From the Vault: Black Stone of Mecca

The Kaaba marks the geographic center of the Islamic world, and here one finds Al-Hadjar Al-Aswad, the Holy Black Stone of Mecca. Islamic traditions hold that the once white white stone blackened with humanity’s sins, but various scientific theories point to geological and potentially cosmic origins. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick discuss the mythic, historical and scientific substance of the Kaaba. (Originally published on Feb. 16, 2017)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Time to go into the vault for a good old
archival episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one
about the black Stone of Mecca. Yeah, this was a
really fun episode because it allowed us to discuss uh
Islam and Islamic culture, but also meteorites, yeah, impact heights.
This one originally published February. We're gonna just launch right

(00:30):
into it now, go on the journey with us. Welcome
to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Today

(00:51):
we're gonna be talking a little bit about religion, a
little bit about geology, a little bit about about space
and science. But I wanted to start off thinking about
the idea of sacred places. For some reason, they're there
are always central places that people want to go to
and experience personally and stand in. All I think about

(01:13):
the in the secular version, they're like, you know, museums
and stuff like this. Oh yeah, when I went to
the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I
remember feeling a kind of church like sensation, even though
those bonkers of people running all over and making all
kinds of noise. Uh, I had this sense of like
I'm in a special place. Oh yeah, this is a

(01:35):
different place. Yes, well, I think I think museums are
a great example because I feel the same way about
the MET And absolutely yeah, like it's it's so fils
like just you just as a place. It's very much
the place of pilgrimage for individuals are interested in history
and art and religion. And and then you go in
and you have all of these pieces that themselves are

(01:57):
from all of these distant sacred places and sacred times.
Oh totally yeah, it's great. Like you get to go
to the it's almost like the catch net for for
sacred places throughout history. But when you go to a
sacred place like this the you know, these places that
have a history, I almost feel like you are you're

(02:17):
playing on the same kind of awe that you might
experience if you went to and believed in a haunted
house that like that that some somehow a kind of
energy has collected there over time and it it gives
you this sense of the sense of being part of history.
To be there. Yeah, I mean we we sort of

(02:39):
map out our worlds with these with these pin points, uh,
that that all the energy seems to converge around. Uh.
And then when we visit those places, we're we're taking
part in that energy. We have all these expectations, and
then we're engaging in sort of the collective expectations of
that place. Now, this is certainly something we've covered on
Stuff to Blow of Mind in the past, that being

(03:01):
a Stendahl syndrome or Jerusalem syndrome, the idea where when
someone finally visits one of these places that means a
lot to them personally. Be it Jerusalem, uh, be it,
in the case of today's episode, Mecca, or be it
just a museum or to stand before a particular piece
of art that that carries a lot of weight with you.

(03:22):
You enter into it with all these expectations. Then you're
finally there, and it can be overwhelming. It can be
mentally overwhelming and physically overwhelming to actually be there at
at this lynch pin of your life. Yeah, despite having
lived in the world your whole life, suddenly you feel
that you have connected with with again the sense of history,

(03:43):
like here's a place that that will continue to be
visited and written about and now I'm here. Yeah. And
it could be an historical cathedral, it could be Stonehenge,
it could be a restaurant that was used as a
filming location from movie you like, but whatever it is, like,
this is a place that that has value that seems
to extend beyond your life. Now, of course we've been

(04:06):
talking about you know, our our favorite secular examples, museums
or whatever. But I'd say you probably have to amplify
this feeling of importance connected to place, even more so
for religious believers and the sites that are sacred to
their personal religious beliefs. And of course one of the
sites that is sacred to millions of people around the

(04:27):
world will be found in Mecca in Saudi Arabia. That's right.
As far as sacred places go, and the and the
collective capital of belief that goes into attributing them as such,
the Haram Mosque or the Grand Mosque in Mecca is
easily one of the most sacred places on earth. Uh
is one of the five pillars of Islam. Every able
bodied Muslim has to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca,

(04:50):
and this is known as the Hodge. On the way,
you conduct a series of rituals, including the stoning of
the devil in Mina, and finally you conduct seven revolution
san's within the Haram Mosque circling the Holy Kabba building,
which is this essentially, this this dark cube. It's featured
in the art for this episode, and I'm sure everyone

(05:11):
out there seeing the images of it. Of course, if
you haven't, you should go look it up because you
should have this in mind, this this dark stone building
with with the tapestries draped on it versus from the Koran.
And then at one corner of the building something very special. Yeah,
the eastern exterior corner includes something that is known as
the black Stone or the al Hajar alha squad. Uh.

(05:35):
This uh, this, it's this is going to be the
object that we're talking about here. As you pass it,
you touch, you touch it, if you can, you kiss
it if you can. If you can't reach it, you
you point at it. But to touch the stone, it
is said, is to enter into a contract with God.
And I've seen translations that indicate that the black Stone
itself is the right hand of God on Earth. Now,

(05:59):
later in this episode, we're going to be exploring what
the black Stone might be from a geological standpoint, what
it's it's history and significance is within the religion. But
I guess first maybe we should just take a look
at the site itself at large, the Kabba. Yeah, the
Coba itself is a very holy place in Islamic tradition,
and it's it's uh. We're gonna in all of this,

(06:21):
as we do with any religion, We're gonna we discuss,
you know, we're gonna sort of divide between the mythic history,
the religious ideas of what this is and where it
came from, as well as what we actually know from history.
But according to uh, to tradition, the Kaaba was constructed
by Abraham, and its four corners a line with the
four compass points. It's made of great blocks of granite.

(06:43):
But the the holy black stone itself burns with an
even greater mysticism. So this black stone here, that's uh,
that's that's set in this in cement and surrounded by
silver here and again the eastern corner of the Cabba stone.
It's not a single stone or at least, it's not
actually a single stone anymore. Rather, it consists of eight

(07:05):
pieces of various size, seemingly the same rock, seemingly the
same origin, and they're submitted together surrounded by a silver frame.
And the largest fragment is said to be about the
size of a date. So that's not very big, right, Yeah,
it's these things go. So sometimes you just hear about
the black stone eager to match something larger. I must
say that I always thought before reading about this for

(07:28):
for the episode today, that it was a single stone,
and I thought it was sort of like one very
large jet black stone. And the reason for that is
that there are not very good pictures of it out there,
that's right. Uh, So you know, generally this is not
something that people photograph very much. The photographs of it
that do exist or kind of sometimes grainy or low

(07:51):
quality or from a distance. Uh, there's just not ideal
documentation conditions. But which is crazy, considering this is probably
of the most viewed objects on the planet. Yeah, it's amazing.
It's it's something that you know, millions and millions of
people have personally laid eyes on. But but it's very
hard to find a good picture of it. Um. But yeah,

(08:13):
so what you see in most of these pictures is
there is this silver It almost looks like a like
a like a basin turned sideways or something. It's this
silver collar that's built into the corner of the building.
And then inside this silver bowl there is just this
dark abyss. Generally is all you can see from the outside.

(08:34):
So if I had to guess before I started reading
the research on it what this was, I would think
it was like a large piece of obsidian or something
like that, just a large flat black surface that is
is smooth and dark and people uh, and you know,
people pass by and and touch it and kiss it.

(08:55):
But no, it turns out that there's actually a good
bit more texture going on inside, which makes identifying the
geology of the of the black stone all the more interesting. Yeah.
So the pieces that are set in the cement, they've
been touched so many times they have there's a smoothness
to them. Um, and uh, it's all the worth worth noting,
like these are pieces of something that was once whole.

(09:16):
And we'll get into that in a bit. Various authors
have commented on it and tried to you know, they're
they're varying figures that have come out over the years,
over the centuries, really Westerners getting a glimpse of it,
looking at it, trying to figure out how how big
it is the pieces are now and how big it
might have been when it was a one piece. Um.

(09:36):
There is a paper by Elizabeth Thompson which we're gonna
refer to several times here. She was from the University
of Copenhagen. She wrote a paper in in Meteoritics in
nineteen eighty titled New Light on the Origin of the
Holy Black Stone of the Kabba, and she did some
some figuring here, and she says that the the possible

(09:56):
original size of the stone would have been by twenty
or nine eight inches by seven point eight by seven
point eight, which would have made it what possibly about
the size of a cantaloupe originally basically cannel And I
rough estimate estimate here. I've never measured a cantaloupe. Robert Well,
I I did some I was at home when I

(10:17):
was doing this portion of the notes, and I was like,
all right, well, how big is that? Let me think
is that what fruit does that align with? And the
best I can tell, possibly candaloupe? Uh fruit or um
Islamic history esque experts may have may differ on that. Now,
as for the color, this is another interesting thing because
again you look at it, you just see darkness surrounded

(10:39):
called the black stone. So what color is it? That
is actually kind of difficult to decide on as well,
because various accounts have described it as brownish black or
blackish brown, or reddish black or deep reddish brown, and
some accounts also speak to a coal like matrix to it.
I think I've read that that was only one account
that actually said at least one account yeah, then said

(11:03):
coal like matrix, But most accounts point out that they're
yellow spots pointed white crystals. There's also a possible interior
that is described as gray, so it's not just this
obsidian or charcoal like stone, but rather something that has
you know, flex of other color in them. Right there

(11:23):
there are these little pieces of yellow or white. And
then there are also some reports that inside the stone
it is white, or that like covered parts of the
stone that are not exposed in the in the cemented,
cemented paved surface are white. Another claim we should probably
deal with because it does figure big into scientists trying

(11:43):
to figure out what type of rock or mineral this is,
is that it allegedly, according to very old reports, floats
in water. Yes, this is this is something that comes
up with time or two in the actual in the
historical record of the stone where supposedly this was used
to authenticated after it has been stolen in return. And

(12:05):
we'll get into that story in a bit that was
in like the tenth century. Yes, yeah, So the idea
that they could tell it's the stone by placing it
in water and seeing it would float, well, not many
stones float, so that would be a unique identifier. But
I guess that that does just depend on taking that
story as accurate, right, And that's one of the that's
one of the problems, the challenges, the tantalizing aspects of

(12:30):
this whole exercise and discussing what this stone actually consists
of from a scientific standpoint, because you're you're left to
draw on all these varying accounts and very limited uh
you know, observational data about the stone. Yeah, I mean
one of the features of the stone. So one of

(12:51):
the things about observing the stone that you have to
understand is that it is sort of the mechanics of
how the ritual the Kaba works. People are constantly circling
this and there. You know, there might be thousands of
people in there, all trying to get up to the
stone to kiss it, or to point at it, or
to touch it. And so you are not in a

(13:15):
situation where you can sit there and look at it
and take notes. Right. This is not a museum, right. Uh. No,
it might be more like in the louver where you
try to get a good look at the Mona Lisa,
but there's just people cramming in from all sides and
pushing you. I mean, I've read reports about people trying
to get a good look at the stone and and

(13:36):
they're they're always reports mentioning just the crowd pushing you along,
not being able to get up close to it. Or
they're also guards there, and sometimes guards will push you along,
move you out of the way. Uh. You can sort
of understand why, I mean that they don't want to
have a case of crowd crush or something like that
with the people there. Yeah. I mean, so you have

(13:56):
and on top of all of this, you have your
you're sort of religious expectations. You have the whole Stendahl
syndrome coming into play here. As you're beholding it now, Robert,
I think you had a couple of accounts you were
reading of people talking about visiting the Kabba, right, Yeah,
I just I tend to find the idea of early
Westerners visiting Mecca and seeing the Kabba in the stone.

(14:20):
I find those really fascinating. And so I just had
had had mainly two here I wanted to to highlight.
And there's a third one that that we end up
referencing later. So the first one that to reference here,
Swiss traveler and Arabic speaker Johann Ludwig Burkhardt, visited Mecca
in eighteen fourteen, so he was very much an Arabic

(14:40):
speaker enthusiast. He was he converted to Islam. This is
also the guy who rediscovered the ruins of Petra, which
if you're if you're if you're still foggy on what
Petra is, think to what Indiana Jones in the last
year said that is that the treasury building of Petra,
that's the one set in the cliff fool. Yeah, the

(15:01):
tomb of the grail. There were not the tomb, the
resting place, the booby trap place, Yes, the booby trap
place with the with the with all the grail stuff.
In reality, of course, that is Petra and does not
have booby trap, does not have boot traps. Now, one
of the most notable individuals, one of one of my
favorites to visit Mecca in early times as a Westerner

(15:22):
is Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He visited in eighteen
fifty three, and Burton was also allegedly a convert to
Islam and earlier possible convert to Hinduism. He's a difficult
guy to pin down and it sounds like I'm being
vague here. So he spoke twenty five distinct languages, not
counting dialects. He was something of a bisexual, hedonist, a

(15:46):
spy and explore. He was endlessly fascinated with other cultures, languages,
modes of human sexuality. And he's probably some commentators classify
him more as an atheist, but his exploration into Hinduism
and Islam are are often referred to his conversions. Like
he didn't just study them, he became them. Yeah, like

(16:07):
that that's kind of my my my read on him,
Like here's a guy who learned all these languages, and
in using these languages, you kind of have to change
the way your brain operates, and even to fake, like
even just to if you were to assume, okay, someone
like Burton, um they just faked Islamic belief in order
to go on the hodge like to fake that, you

(16:28):
would still have to be so versed in a deep
understanding of the culture the rights entailed there, Like your
cover would be so deep. How would you keep it
from overcoming you? I mean, in one sense it almost
you almost want to say that to fully understand someone
else's religion, you almost have to be able to mentally

(16:49):
convert to it, and kind of hypothetical sense to like
to try to see what it looks like from the inside, right,
And then at the same time, like Burton again as
fascinating character, we can't get to everything he did here,
but he wrote a lot about his his travels and
his ideas and his his observations, and at times too
he kind of waffles back and forth. Sometimes he sounds

(17:10):
you know, very much uh, you know, at one with
his lam and and and intrigued by it. Other times
he still still see some of that English colonial um
mentality rising to the surface, and he sounds a bit dismissive,
Like I said, very very fascinating guy. Difficult guy to
to nail down. But here's a quick quote from his

(17:30):
writings about beholding the stone. He said, after thus reaching
the stone, despite popular indignation, testified by impatient shouts, we
monopolize the use of it for at least ten minutes. Yeah,
which is quite a lot. When you see the crowd
pictures right whilst kissing it and rubbing hands and forehead
upon it. I narrowly observed it and came away persuaded

(17:53):
that it is an aerial light. Other travelers, including Burkhardt,
had thought it volcanic in origin. Right, So here we're
starting to get to the question of what the stone
is geologically. A lot of commentators throughout the years have
assumed that it was that it was lava of some
kind of basalt, things like that. But here's the idea

(18:15):
that it's an aero light, that it is a type
of meteorite, a space rock. Right. And to understand why
this idea is so appealing, we have to discuss the
mythic the religious history of the stone a little bit.
So if you if you dive into Islamic tradition and
Islamic belief. There's a basic kind of a Damic origin

(18:39):
story and play here. So depending on how you interpret
this origin story, the black Stone dates back to either
Abraham or Adam, the first created human. So one interpretation
is that Adam built the first Kaba on earth, and
here he sat on a white stone okay, a stone
that turned black with the all of man. And the

(19:01):
first Kaba was then destroyed in the Great Flood, and
it wasn't until later that Abraham was tasked with rebuilding
it or building the first cabin, depending on the telling.
H Another idea here is that this was a meteorite
brought to Abraham by the archangel Gabriel from the mountain
side where it had fallen, or that it originally was
one of the stars of Paradise. Yeah. Now, one of

(19:23):
the reasons they're they're kind of varying takes on this
is because the black Stone, as I understand it, is
not actually mentioned in the Koran. It is uh. It
comes from additional Islamic sources and just sort of traditions.
To me, that's always some of the most interesting things
you find in any religion is the stuff that's not
necessarily straight in the middle of the cannon, but but

(19:46):
not necessarily out of the mainstream cannon either. It's sort
of like it comes from additional traditional material the the
you know, the metadata of the religion, right. I think
we've touched on this before, discussions of of heaven, hell,
and purgatory in Christian and Catholic traditions and where those
ideas come from, because certainly, if you're looking for a

(20:08):
strict definition of those things within the older New Testament, uh,
those details are not really forthcoming. No, you get a
few hints, but you're not going to find Dante in
the Bible right now. In terms of what the stone does.
Already mentioned that it's it's it's considered the right hand
of God. To touch it is to enter into a
contract with God, and there are additional powers that have

(20:30):
been attributed to it. Oh, and I believe this comes
from the writings of one Heinrich von Maltson Well visited
this the Mecca as well in eighteen fifty eight, coming
after the two individuals we already mentioned. Yes, supposedly so
so von maltzon Um. I want to be careful about
citing him because he strikes me as perhaps unreliable and

(20:54):
definitely unsympathetic. Like he wrote this eighteen sixty five book
in German called Mina walfartnc Mecha, which means My Pilgrimage
to Mecca. The books in German. I've not found an
official published translation, but using Google Translate, I did a
little uh looking through this book and he um, he

(21:17):
strikes me as an sort of unsympathetic and perhaps uncomprehending outsider.
So I wouldn't use him as a as a very
reliable account of what the people on the Hajj in
in the nineteenth century we're actually believing. But he at
least claims, possibly wrongly, that the Pilgrims at the time
believed that it was impossible to destroy the Kabba and

(21:40):
the and impossible to destroy the black Stone itself. Uh
so he said that you know, they were attributing these
miraculous powers to it. Now I know, um, you know,
within every religion there's always going to be plenty of
diversity of opinion and different ideas. But I know one
strong tradition, and it's mom probably not adhered to by

(22:01):
all Muslims, is the idea that you know that that
there aren't miraculous objects you know that that that essentially
people aren't going to do miracles for you. Objects aren't
going to be miraculous. But if this account of is correct,
there are at least some slightly miraculous uh properties attributed

(22:22):
to the stone at some points in history. But then again,
as I say, this guy kind seems like a jerk
and like he's maybe not understanding things correctly, Like he
seems disgusted by the rituals. He doesn't at one point
he's like, I had to go and kiss the stone,
and he calls it the monster, So he's he's perhaps
not looking at the stone from the perspective of of

(22:45):
an outsider who has converted to it to Islam and
is fully uh fully accepting any of the ideas and
traditions around it. Yeah, or even just trying for the
sake of understanding, to get into that headspace and what
what does this mean to the insider, to the believer.
And then as far as the future is concerned, there
are tales that are on the Day of Judgment, uh,

(23:07):
it is said that the stone will grow eyes, mouth,
and tongue, and that it will see and speak, and
it will witness in favor of all those who touched
it with sincere hearts, which I think is wow, quite
a visual that one kind of gives me a chill bumps.
The idea of the stone sort of becoming this floating
face that then speaks on behalf to God of those

(23:31):
who actually touched it and entered into that contract with
with with it not just a mouth but a tongue.
That's good. Well, maybe we should take a break, yeah,
and then when we do, we can discuss a little
bit more about the supposed history of this stone and
then get into some of the geological ideas about what

(23:51):
it is and where it came from. Than alright, we're back.
So the stone, the black Stone here, it actually predates Islam.
So it was it was there when Mohammed the Prophet
came into Mecca. And this is the fact that's acknowledged

(24:13):
by Islamic tradition, not contrary to it. Right right, Yeah,
this is this is pretty settled as far as I
understand it. So in Persian legend it was supposedly a
symbol of the planet Saturn. That was a tip that
I read in a Brewer's dictionary phrase and fable. Now,
according to Oliver C. Farrington's writings. In nineteen hundred, he
wrote an article that the worship and folklore of Meteorites.

(24:37):
He says that the worship of the stone by Arabian
tribes is first spoken spoken of by Greek writers of
early times, and that the Kabba definitely existed as a
as a shrine as early as two hundred CE, and
the black Stone was part of it. So this would
have been, you know, a shrine that entailed venerated objects

(24:59):
div ooted to different deities and among them was the
black Stone. Yeah, and so like having idols there, like
I know, part of the Islamic tradition is the idea
of removing the idols from the Kaba, right right, And
that's exactly what happened in UH six thirty C. That's
when when the prophet entered Mecca, purged the Kabba of idols,

(25:21):
reportedly destroying something like three three hundred sixty idols. But
as often is the case with holy places in history,
the Kaaba and the stone retained their sacred aspects. We
see this in Islamic history all the time as well,
such as the function of the Greek Parthenon as a
mosque during Ottoman occupation. This was something I really didn't

(25:43):
know a lot of a lot about until recently when
I attended a talk at at Emory University. How they
you had? They had it was converted into a mosque
the Parthenon, and then when the Parthenon was put was
partially destroyed, you had sort of the gutted Parthenon, and
in the at all they had this, uh, this this
kind of cubicle mosque that actually reminds one a little

(26:06):
bit of the Kabba. Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. I've never
heard that before. Now, there was a lot of turmoil
even during Mohammed's life. Mohammed lived five seventies through six
thirty two, and the Kabo was was burnt during this time,
and this may have caused some of the fragmentation that
we see. That's the thing. We don't know exactly when

(26:28):
this fragmentation of the of the stone occurred. Yeah, this
history of the uh, the stone as an object becoming
many objects does seem kind of fuzzy. Like there's this
general idea that it was once a single stone or
fewer number of stones, and then broke into smaller parts,
and then now there are apparently fewer visible pebbles in

(26:50):
the stone than there were, say in the nineteenth century, right.
And one of the ideas here is that that the
pieces could either have been removed or lost, or they
could still be there. We just can't see all that
well because a we can't really see the stone fragments
all that well anyway, where they might be partially obscured
by the by the cement and the silver and repeated

(27:11):
attempts to you know, hold everything together. So what were
the circumstances under which it was burned? So this was
during the civil war between the caliph Abd al Malik
and Iban Zubar, who controlled Mecca at the time the
Kaba was set on fire. This would have been in
six eight three and report by some accounts, the black

(27:33):
Stone broke into three pieces and then was reassembled with silver.
So that's a that's an opportunity, let's say, for the
stone to have been broken certainly. Um. Now, another opportunity
that comes up is in nine thirty and that's when
Mecca was sacked by the Carmathians led by Abu Terar

(27:56):
al Janabi, who apparently used the hag as an excuse
uh to demand entry into the city with his troops. Now,
a number of you're probably wanting, well, who are the Karmathians. Uh.
They were an heretical sect of Islam that considered the
Koran allegory. They refuted various rights and entailed a mix
of uh of of of Islamic and Persian mysticism. They

(28:22):
sacked and looted Mecca, They desecrated holy sites. They mascuared
pilgrims around the Kaba, and removed the black Stone and
took it out of Mecca, apparently in hopes of moving
the destination of the Hojj to Hajar in what we
now call Bahrain. So they were trying to get everybody
to come to them from now on. That That is

(28:44):
the that that is how I understand it. Yeah, based
on the material I was reading, Um, this ended up
not working all that well. And uh, I mean it's
worth it's also worth noting here that of course history
is written by the victors, so you know to what
extended some of this color by the fact that the
that even though the Carmatheans were very powerful at the time,

(29:06):
they ended up fading into history. So they tried to
change the point of the hodge didn't work. The black
Stone is a return to Mecca around or nine fifty two,
but for a hefty ransom fee. Well, now, hold on
a second, how do you know it's really the stone
when you return it. Well, you've got to test its buoyancy, right,

(29:27):
You've got to see if it floats in water, and
apparently it did. So that's where this idea comes from,
right in the tenth century, that that this was returned,
and one thing that was known about the stone somehow
was that it would float in water. Yes, and some
accounts indicate that it was returned and of shattered into pieces.
So whether it was whether it was shattered during extraction

(29:50):
or during the return, that's kind of you know, up
in the air. Now, there's a an additional account that
is sometimes brought up as a as a possible incident
in which it was shattered, and that's around ten fifty
the caliph Al Hakim byam and Allah allegedly sent an
agent to smash the stone, but this only inflicted slight

(30:11):
damage and the agent was killed on the spot. Who's
to say, I only found one account where someone was
speculating on the nature of the stone, who thought that
this might have been an incident that could have resulted
in serious damage, and the details on these accounts were
from Mecca, a Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land
by Francis E. Peters. So if any of these didn't

(30:34):
do the trick, though, there was also a six flood
that toppled three of the Cabal walls, so that also
could have contributed to the fracturing of the black Stone. Right. So,
if you have a you have an object that is
susceptible to damage and it plays such a vital role
for such a long period of time, Um, it's it's
it's there's there's a high possibility it's gonna result in damage.

(30:58):
You know. One of the other things we should mention
is that this is a stone that you can quite
well expect to be undergoing a certain amount of wear
and tear, with millions of people from around the world
coming to this stone and trying to touch it and
kiss it. Um, I mean, there is there's all. There's
all manner of which, uh, you know, handling of things

(31:22):
leads to their deterioration over time, even if you think
you're being gentle. I mean, there's a reason museums don't
let you touch stuff, right, Like, what if what if
the statue of David. What if everyone got to touch David. Yeah,
you know that would that would erode the statue over time.
And certains and certainly accounts of the black stone indicate
that there is a certain amount of erosion that has

(31:44):
taken place, a smoothing of the stones from all of that,
all of those human touches, all of those kisses, all
of that, you know, the oil from from human skin. Yeah,
but one can imagine that, I don't know, all manner
of various handling, touching and stuff like that could also
maybe have contributed to fracturing. I mean, it wouldn't have
to be a highly destructive event. Uh, even gentle caresses

(32:06):
over the centuries can add up. Indeed. All right, and
that basically brings us up to modern times. So we're
gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
we're going to discuss the possible scientific origins of the stone.
What is it? Where did it come from? And how
how limited are we in our ability to answer that question?

(32:29):
Than all right, we're back. So we're gonna be talking
about scientific inquiry into the geologic nature of the black
Stone of the Kabba. What what kind of rock is it?
Did it come from space, did it come from Earth?
What's it made of? And there's one thing we should
note at the outset here, which is that it is

(32:52):
hard to know the answer to this question because the
rock has not been removed to a scientific lab where
you can do tests on it. This is one of
these strange situations where people are trying to do science
from a distance, sort of through the intermediary of people's
subjective accounts. Right we have, scientists have not examined the

(33:14):
black Stone, and really scientists are probably not going to
get to analyze the black Stone at any point in
the foreseeable future. Uh, Like I kind of have to
think of sci fi scenarios in which the black Stone
could possibly be analyzed. It's uh, it's it's They're simply like,
why would you do it? Why would you allow it? Uh?

(33:35):
Why why would you submit it for scientific analysis? There?
Because because there's really nothing quite like the black Stone
in any other religious tradition that I can think of.
I mean, yeah, an object that is so central, like
literally central to the belief system. Like the closest thing
I can think of in Christian and specifically Catholic traditions

(33:58):
is the shroud of Turin. But even that, it's not
you know, I would not say the shout of turn
as an article of faith or or you know, in
any way associated with a pillar of Christianity. Yeah, there
are definitely in other religions holy objects, holy sites, but
I feel like nothing as central as this and as
as hard to get at, because because as hard to

(34:21):
get out in a in a scrutinizing way, obviously it's
not hard to get at just in general, and that,
like we said, millions of people go in touch and
look at this thing, but you can't remove it, you
can't take it away with you, and you can't spend
some time scrutinizing it. Right, So we end up with
it was generally intellectuals geologists looking at a pictures such

(34:44):
as they are looking at sketches, analyzing descriptions of it,
and then using their knowledge of material science is to
try and figure out what it can be, which can
be very interesting. So one of the standard things this
is probably not a very interesting hypothesis, but for you know,
years people have said, well, it's probably some kind of

(35:05):
lava or basalt something like that. Uh, generally, now people
don't think that's the answer. Uh So. Another one of
the main theories that's been offered over the years is
that the Blackstone is meteoritic in origin, that it came
from space. And you know, it makes sense, right because

(35:27):
this this aligns with the cosmic origins that are presented
in a mythic history as a gift of a primordial God.
What better origin than outer space? Right, And there's also
a long history of two important factors here, one the
worship or at least veneration of meteorites and to the
use of meteor media meteoric iron. Now, I think a

(35:50):
lot of Muslims would probably want to emphasize the distinction
that the Kabba Stone is not something that is worshiped,
but it's a more like symbolic object that is, uh
that is playing a role in what they would describe
as their relationship with God. But even if the object
is not itself a point of worship, you can easily

(36:10):
see how objects that fall from space would take on
some kind of sacred or venerable dimension. Yeah. Like, one
cool example of this is that Native Americans from the
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ruined Community of Oregon continue
to make annual ceremonial visits to the famous Willamette meteorite

(36:31):
at the American Museum of Natural History. Yeah. So, while
scientists believe the rock is the the iron core of
a shattered planet, uh, the Clackamas tribes people knew it
as tom and Owa's a representative of the sky people
and a source of healing and cleansing. I mean, if
you look at a picture of this meteorite, and you should, Yeah,

(36:54):
it looks like something that was sent by the gods.
Of course it does. This thing looks insanean it's got
these caverns in it. Robert, do you know what it
looks like. I've seen pictures. Yes, it looks like you
get a sense of topography, like it's a maze, or
even like a little of former living thing. There are

(37:14):
like coral aspects to it. Yes, it looks like a
large piece of iron. Uh, parts of which have come
alive and slithered away. Now the iron is interesting too,
because that comes back to this, this use of meteoric iron. So,
before mining technology allowed for the ready harvesting of iron ore,

(37:37):
one of the few sources of this durable metal was
the was bits of it that plummeted from the sky
in the form of the meteorites. The ancient Egyptians knew
about it. They dubbed black copper. That's a cool name
it is. It's very very very cool. Uh. And uh,
you know, it's generally spread then across vast distances. You're
gonna find little bits of fit here and there. So

(37:58):
it was a rare commodity. You could not cannot arm
an army with it, correct, you could, Yeah, you couldn't
make enough swords for an army, but you could make
if you scratch, scratch enough of it together, you could
make a single sword and it would have you know,
obviously would have holier or at least um, you know,
ceremonial significance. Um. So this this relegated most meteoric iron

(38:22):
creations to the realm of decorative or significance or ceremony.
In fact, in Islamic history, the seventh century Caliphs were
said to have brandish swords made from meteoric iron, while
such iconic figures as a Till of the Hun and
tamer Lane reportedly wielded other cosmic blades against their enemies.

(38:44):
And you know, also their bowls, plows and stirrups that
have been observed to have been made from it as well.
So maybe sometimes you just ended up making what you
needed out of the iron, But for the most part
it tended to take on a sacred significance. Weapons from space, Yeah,
that should be a whole episd so it on its
own sometimes could be is there enough there? Could we
do it? Weapons from space? I mean, has anybody ever

(39:05):
tried to make like a like a I don't know.
Oh what do you call it? A morning star? I
don't know. Why would you make a morning star out
of it when you can make a sword? Terry Pratchett,
by the way, before he died, I believe had obtained
a sword made from er o'kirn. Know what I meant
was make a morning star with a moon rock? Yeah?

(39:26):
I like the idea. Yeah, who does that mean? If
you have to be brain to death with a medieval
blunt weapon, why not? Why not? Moon rock makes it
a little special. So it's easy to fall into this thinking,
all right, it's a meteorite. Maybe it's it's it's it's
meteoric iron, and that's why all this, uh this, uh,

(39:48):
the significance is given to it. However, as Thompson points
out we mentioned her, We mentioned her earlier, Elizabeth Thompson. Yes,
as she points out, this isn't necessarily a slam dunk theory.
And iron meteorite, she wrote, would not break into fragments,
nor would it float in water because it is a
piece of iron and so, but that doesn't alule out

(40:10):
all meteorites. There's also the idea that it's a stony
meteor rite. But it would a stony meteorite float in water?
Would it be able to withstand centuries of human erosion? Um?
Probably not. Yeah. So here I think we should actually
get into a few of the papers that have been
published on this subject. Uh. And the first big one

(40:32):
and that tried to get at the after after the
meteorite theory had been dominant for a long time in
the twentieth century. The first one that I think really
tried to dig in and and look at the descriptions
and figure out what it would what it could be
was in nineteen seventy four in the journal Meteoritics. And
so they're looking at it and saying, okay, pretty much
everybody thinks this thing is a meteorite. Are they onto

(40:55):
something or are they wrong, and this was by Robert
Diaz and John McCoy own And in this paper, Dietz
and McCone argued that the Kabba Stone, the black stone,
is probably not a meteorite but an agate. So why
do they get to age it. Well, let's follow them
through their reasoning. So first of all, they say, the

(41:18):
fact that it appears to have been cracked and fractured,
as you mentioned earlier, Robert sort of rules out the
possibility that it's a nickel iron meteorite. You you've seen
these types of meteorites before that are that are essentially
like a big metal sponge. You know, if you have
tripped to phobia, these things really should set you off
with these patterns of holes. But a nickel iron meteorite,

(41:41):
it's not brittle like most earth rocks. It's more like
a piece of metal. Un Thus, we would not expect
to see a meteorite like this with a crack or
cracked into multiple pieces. But they say, okay, well, maybe
it could be a stony meteorite. There's a different kind
of meteorite. It's more like earth rocks. And from description
and the stone they say is quote hummocky and muscled

(42:04):
so what does this mean and why is it relevant? Well, hummocky,
that's not just like a cute British word or something
that does kind of sound like, you know, lord hummocky twizzled.
I was thinking it sounds like a great description for
for a wine. It's like, what do you what do
you think of this particular Wine's? Okay, well it's it's
it's hummocky and and muscled, well muscled wine. Yeah, with

(42:26):
notes of elderberry. Uh yeah, So hummocky actually means something
in geology. It means highly uneven or irregular in surface.
So they say, you know, literally millions of people have
touched this thing over the centuries, and yet they haven't
worn away these apparent irregular features of the surface of

(42:47):
the stone. So for that to be the case, the
authors suggests that the stone needs to have a pretty
good Mose scale rating, which they estimate should be a
minimum of a seven. So you know about the mo
A scale, right, That's that's how you answer no mo
m o H. The most scale geological hardness scale. It's
how you rate how hard is it? You want to

(43:10):
know how hard it is? You give a most scale rating.
Um and a ten on the most scale is a
diamond that's super hard. I think. I think talc is
like a one or two. A seven is quartz. So
they think for this thing to have withstood all of
the touching and kissing over the years and still have

(43:31):
this uneven, hummocky surface, it needs to be at least
a seven on the most scale, So that gives them
one clue to work with. Another conclusion from the descriptions
is that the black stone supposedly has this highly reflective
almost mirror like polish. You know, you can you can
put your makeup on in it. I would advise against

(43:52):
doing that now, I don't know. People probably would not
have the patience for that. Uh no, and you probably
actually couldn't. It's uh it's but they say that it
is almost mirroral like, it's highly reflective. Um and they
claim that this indicates the stone must be a fanitic
and monomineralic. Oh god, more terminology. So what does that mean?

(44:13):
A Ponitic is a geology term that means very fine
grained minerals, So a fanitic rocks are those where you
can't see the individual mineral crystals with the naked eye
and This usually happens in igneous rocks, you know, fire
formed rocks that are formed from molten rock cooling and

(44:33):
solidifying pretty quickly. You know, that often happens near the surface.
One common example would be basalt. Uh. The other word
was monomineralic. That means exactly what it sounds like, rocks
that are made of just one type of mineral. If
the rock is a fanitic and monomineralic, they think it's
more likely that it could be polished down to this

(44:54):
reflective surface by people touching it over the years. Already, though,
I think we should know this is something we we
sort of warned about earlier, the awkwardness of doing science
this way because listen to what's going on. They're having
to work from secondhand descriptions of the features of the
stone without examining it themselves. So there's just a lot

(45:17):
of room for problems to creep into this kind of analysis.
So we should definitely take their conclusions with a large grain,
large crystal grain of salt. Anyway, to continue, how about
the color of the stone. Can that tell us anything
about it? Well, their description says, you know, it's called
the black stone. The stones black, maybe even jet black.

(45:38):
Now they don't know whether black is the original color
of the stone or whether it has turned black through handling,
because again, the mythic idea here is that it was
originally white and human sin has turned it black or
mostly black. And this this on top of the differing
opinions of just how black it actually is now referenced earlier. Yeah,

(46:01):
and so back when this article was first published, the
author has managed to get in contact with the keeper
of the Kaba, who in turn got a Muslim scholar
named Mohammed alui Uh to offer a sort of concurrently
published reply that gives some theological and historical context to
their article. And Uh and this scholar had among his claims,

(46:23):
I guess is the idea that the stone was originally white.
He goes with that idea, and he says, various descriptions
have called it quote whiter than snow, as white as silver,
or charmingly as white as yogurt. And I guess they
what they have in mind is not that gray purple
tricks yogurt that oh goodness, I forgot about tricks tricks

(46:44):
yogurt yogurt in name only, Why would you make gray yogurt?
That is a crime against nature. Yeah, yeah, I mean
the fruit needs to stay on the bottom or is
added after the fact. It should It should not come
pre mixed. Okay, tricks. Tricks are for kids, I guess. Anyway,
one explanation for the change in color, if in fact

(47:07):
what happened is that it was originally white and it
darkened over time, is that whenever the pieces of the
stone become loosened or dislodged from the inset over the years,
you know, they started to come out of the cement
they were reattached with this kind of putty or cement
made by kneading together wax, musk and amber grease. Yeah,

(47:31):
and so exposure to this putty is said to have
turned the stones black over the time over time, and
supposedly the historian Iban Nafi al Kazi, while writing a
history of the Kabba, got to see the stone inset
completely exposed while the Kabba was being rebuilt, so out
of the frame where it's usually kept, and he reported

(47:51):
that the part of the stone usually kept covered by
the wall, the part that's usually hidden is white. So
if he's correct about that, um, then it's not just
a jet black stone, but a white stone. That is
either black on one part that's exposed, or has turned
black over time due to possibly multiple factors. But in

(48:12):
any case, if the stone were originally black, it could
be a type of stony meteorites, such as chondrite condrite
as a stony meteorite. Um. And remember that the stony
meteorites different from that that solid metal sponge meteorite, the
iron nickel meteorite. But then again, a chondrite meteorite probably
would not have been able to maintain it's quote hummocky

(48:35):
character with all those years of rubbing. So you put
a stony meteorite in there, people touch it for a
thousand years, it would get ground down. And the authors
also say that a chondrite meteorite probably would not be
described as having a mirror like reflective polish. Now here's
one other option. How about a howardite meteorite. Good name again, um,

(48:57):
Howard It's the authors don't think it's going to be
because Howards are very rare. They think it's an unlikely candidate. Also,
Howard it tends to be light colored, and this would
not fit in with an originally black cobba stone. But
then it might fit if the original stories of original
whiteness are true. Uh so a little bit more, some
legends about the stone point to the possibility of it

(49:19):
being a sapphire or an amethyst, which is interesting, but
the authors think neither of those minerals really fit. Sapphires
are not big enough to be you know, the date
sized pebbles we see now, and uh and amethysts are
they quote they say, quote too readily cleaved. I'm not
quite sure I understand why that would disqualify. Maybe they're

(49:42):
saying that that doesn't meet the hardness characteristics that just
come apart. Yeah, because because again I have to have
a sweet spot here between something that is hard enough
to withstand all that human erosion but also traction. Yeah. Uh,
and so I I don't know. It sounds like what
you would want is something that is readily cleaved but

(50:02):
is not ground down by touching. Yeah. Maybe they mean
it would have just it's just just too fragile. Maybe yeah,
it could be. So what do they conclude? While the
authors suggest the simplest explanation would be to think of
visually attractive stones that are somewhat unusual but also not
things that are considered precious, gems. So they say obsidian

(50:24):
might fit, but they say it's too brittle and delicate
to have survived the years of handling and abuse that
the Cobba stone has. And in the end they settle
on age. They think agged is the most likely candidate,
especially black agg it. Why well, it's monomineralic. Uh, it's
hard a Mose scale seven, it's tough, and it's fine grained,

(50:45):
meeting a fanitic in that fun word from earlier. So age,
when polished by years of rubbing, should also show a
fairly reflective surface, you know, kind of mirror. Like one
last thing that they sawed in their favor. They sighted
an anonymous Arab geologist who went to view the stone
for himself while he was on the Hajj, and the
scholar said that he observed what's called diffusion banding within

(51:09):
the Kabba stone. If you've ever looked inside a cross
section of an aggot, you see these things that are
kind of like tree rings, you know what I'm talking about,
And these are the band's diffusion banding. And the authors
claimed that this would be consistent with the stone being
an agot um. One note is they seem absolutely unconcerned

(51:30):
with or unaware of the idea that the stone maybe
should float. Yes, and that's that's something that Elizabeth Thompson
commented on when in her paper which came afterwards, she
argued that that this choice, uh, the agot wouldn't wouldn't float,
and it also lacked a cosmic origin story. Now, now, personally,

(51:50):
I think that last bit especially is short sighted, because
I think human history shows us that an object or
place need not be verifiably heaven touched to reson aid
with with cosmic potency. Yeah, I'm not very convinced by
that either. I don't see why you couldn't conclude that
a regular Earth rock was a supernatural gift from heaven,

(52:11):
Like it doesn't literally have to come from space for
people to venerate it as a gift from heaven. Yeah,
Because I mean, essentially, you could boil it down to
two different ways of looking at this stone and it's
in its origin. Either it was a really cool looking
stone that someone came across and and it kind of
went from there, or it was a perfectly normal stone

(52:31):
but there was enough capital belief that was put into it,
be it's something situational or just the right people saying
this is this is it? This is tied to to
some something larger than ourselves. I mean, you can just
look around your house and you can find examples of
two of those things in action. Right Um, I have.
I'm on my desk right now, I have just a

(52:52):
normal like gravel pete rock. I don't know, probably came
from from asphalt or something. But my son brought it
to me one day and say and wanted me to
keep it because it was special. It's not special, it
doesn't look special at all, but the fact that he
gave that No, No, I took it in. For the
life of me, I can't quite get rid of it,
because because I have this small attachment to it, and likewise,

(53:16):
we all have various do dads around where that we have,
be it a stone or some minor decoration where we
just it just looks too interesting to get rid of. Well,
I think maybe now we should go to the next paper,
the one we've been talking about several times already, that
of Elizabeth Thompson, who has a different theory about where

(53:37):
this stone comes from. And her theory is an interesting hybrid,
I think, or I guess we should say it's a hypothesis.
It's an interesting hybrid of the meteoric uh or the
meteoritic origin story and UH and dealing with some of
the problems with that. Right. So, as as you can
tell by that that earlier criticism she had, she put

(54:00):
a lot of stock in the cosmic origin aspect that
this is somehow connected to to a meteorite. Uh. However,
it need not be an actual meteorite. According to her theory,
it could be uh what is known as impact tight glass.
So I've attached for Robert for you to look at

(54:20):
here a couple of pictures of of wabar impact type glass.
So cool looking. Yeah, wish I had some of this.
These look these look super cool. Yeah. And and there
are there are examples of what maybe we'll try to
include some links to these images on the landing page
for this episode of Stuff to Build Your Mind dot
com um, because they are kind of how would you

(54:41):
describe them that I actually I was trying to think
of the best way to put this. They don't look
like normal rocks. That do look again sort of like
the iron meteorite. They look like something that could plausibly
have come from a supernatural realm. It looks sort of
like a fistful of cottage cheese was wrapped up in
a bunch of seaweed, in a wad of seaweed, and

(55:03):
then turned into stone. Which that sounds about right, Yeah,
essentially the idea here. I'll get into it more. But
imagine what happens when a meteorite uh impact occurs in
a sandy region. All right, Okay, so there's silica sand,
and what happens when sand is heated up turns to glass? Yeah?
So Thompson points to the meteorite impact craters of a

(55:27):
region known as Wabar. This is six eight four miles
or kilometers from Mecca, so it's reasonably close. It's in
the Ruble Collie Desert and here several iron meteorites have
turned up. But the bedrock here is pure pale sandstone
composed mostly of quartz. Crater walls are composed of block

(55:49):
glass that are formed from fuse silica and infused with
billions of sphere ules of of nickel and iron. So
this is impact tight glass us. Yeah. And it occurs
in in what they call porous bombs uh so, and
often with a white interior and a glossy black shell,
sometimes as black droplets. So she theorizes that the observed

(56:13):
yellow white specks in the stone are remnants of glass
and or sandstone, and that the hardness of the glass
would make it resistant to all that human erosion. Meanwhile,
the poorous nature of the glass would make it would
would make it float, and that the black color would
be due to the nicoliferous iron sphere rules captured from
an explosion of nickel and iron. And she adds that

