Comets and meteorites of different sizes come to us from the sky. One of them, well known, caused the disappearance of 85% of animal species -including all the dinosaurs- 65 million years ago. Had it not been for this 10 km diameter asteroid, mammals would not have been able to become the dominant zoological class, taking the place left by reptiles.
The remains of the impact that are preserved in the Yucatan are the clearest example of the powerful influence of the heavens in the evolution of life on Earth . Even more. They may also have had something to do with the evolution of our technology.
Around 1500 BC The Hittites discovered that iron could be melted down to make tools and weapons of higher quality than those made of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. How was iron discovered ? The melting point of copper is low enough – almost 1,100 ºC – so that it can be melted in simple fires. But iron, with its 1,808 ºC, requires deliberate melting through a complex process. What gave the key for the peoples of the Middle East to start using iron?
We have a clue in that many of the artifacts found in the excavations of the Bronze Age contain 90% iron , among them we have Tutankhamun’s dagger . