Historical Accounts of Meteorites in Medieval and Ancient Times

It is somewhat difficult to obtain trustworthy accounts regarding the occurrence of meteorites in medieval and ancient times, as there was a strong tendency to confuse the real meteorites with flint arrow-heads and hatchets derived from the stone age. A number of interesting facts bearing on the history of certain real or supposed aerolites were given in a recent lecture delivered by Prof. Hubert A. Newton in New Haven, Conn. Some of the more striking instances are here presented.

As an illustration of the way in which meteorites may have come to be reverenced in former times, we have the modern instance of a stone that fell in the region north of Zanzibar, on the East African coast, and was seen and picked up by some shepherd boys. At first all the efforts of the German missionaries to buy this stone were fruitless, because the neighboring Wanikas looked upon it as a god, and, after securing possession of it, proceeded to anoint it with oil, clothe it with apparel and decorate it with pearls. They also built a temple wherein the stone received divine honors. This worship endured for some time, but when, three years later, the nomad tribes of the Masai swooped down on the Wanikas and burned their villages and massacred many of the inhabitants, the Wanikas lost all respect for the stone and were glad to part with it. This conduct was, after all, not entirely unreasonable, since the fetish had failed to prove its divine power.

This occurrence in the nineteenth century may well be typical of what must have happened in past times. A case from the fifteenth century, narrated by Professor Newton, is very interesting, since the treatises on precious stones of that period and somewhat later contain many notices of supposed meteorites. We are told that, on November 16, 1492, a stone weighing 300 pounds fell at Ensisheim, in Alsace. Emperor Maximilian, who was then in Basel, caused the stone to be brought to the neighboring castle and summoned a state council to determine the character of the divine message associated with its fall. The council decided that the event signified some important occurrence in the approaching conflict between the French and the Turks, and the stone, with an appropriate inscription, was suspended in the church, the strictest injunctions being given that it should not be removed. Conrad Gesner, in his treatise, "De figuris lapidum," states that a fragment of this stone was given to him by a friend and that it resembled ordinary sandstone.