(56:35):
these qualities mash up with other examples of Wabbar glass,
as well as reports of meteorites used as memorials to
the prophet. Now, I think this is a really interesting theory.
Uh may I might be sort of favoring it just
because I love the pictures of this impact type glass
so much. It looks really cool. It looks so cool.
I want this to be the answer. Yes, it it's

(56:57):
It very much matches up with that classification and of
I mean, you can imagine somebody coming across this stone
and realizing this looks really cool. What's the story of this.
It's also I'm I'm persuaded, but not persuaded. I shouldn't
say that I'm I'm unfairly biased by this being a
very geologically cool origin story that an object from the

(57:19):
heavens came down and literally melted the earth to form
these these objects that later become objects of reverence. One
thing that's probably not necessarily I don't know, an influence,
but just a very interesting legendary parallel is the idea
of the destruction of the city of Iram of the
Pillars by fire from heaven. Yeah. I've seen this referred

(57:43):
to as the Atlantis of the Sands. Yeah, because it's
you know, it's a lost city. And I think it's
also called is it Ubar? Is that right? I'm not
sure I've seen it referred to it either I I
Ram with an eye or a Ram with an a
at least in the the copy of the Koran that
I was looking at, because it is mentioned in the
Koran chapter eighty nine, verse six to fourteen. It reads,

(58:08):
hast thou not considered how thy Lord dealt with ad
of Aram, having lofty buildings, the like of which are
not created in the land, And of Famide, who hewed
out rocks in the valley, and the Pharaoh, the Lord
of Hosts, who exceeded limits in the cities and made
great mischief therein so thy Lord poured on them a
portion of chastisement. Surely thy Lord is watchful. WHOA yeah, alright,

(58:33):
So Thompson has made uh an interesting uh speculation here
that that it could be this impact type glass. But
there was another scientific paper on it by H. J.
Asson published in the Journal of Material Science Letters in
nine two called the Blackstone of Kabba Suggestions as to
its constitution, And he looks at the research we've already

(58:54):
talked about and tries to draw some conclusions from it,
critique it, and then offer some ideas of zone. So
he reacts to to that original discussion of Dietz and
McCone who said it was an agate, and so he says, okay,
their reasoning rests on some assumptions that the stone is
jet black, that it's mirror like in reflective power, uh,

(59:15):
and that it's got these apparent banded regions that there
that their friend the geologists saw when he went and
visited it, that they attribute to diffusion banding. So it
makes them think agat on this basis. They say that
it's not a stony meteorite of the chondrite variety because
those crumble too easily and the word here is friable.

(59:38):
They're too easily friable. Uh So they're looking for something
that's a fanitic and monomineralic, you remember that, And they
conclude that it's ago. But Acton claims that even though
agat is readily available in the Middle East, he thinks
the authors overlooked the importance of the fact that the
stone is a collection of pebble like fragments cemented together

(01:00:00):
rather than a single stone with a well preserved hummocky surface.
So he he thinks that they may be sort of
um mistaking the textured appearance of this cemented together piece
of pavement essentially for the surface of what a stone
itself should look like. And in defense of stony meteorites,

(01:00:24):
he says, okay, chondrites, those are stony meteorites actually vary
a whole lot and exactly how crumbly they are, you know,
some of them might be more crumbly than others. How
friable they are also, Accon says, you know, cond rites
that have been subjected to what he calls extraterrestrial shock,
which is also the medical condition induced by watching the

(01:00:46):
movie Mac and Me. He says, they quote tend to
be compacted and contain dark veins which might be mistaken
for banding under unfavorable conditions of observation. So he says,
you know, if you're just coming up at this thing
in the middle of the day and you're trying to
peek in at it, you might mistake these these veins

(01:01:07):
that we would often see in certain types of condrites
for the kind of banding you'd see in an agate.
So that's in defense of it being a meteorite. On
the other hand, against the condrite hypothesis, Accent says, Uh,
it's common for chondrites to have these metallic iron nickel
pieces distributed evenly throughout, which should be obvious when you

(01:01:30):
look at this thing. Uh, this is something that people
would have observed about it. On the other hand, he
says that metal can disappear by way of oxidation i e.
Rusting if exposed to your earth weather for long periods
of time. So it maybe maybe it's just rusting. But
if this were the case, you'd expect to see rust,
you'd expect to see like a reddish you. Now that

(01:01:53):
being said, there are some accounts have said brownish or reddish, yeah,
and here we get back to the problem with like
come by all these different accounts that seem to differ
from one another. Uh, it's hard to know which one
to go on if you're trying to draw the best conclusions.
But yeah, I have seen that too. Some people say
reddish brown, others say black. So that's a little confusing. Um.

(01:02:15):
But also he says, we would expect to see in
a chondrite quote light colored con drools of silicate So
what is that? Well, con drools are these visually striking,
colorful spherical minerals that are found in some meteorites. You
should look this up. We could go Google search con drools.

(01:02:35):
They have a distinctive appearance and people would probably have
noticed and reported them if they'd been present in the stone,
because they're these like colored spheres. You would see them.
So Accent says, okay, okay, what about a carbonaceous meteorite.
These are rare condrites that are low in density, they're
free of obvious medical medical metal particles, and sometimes they

(01:03:01):
don't have these big cond rules that are really obvious.
But these are rare meteorites. They're not a major candidate,
and Accent thinks maybe we should just keep them in
the back of the mind, you know. And we've had
a two different authors here discussed like rarity being an issue.
I keep thinking, though, we're talking about a rare stone,
like you no, in no classification. It's not like black stone. Yeah,

(01:03:26):
like this is a singular stone. So can we really
count out the possibility of rare meteorites? Well, I mean
it just it lowers the probability that anybody in history
would have found things, but it maybe increases the probability
that if they had found it, they would have kept
it and revered it. Um. So you're just sort of

(01:03:48):
like adjusting the selection dials in two different ways. Um.
What about Thompson's hypothesis. He comes to that, you know
that it's this fused silical glass. There's an impact event
in the sand and the desert, a bunch of sand
gets melted along with some pieces of the meteorite into
these crazy wads of spinach and cottage cheese, uh turned

(01:04:11):
into stone. Well. Thompson obviously, as we said, likes this
hypothesis because it means the stone could feasibly float, and
there are those stories from the past of it floating
in brine or water or even concentrated brine, and this
would this would also explain the white stone inside the
black stone. Um. But Accent says, it's hard to see

(01:04:34):
how a large peat piece of this impactite glass would
form the smooth pebble shapes that are described by observers.
Again back to what people say. You see these smooth pebbles,
you know, no bigger than a date in in the cement.
If you look at these things, Accent says, if the
black stone fragments really are this fused silical glass from

(01:04:55):
an impact, they shouldn't look like these smooth pebbles. They
should uh, they should have different surface features, including things
like bubbles and vesicles. Um. And so one last thought
he offers is, you know, perhaps the original body was
what he calls a concreteation of pebbles. And so this
originally this original stone, when when it fractured, what it

(01:05:19):
was was a bunch of pebbles stuck together and it
was just the pebbles coming off, if that makes any sense.
So if you imagine the original stone was not like
a solid stone that broke into pieces and then the
pieces got smoothed down, what if it was a solid
stone that was more like a cluster of grapes in shape,
and he cites one example of a piece of lunar

(01:05:41):
material that had been hit by a shock media write
bombardment that actually showed this type of this shape that
it looked sort of like a cluster of grapes. And
so that's one possibility in his mind. But ultimately he concludes,
you know what, we don't know, and even though we've
got better scientific knowledge to work with, we really need

(01:06:03):
better access if we're going to make a conclusion, just
better access to the primary data. We'd have to be
able to look at this thing closely and make some measurements. Yeah.
I really like that point that he made in the paper,
saying that you know, even at the time it was
this ad two, that the material sciences had advanced so much, uh,
even from some of the previous studies in the prior decades,

(01:06:24):
and yet our information about the black Stone itself has
remained relatively the same. Uh, just you know, a few
more subjective observations of what it consists of. But but
but ultimately no new information, certainly no scientific, scientifically analytic information. Yeah.

