I wanted to to highlight.
Speaker 1: And there's a third one that that we end up
Speaker 1: referencing later. So the first one that to reference here,
Speaker 1: Swiss traveler and Arabic speaker Johann Ludwig Burkhardt, visited Mecca
Speaker 1: in eighteen fourteen, so he was very much an Arabic
Speaker 1: speaker enthusiast. He was he converted to Islam. This is
Speaker 1: also the guy who rediscovered the ruins of Petra, which
Speaker 1: if you're if you're if you're still foggy on what
Speaker 1: Petra is, think to what Indiana Jones in the last
Speaker 1: year said that is that the treasury building of Petra,
Speaker 1: that's the one set in the cliff fool. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: tomb of the grail. There were not the tomb, the
Speaker 1: resting place, the booby trap place, Yes, the booby trap
Speaker 1: place with the with the with all the grail stuff.
Speaker 1: In reality, of course, that is Petra and does not
Speaker 1: have booby trap, does not have boot traps. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the most notable individuals, one of one of my
Speaker 1: favorites to visit Mecca in early times as a Westerner
Speaker 1: is Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He visited in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, and Burton was also allegedly a convert to
Speaker 1: Islam and earlier possible convert to Hinduism. He's a difficult
Speaker 1: guy to pin down and it sounds like I'm being
Speaker 1: vague here. So he spoke twenty five distinct languages, not
Speaker 1: counting dialects. He was something of a bisexual, hedonist, a
Speaker 1: spy and explore. He was endlessly fascinated with other cultures, languages,
Speaker 1: modes of human sexuality. And he's probably some commentators classify
Speaker 1: him more as an atheist, but his exploration into Hinduism
Speaker 1: and Islam are are often referred to his conversions. Like
Speaker 1: he didn't just study them, he became them. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that that's kind of my my my read on him,
Speaker 1: Like here's a guy who learned all these languages, and
Speaker 1: in using these languages, you kind of have to change
Speaker 1: the way your brain operates, and even to fake, like
Speaker 1: even just to if you were to assume, okay, someone
Speaker 1: like Burton, um they just faked Islamic belief in order
Speaker 1: to go on the hodge like to fake that, you
Speaker 1: would still have to be so versed in a deep
Speaker 1: understanding of the culture the rights entailed there, Like your
Speaker 1: cover would be so deep. How would you keep it
Speaker 1: from overcoming you? I mean, in one sense it almost
Speaker 1: you almost want to say that to fully understand someone
Speaker 1: else's religion, you almost have to be able to mentally
Speaker 1: convert to it, and kind of hypothetical sense to like
Speaker 1: to try to see what it looks like from the inside, right,
Speaker 1: And then at the same time, like Burton again as
Speaker 1: fascinating character, we can't get to everything he did here,
Speaker 1: but he wrote a lot about his his travels and
Speaker 1: his ideas and his his observations, and at times too
Speaker 1: he kind of waffles back and forth. Sometimes he sounds
Speaker 1: you know, very much uh, you know, at one with
Speaker 1: his lam and and and intrigued by it. Other times
Speaker 1: he still still see some of that English colonial um
Speaker 1: mentality rising to the surface, and he sounds a bit dismissive,
Speaker 1: Like I said, very very fascinating guy. Difficult guy to
Speaker 1: to nail down. But here's a quick quote from his
Speaker 1: writings about beholding the stone. He said, after thus reaching
Speaker 1: the stone, despite popular indignation, testified by impatient shouts, we
Speaker 1: monopolize the use of it for at least ten minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is quite a lot. When you see the crowd
Speaker 1: pictures right whilst kissing it and rubbing hands and forehead
Speaker 1: upon it. I narrowly observed it and came away persuaded
Speaker 1: that it is an aerial light. Other travelers, including Burkhardt,
Speaker 1: had thought it volcanic in origin. Right, So here we're
Speaker 1: starting to get to the question of what the stone
Speaker 1: is geologically. A lot of commentators throughout the years have
Speaker 1: assumed that it was that it was lava of some
Speaker 1: kind of basalt, things like that. But here's the idea
Speaker 1: that it's an aero light, that it is a type
Speaker 1: of meteorite, a space rock. Right. And to understand why
Speaker 1: this idea is so appealing, we have to discuss the
Speaker 1: mythic the religious history of the stone a little bit.
Speaker 1: So if you if you dive into Islamic tradition and
Speaker 1: Islamic belief. There's a basic kind of a Damic origin
Speaker 1: story and play here. So depending on how you interpret
Speaker 1: this origin story, the black Stone dates back to either
Speaker 1: Abraham or Adam, the first created human. So one interpretation
Speaker 1: is that Adam built the first Kaba on earth, and
Speaker 1: here he sat on a white stone okay, a stone
Speaker 1: that turned black with the all of man. And the
Speaker 1: first Kaba was then destroyed in the Great Flood, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until later that Abraham was tasked with rebuilding
Speaker 1: it or building the first cabin, depending on the telling.
Speaker 1: H Another idea here is that this was a meteorite
Speaker 1: brought to Abraham by the archangel Gabriel from the mountain
Speaker 1: side where it had fallen, or that it originally was
Speaker 1: one of the stars of Paradise. Yeah. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons they're they're kind of varying takes on this
Speaker 1: is because the black Stone, as I understand it, is
Speaker 1: not actually mentioned in the Koran. It is uh. It
Speaker 1: comes from additional Islamic sources and just sort of traditions.
Speaker 1: To me, that's always some of the most interesting things
Speaker 1: you find in any religion is the stuff that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily straight in the middle of the cannon, but but
Speaker 1: not necessarily out of the mainstream cannon either. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like it comes from additional traditional material the the
Speaker 1: you know, the metadata of the religion, right. I think
Speaker 1: we've touched on this before, discussions of of heaven, hell,
Speaker 1: and purgatory in Christian and Catholic traditions and where those
Speaker 1: ideas come from, because certainly, if you're looking for a
Speaker 1: strict definition of those things within the older New Testament, uh,
Speaker 1: those details are not really forthcoming. No, you get a
Speaker 1: few hints, but you're not going to find Dante in
Speaker 1: the Bible right now. In terms of what the stone does.
Speaker 1: Already mentioned that it's it's it's considered the right hand
Speaker 1: of God. To touch it is to enter into a
Speaker 1: contract with God, and there are additional powers that have
Speaker 1: been attributed to it. Oh, and I believe this comes
Speaker 1: from the writings of one Heinrich von Maltson Well visited
Speaker 1: this the Mecca as well in eighteen fifty eight, coming
Speaker 1: after the two individuals we already mentioned. Yes, supposedly so
Speaker 1: so von maltzon Um. I want to be careful about
Speaker 1: citing him because he strikes me as perhaps unreliable and
Speaker 1: definitely unsympathetic. Like he wrote this eighteen sixty five book
Speaker 1: in German called Mina walfartnc Mecha, which means My Pilgrimage
Speaker 1: to Mecca. The books in German. I've not found an
Speaker 1: official published translation, but using Google Translate, I did a
Speaker 1: little uh looking through this book and he um, he
Speaker 1: strikes me as an sort of unsympathetic and perhaps uncomprehending outsider.
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't use him as a as a very
Speaker 1: reliable account of what the people on the Hajj in
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century we're actually believing. But he at
Speaker 1: least claims, possibly wrongly, that the Pilgrims at the time
Speaker 1: believed that it was impossible to destroy the Kabba and
Speaker 1: the and impossible to destroy the black Stone itself. Uh
Speaker 1: so he said that you know, they were attributing these
Speaker 1: miraculous powers to it. Now I know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: within every religion there's always going to be plenty of
Speaker 1: diversity of opinion and different ideas. But I know one
Speaker 1: strong tradition, and it's mom probably not adhered to by
Speaker 1: all Muslims, is the idea that you know that that
Speaker 1: there aren't miraculous objects you know that that that essentially
Speaker 1: people aren't going to do miracles for you. Objects aren't
Speaker 1: going to be miraculous. But if this account of is correct,
Speaker 1: there are at least some slightly miraculous uh properties attributed
Speaker 1: to the stone at some points in history. But then again,
Speaker 1: as I say, this guy kind seems like a jerk
Speaker 1: and like he's maybe not understanding things correctly, Like he
Speaker 1: seems disgusted by the rituals. He doesn't at one point
Speaker 1: he's like, I had to go and kiss the stone,
Speaker 1: and he calls it the monster, So he's he's perhaps
Speaker 1: not looking at the stone from the perspective of of
Speaker 1: an outsider who has converted to it to Islam and
Speaker 1: is fully uh fully accepting any of the ideas and
Speaker 1: traditions around it. Yeah, or even just trying for the
Speaker 1: sake of understanding, to get into that headspace and what
Speaker 1: what does this mean to the insider, to the believer.
Speaker 1: And then as far as the future is concerned, there
Speaker 1: are tales that are on the Day of Judgment, uh,
Speaker 1: it is said that the stone will grow eyes, mouth,
Speaker 1: and tongue, and that it will see and speak, and
Speaker 1: it will witness in favor of all those who touched
Speaker 1: it with sincere hearts, which I think is wow, quite
Speaker 1: a visual that one kind of gives me a chill bumps.
Speaker 1: The idea of the stone sort of becoming this floating
Speaker 1: face that then speaks on behalf to God of those
Speaker 1: who actually touched it and entered into that contract with
Speaker 1: with with it not just a mouth but a tongue.
Speaker 1: That's good. Well, maybe we should take a break, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then when we do, we can discuss a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the supposed history of this stone and
Speaker 1: then get into some of the geological ideas about what
Speaker 1: it is and where it came from. Than alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So the stone, the black Stone here, it actually predates Islam.
Speaker 1: So it was it was there when Mohammed the Prophet
Speaker 1: came into Mecca. And this is the fact that's acknowledged
Speaker 1: by Islamic tradition, not contrary to it. Right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty settled as far as I
Speaker 1: understand it. So in Persian legend it was supposedly a
Speaker 1: symbol of the planet Saturn. That was a tip that
Speaker 1: I read in a Brewer's dictionary phrase and fable. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Oliver C. Farrington's writings. In nineteen hundred, he
Speaker 1: wrote an article that the worship and folklore of Meteorites.
Speaker 1: He says that the worship of the stone by Arabian
Speaker 1: tribes is first spoken spoken of by Greek writers of
Speaker 1: early times, and that the Kabba definitely existed as a
Speaker 1: as a shrine as early as two hundred CE, and
Speaker 1: the black Stone was part of it. So this would
Speaker 1: have been, you know, a shrine that entailed venerated objects
Speaker 1: div ooted to different deities and among them was the
Speaker 1: black Stone. Yeah, and so like having idols there, like
Speaker 1: I know, part of the Islamic tradition is the idea
Speaker 1: of removing the idols from the Kaba, right right, And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened in UH six thirty C. That's
Speaker 1: when when the prophet entered Mecca, purged the Kabba of idols,
Speaker 1: reportedly destroying something like three three hundred sixty idols. But
Speaker 1: as often is the case with holy places in history,
Speaker 1: the Kaaba and the stone retained their sacred aspects. We
Speaker 1: see this in Islamic history all the time as well,
Speaker 1: such as the function of the Greek Parthenon as a
Speaker 1: mosque during Ottoman occupation. This was something I really didn't
Speaker 1: know a lot of a lot about until recently when
Speaker 1: I attended a talk at at Emory University. How they
Speaker 1: you had? They had it was converted into a mosque
Speaker 1: the Parthenon, and then when the Parthenon was put was
Speaker 1: partially destroyed, you had sort of the gutted Parthenon, and
Speaker 1: in the at all they had this, uh, this this
Speaker 1: kind of cubicle mosque that actually reminds one a little
Speaker 1: bit of the Kabba. Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. I've never
Speaker 1: heard that before. Now, there was a lot of turmoil
Speaker 1: even during Mohammed's life. Mohammed lived five seventies through six
Speaker 1: thirty two, and the Kabo was was burnt during this time,
Speaker 1: and this may have caused some of the fragmentation that
Speaker 1: we see. That's the thing. We don't know exactly when
Speaker 1: this fragmentation of the of the stone occurred. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: history of the uh, the stone as an object becoming
Speaker 1: many objects does seem kind of fuzzy. Like there's this
Speaker 1: general idea that it was once a single stone or
Speaker 1: fewer number of stones, and then broke into smaller parts,
Speaker 1: and then now there are apparently fewer visible pebbles in
Speaker 1: the stone than there were, say in the nineteenth century, right.
Speaker 1: And one of the ideas here is that that the
Speaker 1: pieces could either have been removed or lost, or they
Speaker 1: could still be there. We just can't see all that
Speaker 1: well because a we can't really see the stone fragments
Speaker 1: all that well anyway, where they might be partially obscured
Speaker 1: by the by the cement and the silver and repeated
Speaker 1: attempts to you know, hold everything together. So what were
Speaker 1: the circumstances under which it was burned? So this was
Speaker 1: during the civil war between the caliph Abd al Malik
Speaker 1: and Iban Zubar, who controlled Mecca at the time the
Speaker 1: Kaba was set on fire. This would have been in
Speaker 1: six eight three and report by some accounts, the black
Speaker 1: Stone broke into three pieces and then was reassembled with silver.
Speaker 1: So that's a that's an opportunity, let's say, for the
Speaker 1: stone to have been broken certainly. Um. Now, another opportunity
Speaker 1: that comes up is in nine thirty and that's when
Speaker 1: Mecca was sacked by the Carmathians led by Abu Terar
Speaker 1: al Janabi, who apparently used the hag as an excuse
Speaker 1: uh to demand entry into the city with his troops. Now,
Speaker 1: a number of you're probably wanting, well, who are the Karmathians. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were an heretical sect of Islam that considered the
Speaker 1: Koran allegory. They refuted various rights and entailed a mix
Speaker 1: of uh of of of Islamic and Persian mysticism. They
Speaker 1: sacked and looted Mecca, They desecrated holy sites. They mascuared
Speaker 1: pilgrims around the Kaba, and removed the black Stone and
Speaker 1: took it out of Mecca, apparently in hopes of moving
Speaker 1: the destination of the Hojj to Hajar in what we
Speaker 1: now call Bahrain. So they were trying to get everybody
Speaker 1: to come to them from now on. That That is
Speaker 1: the that that is how I understand it. Yeah, based
Speaker 1: on the material I was reading, Um, this ended up
Speaker 1: not working all that well. And uh, I mean it's
Speaker 1: worth it's also worth noting here that of course history
Speaker 1: is written by the victors, so you know to what
Speaker 1: extended some of this color by the fact that the
Speaker 1: that even though the Carmatheans were very powerful at the time,
Speaker 1: they ended up fading into history. So they tried to
Speaker 1: change the point of the hodge didn't work. The black
Speaker 1: Stone is a return to Mecca around or nine fifty two,
Speaker 1: but for a hefty ransom fee. Well, now, hold on
Speaker 1: a second, how do you know it's really the stone
Speaker 1: when you return it. Well, you've got to test its buoyancy, right,
Speaker 1: You've got to see if it floats in water, and
Speaker 1: apparently it did. So that's where this idea comes from,
Speaker 1: right in the tenth century, that that this was returned,
Speaker 1: and one thing that was known about the stone somehow
Speaker 1: was that it would float in water. Yes, and some
Speaker 1: accounts indicate that it was returned and of shattered into pieces.
Speaker 1: So whether it was whether it was shattered during extraction
Speaker 1: or during the return, that's kind of you know, up
Speaker 1: in the air. Now, there's a an additional account that
Speaker 1: is sometimes brought up as a as a possible incident
Speaker 1: in which it was shattered, and that's around ten fifty
Speaker 1: the caliph Al Hakim byam and Allah allegedly sent an
Speaker 1: agent to smash the stone, but this only inflicted slight
Speaker 1: damage and the agent was killed on the spot. Who's
Speaker 1: to say, I only found one account where someone was
Speaker 1: speculating on the nature of the stone, who thought that
Speaker 1: this might have been an incident that could have resulted
Speaker 1: in serious damage, and the details on these accounts were
Speaker 1: from Mecca, a Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land
Speaker 1: by Francis E. Peters. So if any of these didn't
Speaker 1: do the trick, though, there was also a six flood
Speaker 1: that toppled three of the Cabal walls, so that also
Speaker 1: could have contributed to the fracturing of the black Stone. Right. So,
Speaker 1: if you have a you have an object that is
Speaker 1: susceptible to damage and it plays such a vital role
Speaker 1: for such a long period of time, Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's there's there's a high possibility it's gonna result in damage.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the other things we should mention
Speaker 1: is that this is a stone that you can quite
Speaker 1: well expect to be undergoing a certain amount of wear
Speaker 1: and tear, with millions of people from around the world
Speaker 1: coming to this stone and trying to touch it and
Speaker 1: kiss it. Um, I mean, there is there's all. There's
Speaker 1: all manner of which, uh, you know, handling of things
Speaker 1: leads to their deterioration over time, even if you think
Speaker 1: you're being gentle. I mean, there's a reason museums don't
Speaker 1: let you touch stuff, right, Like, what if what if
Speaker 1: the statue of David. What if everyone got to touch David. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that would that would erode the statue over time.
Speaker 1: And certains and certainly accounts of the black stone indicate
Speaker 1: that there is a certain amount of erosion that has
Speaker 1: taken place, a smoothing of the stones from all of that,
Speaker 1: all of those human touches, all of those kisses, all
Speaker 1: of that, you know, the oil from from human skin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but one can imagine that, I don't know, all manner
Speaker 1: of various handling, touching and stuff like that could also
Speaker 1: maybe have contributed to fracturing. I mean, it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to be a highly destructive event. Uh, even gentle caresses
Speaker 1: over the centuries can add up. Indeed. All right, and
Speaker 1: that basically brings us up to modern times. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss the possible scientific origins of the stone.
Speaker 1: What is it? Where did it come from? And how
Speaker 1: how limited are we in our ability to answer that question?
Speaker 1: Than all right, we're back. So we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about scientific inquiry into the geologic nature of the black
Speaker 1: Stone of the Kabba. What what kind of rock is it?
Speaker 1: Did it come from space, did it come from Earth?
Speaker 1: What's it made of? And there's one thing we should
Speaker 1: note at the outset here, which is that it is
Speaker 1: hard to know the answer to this question because the
Speaker 1: rock has not been removed to a scientific lab where
Speaker 1: you can do tests on it. This is one of
Speaker 1: these strange situations where people are trying to do science
Speaker 1: from a distance, sort of through the intermediary of people's
Speaker 1: subjective accounts. Right we have, scientists have not examined the
Speaker 1: black Stone, and really scientists are probably not going to
Speaker 1: get to analyze the black Stone at any point in
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future. Uh, Like I kind of have to
Speaker 1: think of sci fi scenarios in which the black Stone
Speaker 1: could possibly be analyzed. It's uh, it's it's They're simply like,
Speaker 1: why would you do it? Why would you allow it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Why why would you submit it for scientific analysis? There?
Speaker 1: Because because there's really nothing quite like the black Stone
Speaker 1: in any other religious tradition that I can think of.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, an object that is so central, like
Speaker 1: literally central to the belief system. Like the closest thing
Speaker 1: I can think of in Christian and specifically Catholic traditions
Speaker 1: is the shroud of Turin. But even that, it's not
Speaker 1: you know, I would not say the shout of turn
Speaker 1: as an article of faith or or you know, in
Speaker 1: any way associated with a pillar of Christianity. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are definitely in other religions holy objects, holy sites, but
Speaker 1: I feel like nothing as central as this and as
Speaker 1: as hard to get at, because because as hard to
Speaker 1: get out in a in a scrutinizing way, obviously it's
Speaker 1: not hard to get at just in general, and that,
Speaker 1: like we said, millions of people go in touch and
Speaker 1: look at this thing, but you can't remove it, you
Speaker 1: can't take it away with you, and you can't spend
Speaker 1: some time scrutinizing it. Right, So we end up with
Speaker 1: it was generally intellectuals geologists looking at a pictures such
Speaker 1: as they are looking at sketches, analyzing descriptions of it,
Speaker 1: and then using their knowledge of material science is to
Speaker 1: try and figure out what it can be, which can
Speaker 1: be very interesting. So one of the standard things this
Speaker 1: is probably not a very interesting hypothesis, but for you know,
Speaker 1: years people have said, well, it's probably some kind of
Speaker 1: lava or basalt something like that. Uh, generally, now people
Speaker 1: don't think that's the answer. Uh So. Another one of
Speaker 1: the main theories that's been offered over the years is
Speaker 1: that the Blackstone is meteoritic in origin, that it came
Speaker 1: from space. And you know, it makes sense, right because
Speaker 1: this this aligns with the cosmic origins that are presented
Speaker 1: in a mythic history as a gift of a primordial God.
Speaker 1: What better origin than outer space? Right, And there's also
Speaker 1: a long history of two important factors here, one the
Speaker 1: worship or at least veneration of meteorites and to the
Speaker 1: use of meteor media meteoric iron. Now, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of Muslims would probably want to emphasize the distinction
Speaker 1: that the Kabba Stone is not something that is worshiped,
Speaker 1: but it's a more like symbolic object that is, uh
Speaker 1: that is playing a role in what they would describe
Speaker 1: as their relationship with God. But even if the object
Speaker 1: is not itself a point of worship, you can easily
Speaker 1: see how objects that fall from space would take on
Speaker 1: some kind of sacred or venerable dimension. Yeah. Like, one
Speaker 1: cool example of this is that Native Americans from the
Speaker 1: Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ruined Community of Oregon continue
Speaker 1: to make annual ceremonial visits to the famous Willamette meteorite
Speaker 1: at the American Museum of Natural History. Yeah. So, while
Speaker 1: scientists believe the rock is the the iron core of
Speaker 1: a shattered planet, uh, the Clackamas tribes people knew it
Speaker 1: as tom and Owa's a representative of the sky people
Speaker 1: and a source of healing and cleansing. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of this meteorite, and you should, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like something that was sent by the gods.
Speaker 1: Of course it does. This thing looks insanean it's got
Speaker 1: these caverns in it. Robert, do you know what it
Speaker 1: looks like. I've seen pictures. Yes, it looks like you
Speaker 1: get a sense of topography, like it's a maze, or
Speaker 1: even like a little of former living thing. There are
Speaker 1: like coral aspects to it. Yes, it looks like a
Speaker 1: large piece of iron. Uh, parts of which have come
Speaker 1: alive and slithered away. Now the iron is interesting too,
Speaker 1: because that comes back to this, this use of meteoric iron. So,
Speaker 1: before mining technology allowed for the ready harvesting of iron ore,
Speaker 1: one of the few sources of this durable metal was
Speaker 1: the was bits of it that plummeted from the sky
Speaker 1: in the form of the meteorites. The ancient Egyptians knew
Speaker 1: about it. They dubbed black copper. That's a cool name
Speaker 1: it is. It's very very very cool. Uh. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's generally spread then across vast distances. You're
Speaker 1: gonna find little bits of fit here and there. So
Speaker 1: it was a rare commodity. You could not cannot arm
Speaker 1: an army with it, correct, you could, Yeah, you couldn't
Speaker 1: make enough swords for an army, but you could make
Speaker 1: if you scratch, scratch enough of it together, you could
Speaker 1: make a single sword and it would have you know,
Speaker 1: obviously would have holier or at least um, you know,
Speaker 1: ceremonial significance. Um. So this this relegated most meteoric iron
Speaker 1: creations to the realm of decorative or significance or ceremony.
Speaker 1: In fact, in Islamic history, the seventh century Caliphs were
Speaker 1: said to have brandish swords made from meteoric iron, while
Speaker 1: such iconic figures as a Till of the Hun and
Speaker 1: tamer Lane reportedly wielded other cosmic blades against their enemies.
Speaker 1: And you know, also their bowls, plows and stirrups that
Speaker 1: have been observed to have been made from it as well.
Speaker 1: So maybe sometimes you just ended up making what you
Speaker 1: needed out of the iron, But for the most part
Speaker 1: it tended to take on a sacred significance. Weapons from space, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that should be a whole episd so it on its
Speaker 1: own sometimes could be is there enough there? Could we
Speaker 1: do it? Weapons from space? I mean, has anybody ever
Speaker 1: tried to make like a like a I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh what do you call it? A morning star? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Why would you make a morning star out
Speaker 1: of it when you can make a sword? Terry Pratchett,
Speaker 1: by the way, before he died, I believe had obtained
Speaker 1: a sword made from er o'kirn. Know what I meant
Speaker 1: was make a morning star with a moon rock? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I like the idea. Yeah, who does that mean? If
Speaker 1: you have to be brain to death with a medieval
Speaker 1: blunt weapon, why not? Why not? Moon rock makes it
Speaker 1: a little special. So it's easy to fall into this thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, it's a meteorite. Maybe it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: meteoric iron, and that's why all this, uh this, uh,
Speaker 1: the significance is given to it. However, as Thompson points
Speaker 1: out we mentioned her, We mentioned her earlier, Elizabeth Thompson. Yes,
Speaker 1: as she points out, this isn't necessarily a slam dunk theory.
Speaker 1: And iron meteorite, she wrote, would not break into fragments,
Speaker 1: nor would it float in water because it is a
Speaker 1: piece of iron and so, but that doesn't alule out
Speaker 1: all meteorites. There's also the idea that it's a stony
Speaker 1: meteor rite. But it would a stony meteorite float in water?
Speaker 1: Would it be able to withstand centuries of human erosion? Um?
Speaker 1: Probably not. Yeah. So here I think we should actually
Speaker 1: get into a few of the papers that have been
Speaker 1: published on this subject. Uh. And the first big one
Speaker 1: and that tried to get at the after after the
Speaker 1: meteorite theory had been dominant for a long time in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. The first one that I think really
Speaker 1: tried to dig in and and look at the descriptions
Speaker 1: and figure out what it would what it could be
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy four in the journal Meteoritics. And
Speaker 1: so they're looking at it and saying, okay, pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody thinks this thing is a meteorite. Are they onto
Speaker 1: something or are they wrong, and this was by Robert
Speaker 1: Diaz and John McCoy own And in this paper, Dietz
Speaker 1: and McCone argued that the Kabba Stone, the black stone,
Speaker 1: is probably not a meteorite but an agate. So why
Speaker 1: do they get to age it. Well, let's follow them
Speaker 1: through their reasoning. So first of all, they say, the
Speaker 1: fact that it appears to have been cracked and fractured,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, Robert sort of rules out the
Speaker 1: possibility that it's a nickel iron meteorite. You you've seen
Speaker 1: these types of meteorites before that are that are essentially
Speaker 1: like a big metal sponge. You know, if you have
Speaker 1: tripped to phobia, these things really should set you off
Speaker 1: with these patterns of holes. But a nickel iron meteorite,
Speaker 1: it's not brittle like most earth rocks. It's more like
Speaker 1: a piece of metal. Un Thus, we would not expect
Speaker 1: to see a meteorite like this with a crack or
Speaker 1: cracked into multiple pieces. But they say, okay, well, maybe
Speaker 1: it could be a stony meteorite. There's a different kind
Speaker 1: of meteorite. It's more like earth rocks. And from description
Speaker 1: and the stone they say is quote hummocky and muscled
Speaker 1: so what does this mean and why is it relevant? Well, hummocky,
Speaker 1: that's not just like a cute British word or something
Speaker 1: that does kind of sound like, you know, lord hummocky twizzled.
Speaker 1: I was thinking it sounds like a great description for
Speaker 1: for a wine. It's like, what do you what do
Speaker 1: you think of this particular Wine's? Okay, well it's it's
Speaker 1: it's hummocky and and muscled, well muscled wine. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: notes of elderberry. Uh yeah, So hummocky actually means something
Speaker 1: in geology. It means highly uneven or irregular in surface.
Speaker 1: So they say, you know, literally millions of people have
Speaker 1: touched this thing over the centuries, and yet they haven't
Speaker 1: worn away these apparent irregular features of the surface of
Speaker 1: the stone. So for that to be the case, the
Speaker 1: authors suggests that the stone needs to have a pretty
Speaker 1: good Mose scale rating, which they estimate should be a
Speaker 1: minimum of a seven. So you know about the mo
Speaker 1: A scale, right, That's that's how you answer no mo
Speaker 1: m o H. The most scale geological hardness scale. It's
Speaker 1: how you rate how hard is it? You want to
Speaker 1: know how hard it is? You give a most scale rating.
Speaker 1: Um and a ten on the most scale is a
Speaker 1: diamond that's super hard. I think. I think talc is
Speaker 1: like a one or two. A seven is quartz. So
Speaker 1: they think for this thing to have withstood all of
Speaker 1: the touching and kissing over the years and still have
Speaker 1: this uneven, hummocky surface, it needs to be at least
Speaker 1: a seven on the most scale, So that gives them
Speaker 1: one clue to work with. Another conclusion from the descriptions
Speaker 1: is that the black stone supposedly has this highly reflective
Speaker 1: almost mirror like polish. You know, you can you can
Speaker 1: put your makeup on in it. I would advise against
Speaker 1: doing that now, I don't know. People probably would not
Speaker 1: have the patience for that. Uh no, and you probably
Speaker 1: actually couldn't. It's uh it's but they say that it
Speaker 1: is almost mirroral like, it's highly reflective. Um and they
Speaker 1: claim that this indicates the stone must be a fanitic
Speaker 1: and monomineralic. Oh god, more terminology. So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: A Ponitic is a geology term that means very fine
Speaker 1: grained minerals, So a fanitic rocks are those where you
Speaker 1: can't see the individual mineral crystals with the naked eye
Speaker 1: and This usually happens in igneous rocks, you know, fire
Speaker 1: formed rocks that are formed from molten rock cooling and
Speaker 1: solidifying pretty quickly. You know, that often happens near the surface.
Speaker 1: One common example would be basalt. Uh. The other word
Speaker 1: was monomineralic. That means exactly what it sounds like, rocks
Speaker 1: that are made of just one type of mineral. If
Speaker 1: the rock is a fanitic and monomineralic, they think it's
Speaker 1: more likely that it could be polished down to this
Speaker 1: reflective surface by people touching it over the years. Already, though,
Speaker 1: I think we should know this is something we we
Speaker 1: sort of warned about earlier, the awkwardness of doing science
Speaker 1: this way because listen to what's going on. They're having
Speaker 1: to work from secondhand descriptions of the features of the
Speaker 1: stone without examining it themselves. So there's just a lot
Speaker 1: of room for problems to creep into this kind of analysis.
Speaker 1: So we should definitely take their conclusions with a large grain,
Speaker 1: large crystal grain of salt. Anyway, to continue, how about
Speaker 1: the color of the stone. Can that tell us anything
Speaker 1: about it? Well, their description says, you know, it's called
Speaker 1: the black stone. The stones black, maybe even jet black.
Speaker 1: Now they don't know whether black is the original color
Speaker 1: of the stone or whether it has turned black through handling,
Speaker 1: because again, the mythic idea here is that it was
Speaker 1: originally white and human sin has turned it black or
Speaker 1: mostly black. And this this on top of the differing
Speaker 1: opinions of just how black it actually is now referenced earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so back when this article was first published, the
Speaker 1: author has managed to get in contact with the keeper
Speaker 1: of the Kaba, who in turn got a Muslim scholar
Speaker 1: named Mohammed alui Uh to offer a sort of concurrently
Speaker 1: published reply that gives some theological and historical context to
Speaker 1: their article. And Uh and this scholar had among his claims,
Speaker 1: I guess is the idea that the stone was originally white.
Speaker 1: He goes with that idea, and he says, various descriptions
Speaker 1: have called it quote whiter than snow, as white as silver,
Speaker 1: or charmingly as white as yogurt. And I guess they
Speaker 1: what they have in mind is not that gray purple
Speaker 1: tricks yogurt that oh goodness, I forgot about tricks tricks
Speaker 1: yogurt yogurt in name only, Why would you make gray yogurt?
Speaker 1: That is a crime against nature. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the fruit needs to stay on the bottom or is
Speaker 1: added after the fact. It should It should not come
Speaker 1: pre mixed. Okay, tricks. Tricks are for kids, I guess. Anyway,
Speaker 1: one explanation for the change in color, if in fact
Speaker 1: what happened is that it was originally white and it
Speaker 1: darkened over time, is that whenever the pieces of the
Speaker 1: stone become loosened or dislodged from the inset over the years,
Speaker 1: you know, they started to come out of the cement
Speaker 1: they were reattached with this kind of putty or cement
Speaker 1: made by kneading together wax, musk and amber grease. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so exposure to this putty is said to have
Speaker 1: turned the stones black over the time over time, and
Speaker 1: supposedly the historian Iban Nafi al Kazi, while writing a
Speaker 1: history of the Kabba, got to see the stone inset
Speaker 1: completely exposed while the Kabba was being rebuilt, so out
Speaker 1: of the frame where it's usually kept, and he reported
Speaker 1: that the part of the stone usually kept covered by
Speaker 1: the wall, the part that's usually hidden is white. So
Speaker 1: if he's correct about that, um, then it's not just
Speaker 1: a jet black stone, but a white stone. That is
Speaker 1: either black on one part that's exposed, or has turned
Speaker 1: black over time due to possibly multiple factors. But in
Speaker 1: any case, if the stone were originally black, it could
Speaker 1: be a type of stony meteorites, such as chondrite condrite
Speaker 1: as a stony meteorite. Um. And remember that the stony
Speaker 1: meteorites different from that that solid metal sponge meteorite, the
Speaker 1: iron nickel meteorite. But then again, a chondrite meteorite probably
Speaker 1: would not have been able to maintain it's quote hummocky
Speaker 1: character with all those years of rubbing. So you put
Speaker 1: a stony meteorite in there, people touch it for a
Speaker 1: thousand years, it would get ground down. And the authors
Speaker 1: also say that a chondrite meteorite probably would not be
Speaker 1: described as having a mirror like reflective polish. Now here's
Speaker 1: one other option. How about a howardite meteorite. Good name again, um,
Speaker 1: Howard It's the authors don't think it's going to be
Speaker 1: because Howards are very rare. They think it's an unlikely candidate. Also,
Speaker 1: Howard it tends to be light colored, and this would
Speaker 1: not fit in with an originally black cobba stone. But
Speaker 1: then it might fit if the original stories of original
Speaker 1: whiteness are true. Uh so a little bit more, some
Speaker 1: legends about the stone point to the possibility of it
Speaker 1: being a sapphire or an amethyst, which is interesting, but
Speaker 1: the authors think neither of those minerals really fit. Sapphires
Speaker 1: are not big enough to be you know, the date
Speaker 1: sized pebbles we see now, and uh and amethysts are
Speaker 1: they quote they say, quote too readily cleaved. I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure I understand why that would disqualify. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: saying that that doesn't meet the hardness characteristics that just
Speaker 1: come apart. Yeah, because because again I have to have
Speaker 1: a sweet spot here between something that is hard enough
Speaker 1: to withstand all that human erosion but also traction. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so I I don't know. It sounds like what
Speaker 1: you would want is something that is readily cleaved but
Speaker 1: is not ground down by touching. Yeah. Maybe they mean
Speaker 1: it would have just it's just just too fragile. Maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be. So what do they conclude? While the
Speaker 1: authors suggest the simplest explanation would be to think of
Speaker 1: visually attractive stones that are somewhat unusual but also not
Speaker 1: things that are considered precious, gems. So they say obsidian
Speaker 1: might fit, but they say it's too brittle and delicate
Speaker 1: to have survived the years of handling and abuse that
Speaker 1: the Cobba stone has. And in the end they settle
Speaker 1: on age. They think agged is the most likely candidate,
Speaker 1: especially black agg it. Why well, it's monomineralic. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: hard a Mose scale seven, it's tough, and it's fine grained,
Speaker 1: meeting a fanitic in that fun word from earlier. So age,
Speaker 1: when polished by years of rubbing, should also show a
Speaker 1: fairly reflective surface, you know, kind of mirror. Like one
Speaker 1: last thing that they sawed in their favor. They sighted
Speaker 1: an anonymous Arab geologist who went to view the stone
Speaker 1: for himself while he was on the Hajj, and the
Speaker 1: scholar said that he observed what's called diffusion banding within
Speaker 1: the Kabba stone. If you've ever looked inside a cross
Speaker 1: section of an aggot, you see these things that are
Speaker 1: kind of like tree rings, you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: And these are the band's diffusion banding. And the authors
Speaker 1: claimed that this would be consistent with the stone being
Speaker 1: an agot um. One note is they seem absolutely unconcerned
Speaker 1: with or unaware of the idea that the stone maybe
Speaker 1: should float. Yes, and that's that's something that Elizabeth Thompson
Speaker 1: commented on when in her paper which came afterwards, she
Speaker 1: argued that that this choice, uh, the agot wouldn't wouldn't float,
Speaker 1: and it also lacked a cosmic origin story. Now, now, personally,
Speaker 1: I think that last bit especially is short sighted, because
Speaker 1: I think human history shows us that an object or
Speaker 1: place need not be verifiably heaven touched to reson aid
Speaker 1: with with cosmic potency. Yeah, I'm not very convinced by
Speaker 1: that either. I don't see why you couldn't conclude that
Speaker 1: a regular Earth rock was a supernatural gift from heaven,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't literally have to come from space for
Speaker 1: people to venerate it as a gift from heaven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because I mean, essentially, you could boil it down to
Speaker 1: two different ways of looking at this stone and it's
Speaker 1: in its origin. Either it was a really cool looking
Speaker 1: stone that someone came across and and it kind of
Speaker 1: went from there, or it was a perfectly normal stone
Speaker 1: but there was enough capital belief that was put into it,
Speaker 1: be it's something situational or just the right people saying
Speaker 1: this is this is it? This is tied to to
Speaker 1: some something larger than ourselves. I mean, you can just
Speaker 1: look around your house and you can find examples of
Speaker 1: two of those things in action. Right Um, I have.
Speaker 1: I'm on my desk right now, I have just a
Speaker 1: normal like gravel pete rock. I don't know, probably came
Speaker 1: from from asphalt or something. But my son brought it
Speaker 1: to me one day and say and wanted me to
Speaker 1: keep it because it was special. It's not special, it
Speaker 1: doesn't look special at all, but the fact that he
Speaker 1: gave that No, No, I took it in. For the
Speaker 1: life of me, I can't quite get rid of it,
Speaker 1: because because I have this small attachment to it, and likewise,
Speaker 1: we all have various do dads around where that we have,
Speaker 1: be it a stone or some minor decoration where we
Speaker 1: just it just looks too interesting to get rid of. Well,
Speaker 1: I think maybe now we should go to the next paper,
Speaker 1: the one we've been talking about several times already, that
Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Thompson, who has a different theory about where
Speaker 1: this stone comes from. And her theory is an interesting hybrid,
Speaker 1: I think, or I guess we should say it's a hypothesis.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting hybrid of the meteoric uh or the
Speaker 1: meteoritic origin story and UH and dealing with some of
Speaker 1: the problems with that. Right. So, as as you can
Speaker 1: tell by that that earlier criticism she had, she put
Speaker 1: a lot of stock in the cosmic origin aspect that
Speaker 1: this is somehow connected to to a meteorite. Uh. However,
Speaker 1: it need not be an actual meteorite. According to her theory,
Speaker 1: it could be uh what is known as impact tight glass.
Speaker 1: So I've attached for Robert for you to look at
Speaker 1: here a couple of pictures of of wabar impact type glass.
Speaker 1: So cool looking. Yeah, wish I had some of this.
Speaker 1: These look these look super cool. Yeah. And and there
Speaker 1: are there are examples of what maybe we'll try to
Speaker 1: include some links to these images on the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode of Stuff to Build Your Mind dot
Speaker 1: com um, because they are kind of how would you
Speaker 1: describe them that I actually I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of the best way to put this. They don't look
Speaker 1: like normal rocks. That do look again sort of like
Speaker 1: the iron meteorite. They look like something that could plausibly
Speaker 1: have come from a supernatural realm. It looks sort of
Speaker 1: like a fistful of cottage cheese was wrapped up in
Speaker 1: a bunch of seaweed, in a wad of seaweed, and
Speaker 1: then turned into stone. Which that sounds about right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: essentially the idea here. I'll get into it more. But
Speaker 1: imagine what happens when a meteorite uh impact occurs in
Speaker 1: a sandy region. All right, Okay, so there's silica sand,
Speaker 1: and what happens when sand is heated up turns to glass? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So Thompson points to the meteorite impact craters of a
Speaker 1: region known as Wabar. This is six eight four miles
Speaker 1: or kilometers from Mecca, so it's reasonably close. It's in
Speaker 1: the Ruble Collie Desert and here several iron meteorites have
Speaker 1: turned up. But the bedrock here is pure pale sandstone
Speaker 1: composed mostly of quartz. Crater walls are composed of block
Speaker 1: glass that are formed from fuse silica and infused with
Speaker 1: billions of sphere ules of of nickel and iron. So
Speaker 1: this is impact tight glass us. Yeah. And it occurs
Speaker 1: in in what they call porous bombs uh so, and
Speaker 1: often with a white interior and a glossy black shell,
Speaker 1: sometimes as black droplets. So she theorizes that the observed
Speaker 1: yellow white specks in the stone are remnants of glass
Speaker 1: and or sandstone, and that the hardness of the glass
Speaker 1: would make it resistant to all that human erosion. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the poorous nature of the glass would make it would
Speaker 1: would make it float, and that the black color would
Speaker 1: be due to the nicoliferous iron sphere rules captured from
Speaker 1: an explosion of nickel and iron. And she adds that
Speaker 1: these qualities mash up with other examples of Wabbar glass,
Speaker 1: as well as reports of meteorites used as memorials to
Speaker 1: the prophet. Now, I think this is a really interesting theory.
Speaker 1: Uh may I might be sort of favoring it just
Speaker 1: because I love the pictures of this impact type glass
Speaker 1: so much. It looks really cool. It looks so cool.
Speaker 1: I want this to be the answer. Yes, it it's
Speaker 1: It very much matches up with that classification and of
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine somebody coming across this stone
Speaker 1: and realizing this looks really cool. What's the story of this.
Speaker 1: It's also I'm I'm persuaded, but not persuaded. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say that I'm I'm unfairly biased by this being a
Speaker 1: very geologically cool origin story that an object from the
Speaker 1: heavens came down and literally melted the earth to form
Speaker 1: these these objects that later become objects of reverence. One
Speaker 1: thing that's probably not necessarily I don't know, an influence,
Speaker 1: but just a very interesting legendary parallel is the idea
Speaker 1: of the destruction of the city of Iram of the
Speaker 1: Pillars by fire from heaven. Yeah. I've seen this referred
Speaker 1: to as the Atlantis of the Sands. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lost city. And I think it's
Speaker 1: also called is it Ubar? Is that right? I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I've seen it referred to it either I I
Speaker 1: Ram with an eye or a Ram with an a
Speaker 1: at least in the the copy of the Koran that
Speaker 1: I was looking at, because it is mentioned in the
Speaker 1: Koran chapter eighty nine, verse six to fourteen. It reads,
Speaker 1: hast thou not considered how thy Lord dealt with ad
Speaker 1: of Aram, having lofty buildings, the like of which are
Speaker 1: not created in the land, And of Famide, who hewed
Speaker 1: out rocks in the valley, and the Pharaoh, the Lord
Speaker 1: of Hosts, who exceeded limits in the cities and made
Speaker 1: great mischief therein so thy Lord poured on them a
Speaker 1: portion of chastisement. Surely thy Lord is watchful. WHOA yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So Thompson has made uh an interesting uh speculation here
Speaker 1: that that it could be this impact type glass. But
Speaker 1: there was another scientific paper on it by H. J.
Speaker 1: Asson published in the Journal of Material Science Letters in
Speaker 1: nine two called the Blackstone of Kabba Suggestions as to
Speaker 1: its constitution, And he looks at the research we've already
Speaker 1: talked about and tries to draw some conclusions from it,
Speaker 1: critique it, and then offer some ideas of zone. So
Speaker 1: he reacts to to that original discussion of Dietz and
Speaker 1: McCone who said it was an agate, and so he says, okay,
Speaker 1: their reasoning rests on some assumptions that the stone is
Speaker 1: jet black, that it's mirror like in reflective power, uh,
Speaker 1: and that it's got these apparent banded regions that there
Speaker 1: that their friend the geologists saw when he went and
Speaker 1: visited it, that they attribute to diffusion banding. So it
Speaker 1: makes them think agat on this basis. They say that
Speaker 1: it's not a stony meteorite of the chondrite variety because
Speaker 1: those crumble too easily and the word here is friable.
Speaker 1: They're too easily friable. Uh So they're looking for something
Speaker 1: that's a fanitic and monomineralic, you remember that, And they
Speaker 1: conclude that it's ago. But Acton claims that even though
Speaker 1: agat is readily available in the Middle East, he thinks
Speaker 1: the authors overlooked the importance of the fact that the
Speaker 1: stone is a collection of pebble like fragments cemented together
Speaker 1: rather than a single stone with a well preserved hummocky surface.
Speaker 1: So he he thinks that they may be sort of
Speaker 1: um mistaking the textured appearance of this cemented together piece
Speaker 1: of pavement essentially for the surface of what a stone
Speaker 1: itself should look like. And in defense of stony meteorites,
Speaker 1: he says, okay, chondrites, those are stony meteorites actually vary
Speaker 1: a whole lot and exactly how crumbly they are, you know,
Speaker 1: some of them might be more crumbly than others. How
Speaker 1: friable they are also, Accon says, you know, cond rites
Speaker 1: that have been subjected to what he calls extraterrestrial shock,
Speaker 1: which is also the medical condition induced by watching the
Speaker 1: movie Mac and Me. He says, they quote tend to
Speaker 1: be compacted and contain dark veins which might be mistaken
Speaker 1: for banding under unfavorable conditions of observation. So he says,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're just coming up at this thing
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day and you're trying to
Speaker 1: peek in at it, you might mistake these these veins
Speaker 1: that we would often see in certain types of condrites
Speaker 1: for the kind of banding you'd see in an agate.
Speaker 1: So that's in defense of it being a meteorite. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, against the condrite hypothesis, Accent says, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's common for chondrites to have these metallic iron nickel
Speaker 1: pieces distributed evenly throughout, which should be obvious when you
Speaker 1: look at this thing. Uh, this is something that people
Speaker 1: would have observed about it. On the other hand, he
Speaker 1: says that metal can disappear by way of oxidation i e.
Speaker 1: Rusting if exposed to your earth weather for long periods
Speaker 1: of time. So it maybe maybe it's just rusting. But
Speaker 1: if this were the case, you'd expect to see rust,
Speaker 1: you'd expect to see like a reddish you. Now that
Speaker 1: being said, there are some accounts have said brownish or reddish, yeah,
Speaker 1: and here we get back to the problem with like
Speaker 1: come by all these different accounts that seem to differ
Speaker 1: from one another. Uh, it's hard to know which one
Speaker 1: to go on if you're trying to draw the best conclusions.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I have seen that too. Some people say
Speaker 1: reddish brown, others say black. So that's a little confusing. Um.
Speaker 1: But also he says, we would expect to see in
Speaker 1: a chondrite quote light colored con drools of silicate So
Speaker 1: what is that? Well, con drools are these visually striking,
Speaker 1: colorful spherical minerals that are found in some meteorites. You
Speaker 1: should look this up. We could go Google search con drools.
Speaker 1: They have a distinctive appearance and people would probably have
Speaker 1: noticed and reported them if they'd been present in the stone,
Speaker 1: because they're these like colored spheres. You would see them.
Speaker 1: So Accent says, okay, okay, what about a carbonaceous meteorite.
Speaker 1: These are rare condrites that are low in density, they're
Speaker 1: free of obvious medical medical metal particles, and sometimes they
Speaker 1: don't have these big cond rules that are really obvious.
Speaker 1: But these are rare meteorites. They're not a major candidate,
Speaker 1: and Accent thinks maybe we should just keep them in
Speaker 1: the back of the mind, you know. And we've had
Speaker 1: a two different authors here discussed like rarity being an issue.
Speaker 1: I keep thinking, though, we're talking about a rare stone,
Speaker 1: like you no, in no classification. It's not like black stone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is a singular stone. So can we really
Speaker 1: count out the possibility of rare meteorites? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it just it lowers the probability that anybody in history
Speaker 1: would have found things, but it maybe increases the probability
Speaker 1: that if they had found it, they would have kept
Speaker 1: it and revered it. Um. So you're just sort of
Speaker 1: like adjusting the selection dials in two different ways. Um.
Speaker 1: What about Thompson's hypothesis. He comes to that, you know
Speaker 1: that it's this fused silical glass. There's an impact event
Speaker 1: in the sand and the desert, a bunch of sand
Speaker 1: gets melted along with some pieces of the meteorite into
Speaker 1: these crazy wads of spinach and cottage cheese, uh turned
Speaker 1: into stone. Well. Thompson obviously, as we said, likes this
Speaker 1: hypothesis because it means the stone could feasibly float, and
Speaker 1: there are those stories from the past of it floating
Speaker 1: in brine or water or even concentrated brine, and this
Speaker 1: would this would also explain the white stone inside the
Speaker 1: black stone. Um. But Accent says, it's hard to see
Speaker 1: how a large peat piece of this impactite glass would
Speaker 1: form the smooth pebble shapes that are described by observers.
Speaker 1: Again back to what people say. You see these smooth pebbles,
Speaker 1: you know, no bigger than a date in in the cement.
Speaker 1: If you look at these things, Accent says, if the
Speaker 1: black stone fragments really are this fused silical glass from
Speaker 1: an impact, they shouldn't look like these smooth pebbles. They
Speaker 1: should uh, they should have different surface features, including things
Speaker 1: like bubbles and vesicles. Um. And so one last thought
Speaker 1: he offers is, you know, perhaps the original body was
Speaker 1: what he calls a concreteation of pebbles. And so this
Speaker 1: originally this original stone, when when it fractured, what it
Speaker 1: was was a bunch of pebbles stuck together and it
Speaker 1: was just the pebbles coming off, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine the original stone was not like
Speaker 1: a solid stone that broke into pieces and then the
Speaker 1: pieces got smoothed down, what if it was a solid
Speaker 1: stone that was more like a cluster of grapes in shape,
Speaker 1: and he cites one example of a piece of lunar
Speaker 1: material that had been hit by a shock media write
Speaker 1: bombardment that actually showed this type of this shape that
Speaker 1: it looked sort of like a cluster of grapes. And
Speaker 1: so that's one possibility in his mind. But ultimately he concludes,
Speaker 1: you know what, we don't know, and even though we've
Speaker 1: got better scientific knowledge to work with, we really need
Speaker 1: better access if we're going to make a conclusion, just
Speaker 1: better access to the primary data. We'd have to be
Speaker 1: able to look at this thing closely and make some measurements. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really like that point that he made in the paper,
Speaker 1: saying that you know, even at the time it was
Speaker 1: this ad two, that the material sciences had advanced so much, uh,
Speaker 1: even from some of the previous studies in the prior decades,
Speaker 1: and yet our information about the black Stone itself has
Speaker 1: remained relatively the same. Uh, just you know, a few
Speaker 1: more subjective observations of what it consists of. But but
Speaker 1: but ultimately no new information, certainly no scientific, scientifically analytic information. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that is a good point. And I think one
Speaker 1: thing that I come away from this discussion with is Um.
Speaker 1: This attempt to investigate the material or geological character of
Speaker 1: of the black Stone strikes me as kind of similar
Speaker 1: to our episode from a couple of years ago, or
Speaker 1: I guess, let yeah, almost a couple of year and
Speaker 1: a half ago, maybe on the Will of the Wisp
Speaker 1: uh in the same way, it encapsulates some of the
Speaker 1: difficulties of doing what you might call second hand science.