(01:06:45):
That that is a good point. And I think one
thing that I come away from this discussion with is Um.
This attempt to investigate the material or geological character of
of the black Stone strikes me as kind of similar
to our episode from a couple of years ago, or
I guess, let yeah, almost a couple of year and
a half ago, maybe on the Will of the Wisp

(01:07:08):
uh in the same way, it encapsulates some of the
difficulties of doing what you might call second hand science.
In both cases, you've got scientists trying to apply their
knowledge of natural phenomena to match this wide range of
disparate subjective reports. Now, I think the reports of the
black Stone of the Kabba are much more substantive than

(01:07:31):
those of the Will of the Wisp. Obviously, in the
case of the black Stone, it actually exists, and we
know for a fact that it actually exists. It's not
something that maybe people are just imagining. We know millions
of people see it all the time. It's not an
ephemeral phenomenon. It's like a thing that's there. It's widely observed,
and we know that it's one unified phenomenon and not

(01:07:53):
like different phenomena being reported under the same name. So
these are all not the case for the Will of
the Isp. But like the will of the whisp, we
have to make judgments based on a host of variable
descriptions and characteristics. What color is it? Different reports and
different things. Are there flecks of other colors within it?

(01:08:13):
What color was it originally? Does it float in water?
How reflective is it? Even in the cases where there's
only one major answer to these, sometimes we don't know
if we should trust that answer or just throw out
the question entirely. You know, does it float in water?
Are our evidence that the stone floats in water? Is
some report from a thousand years ago? Yeah? Like, should
we give it? Give that more weight than the question, Well,

(01:08:36):
could it conceivably you know, spout a mouth and start talking?
You know, uh, you know, at what point you just
cut off and say, all right, we're only gonna We're
only gonna look at these three qualities. What class of
meteorite most commonly sprouts a tongue? I can't, I can't
think I think of one offhand. We'll have to what

(01:08:58):
we'll have to have to have to reach out to
our audience on that one. Maybe the in meteorites. Yeah, well,
I mean, even if you do make a distinction between um,
you know, subjective religious beliefs and just subjective direct observational reports.
Even the direct observational reports, they're giving us all this
conflicting info, and and none of it's very solid. Like

(01:09:18):
you you're you're not taking a measurement of it. You're
just saying like, yeah, here's generally what I saw. But
then there's one other interesting parallel, at least it seemed
interesting to me here in talking about a religious object,
is that I think it's kind of funny how the
practice of trying to do a geological or material science

(01:09:38):
analysis on the black Stone based on these subjective descriptions
almost reminds me of something that often happens in our
faith traditions, which is the process of trying to draw
clarity of theology from just what amounts to a large
collection of stories. You know. So when theologians of almost

(01:09:59):
any religion try to come up with the systematic theology
of that religion, the systematic theology being here are beliefs,
here in the rules, here's what happens in the metaphysics
of our religion, essentially the science of the religion. Uh,
they often have to draw these conclusions based on sources
that are not originally written to be clear and systematic

(01:10:20):
descriptions of rules and theological principles, but they're based on stories,
and so you have to sift through the stories to
try to pull out this clear, systematic understanding of it all. Anyway,
I thought that was kind of interesting. No, No, I think, yeah,
that's that's that's fair. It has a yeah, the idea
of of taking all of these either tales or these

(01:10:42):
accounts and trying to build something concrete out of it,
or just to say what does it mean? Yeah, yeah,
what is the what is the shape of this? Or indeed,
what is the meaning of this? Well? What am I
supposed to take home from this? Right? But it's but again,
so it's fascinating to to look at these different scientific
hypotheses about the black Stone. It's also interesting just to

(01:11:06):
look at the history and in mythology surrounding it and
try and figure out what that means as well. It's
it's really an enigma on several different levels. And I
hope that we've been able to relate some of that
to you today. And on that note, hey, we're thinking
about doing more episodes in this series looking at sacred

(01:11:27):
places or objects, so we should throw out the question,
what sacred objects or places would you like us to
cover in the future. We already have a few ideas
kicking around obviously, especially if there's some interesting scientific angle
it can be discussed about it. One of the things
that I might want to talk about in the future
is is the Ganges. Oh, yes, that's a good one. Uh.

(01:11:49):
More of an object than a place that comes to
my mind, as of course the Ark of the Covenant. Um,
it's like nothing we've gone after before. We should at
least consider it u huh. But I'm sure there are
some other examples out there that our listeners can think of,
and certainly you can get in touch with us about those.
And finally, you know, we've covered Islamic history, Islamic myth,

(01:12:12):
Islamic scientific contributions on the show before and will again,
and you know, it's all part of our shared global culture.
And at the same time, we recognize that discussions of
Islamic culture continue to resonate with particular potency in today's
political climate. So we encourage everyone out there to expand
their understanding of what it means to be a mussliment
today society. And as the starting point, we just wanted

(01:12:34):
to highlight two organizations you might want to check out.
First off, there's Muslims for Progressive Values at www dot
mp V USA dot org. This is a um a
faith based, grassroots international human rights organization organization that embodies
and advocates for the traditional chronic values of social justice
and equality for all. In the twenty one century, so

(01:12:55):
they championed such values as separation of religious and state authorities,
freedom of speech you versaal, human rights, and gender equality.
And another group is the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and
Gender Diversity and that's at Muslim Alliance dot org. Uh So,
they work to support, empower and connect lgb t Q Muslims.
They seek to challenge root causes of oppression, including misogyny

(01:13:18):
and xenophobia, and the aim to increase the acceptance of
gender and sexual diversity within Muslim communities and to promote
a progressive understanding of Islam that is centered on inclusion,
justice and equality. Yeah. And one of the things that
I hope always comes through UM whenever we talk about
religions on this podcast, as we do fairly often because
I think we all sort of find them very interesting, uh,

(01:13:41):
is it can be very easy to talk about religions,
especially a religion that you don't personally hold in ways
that are sort of over generalized and overdetermined. Uh. And
so one thing I hope you always take away from
our discussions is is the incredible room for diversity of
opinion the that exists within all these faith traditions around

(01:14:02):
the world. Uh. There are a lot of ways to
be a Christian, a lot of ways to be a Muslim,
a lot of ways to be a Hindu or Jew
or anything. Indeed, and you know, I know we have
some Muslim listeners out there, So I'd love to hear
your thoughts on this. And certainly if you have gone
on the Hodge and you have seen the black Stone
with your own eyes or touched it with your with
your own body, Uh, we would love to hear your

(01:14:25):
account of that. Yeah, what was it like? What? What
what do you think? And what color is it? Really? Yeah? Yeah,
what are your thoughts on that? You can find us
online as always it's stuff to blow your mind. Dot
com that is the mothership. That's where we'll find all
the podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, and links out to
our various social media accounts, which is Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Instagram it set, and if you want to get in

(01:14:47):
touch with us directly, as always, you can email us
at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com The pay big believe

(01:15:17):
I think by Man are doing