Speaker 1: In both cases, you've got scientists trying to apply their
Speaker 1: knowledge of natural phenomena to match this wide range of
Speaker 1: disparate subjective reports. Now, I think the reports of the
Speaker 1: black Stone of the Kabba are much more substantive than
Speaker 1: those of the Will of the Wisp. Obviously, in the
Speaker 1: case of the black Stone, it actually exists, and we
Speaker 1: know for a fact that it actually exists. It's not
Speaker 1: something that maybe people are just imagining. We know millions
Speaker 1: of people see it all the time. It's not an
Speaker 1: ephemeral phenomenon. It's like a thing that's there. It's widely observed,
Speaker 1: and we know that it's one unified phenomenon and not
Speaker 1: like different phenomena being reported under the same name. So
Speaker 1: these are all not the case for the Will of
Speaker 1: the Isp. But like the will of the whisp, we
Speaker 1: have to make judgments based on a host of variable
Speaker 1: descriptions and characteristics. What color is it? Different reports and
Speaker 1: different things. Are there flecks of other colors within it?
Speaker 1: What color was it originally? Does it float in water?
Speaker 1: How reflective is it? Even in the cases where there's
Speaker 1: only one major answer to these, sometimes we don't know
Speaker 1: if we should trust that answer or just throw out
Speaker 1: the question entirely. You know, does it float in water?
Speaker 1: Are our evidence that the stone floats in water? Is
Speaker 1: some report from a thousand years ago? Yeah? Like, should
Speaker 1: we give it? Give that more weight than the question, Well,
Speaker 1: could it conceivably you know, spout a mouth and start talking?
Speaker 1: You know, uh, you know, at what point you just
Speaker 1: cut off and say, all right, we're only gonna We're
Speaker 1: only gonna look at these three qualities. What class of
Speaker 1: meteorite most commonly sprouts a tongue? I can't, I can't
Speaker 1: think I think of one offhand. We'll have to what
Speaker 1: we'll have to have to have to reach out to
Speaker 1: our audience on that one. Maybe the in meteorites. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you do make a distinction between um,
Speaker 1: you know, subjective religious beliefs and just subjective direct observational reports.
Speaker 1: Even the direct observational reports, they're giving us all this
Speaker 1: conflicting info, and and none of it's very solid. Like
Speaker 1: you you're you're not taking a measurement of it. You're
Speaker 1: just saying like, yeah, here's generally what I saw. But
Speaker 1: then there's one other interesting parallel, at least it seemed
Speaker 1: interesting to me here in talking about a religious object,
Speaker 1: is that I think it's kind of funny how the
Speaker 1: practice of trying to do a geological or material science
Speaker 1: analysis on the black Stone based on these subjective descriptions
Speaker 1: almost reminds me of something that often happens in our
Speaker 1: faith traditions, which is the process of trying to draw
Speaker 1: clarity of theology from just what amounts to a large
Speaker 1: collection of stories. You know. So when theologians of almost
Speaker 1: any religion try to come up with the systematic theology
Speaker 1: of that religion, the systematic theology being here are beliefs,
Speaker 1: here in the rules, here's what happens in the metaphysics
Speaker 1: of our religion, essentially the science of the religion. Uh,
Speaker 1: they often have to draw these conclusions based on sources
Speaker 1: that are not originally written to be clear and systematic
Speaker 1: descriptions of rules and theological principles, but they're based on stories,
Speaker 1: and so you have to sift through the stories to
Speaker 1: try to pull out this clear, systematic understanding of it all. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought that was kind of interesting. No, No, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's fair. It has a yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: of of taking all of these either tales or these
Speaker 1: accounts and trying to build something concrete out of it,
Speaker 1: or just to say what does it mean? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is the what is the shape of this? Or indeed,
Speaker 1: what is the meaning of this? Well? What am I
Speaker 1: supposed to take home from this? Right? But it's but again,
Speaker 1: so it's fascinating to to look at these different scientific
Speaker 1: hypotheses about the black Stone. It's also interesting just to
Speaker 1: look at the history and in mythology surrounding it and
Speaker 1: try and figure out what that means as well. It's
Speaker 1: it's really an enigma on several different levels. And I
Speaker 1: hope that we've been able to relate some of that
Speaker 1: to you today. And on that note, hey, we're thinking
Speaker 1: about doing more episodes in this series looking at sacred
Speaker 1: places or objects, so we should throw out the question,
Speaker 1: what sacred objects or places would you like us to
Speaker 1: cover in the future. We already have a few ideas
Speaker 1: kicking around obviously, especially if there's some interesting scientific angle
Speaker 1: it can be discussed about it. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I might want to talk about in the future
Speaker 1: is is the Ganges. Oh, yes, that's a good one. Uh.
Speaker 1: More of an object than a place that comes to
Speaker 1: my mind, as of course the Ark of the Covenant. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like nothing we've gone after before. We should at
Speaker 1: least consider it u huh. But I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: some other examples out there that our listeners can think of,
Speaker 1: and certainly you can get in touch with us about those.
Speaker 1: And finally, you know, we've covered Islamic history, Islamic myth,
Speaker 1: Islamic scientific contributions on the show before and will again,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's all part of our shared global culture.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, we recognize that discussions of
Speaker 1: Islamic culture continue to resonate with particular potency in today's
Speaker 1: political climate. So we encourage everyone out there to expand
Speaker 1: their understanding of what it means to be a mussliment
Speaker 1: today society. And as the starting point, we just wanted
Speaker 1: to highlight two organizations you might want to check out.
Speaker 1: First off, there's Muslims for Progressive Values at www dot
Speaker 1: mp V USA dot org. This is a um a
Speaker 1: faith based, grassroots international human rights organization organization that embodies
Speaker 1: and advocates for the traditional chronic values of social justice
Speaker 1: and equality for all. In the twenty one century, so
Speaker 1: they championed such values as separation of religious and state authorities,
Speaker 1: freedom of speech you versaal, human rights, and gender equality.
Speaker 1: And another group is the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and
Speaker 1: Gender Diversity and that's at Muslim Alliance dot org. Uh So,
Speaker 1: they work to support, empower and connect lgb t Q Muslims.
Speaker 1: They seek to challenge root causes of oppression, including misogyny
Speaker 1: and xenophobia, and the aim to increase the acceptance of
Speaker 1: gender and sexual diversity within Muslim communities and to promote
Speaker 1: a progressive understanding of Islam that is centered on inclusion,
Speaker 1: justice and equality. Yeah. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: I hope always comes through UM whenever we talk about
Speaker 1: religions on this podcast, as we do fairly often because
Speaker 1: I think we all sort of find them very interesting, uh,
Speaker 1: is it can be very easy to talk about religions,
Speaker 1: especially a religion that you don't personally hold in ways
Speaker 1: that are sort of over generalized and overdetermined. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so one thing I hope you always take away from
Speaker 1: our discussions is is the incredible room for diversity of
Speaker 1: opinion the that exists within all these faith traditions around
Speaker 1: the world. Uh. There are a lot of ways to
Speaker 1: be a Christian, a lot of ways to be a Muslim,
Speaker 1: a lot of ways to be a Hindu or Jew
Speaker 1: or anything. Indeed, and you know, I know we have
Speaker 1: some Muslim listeners out there, So I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this. And certainly if you have gone
Speaker 1: on the Hodge and you have seen the black Stone
Speaker 1: with your own eyes or touched it with your with
Speaker 1: your own body, Uh, we would love to hear your
Speaker 1: account of that. Yeah, what was it like? What? What
Speaker 1: what do you think? And what color is it? Really? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on that? You can find us
Speaker 1: online as always it's stuff to blow your mind. Dot
Speaker 1: com that is the mothership. That's where we'll find all
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, and links out to
Speaker 1: our various social media accounts, which is Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: Instagram it set, and if you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us directly, as always, you can email us
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com
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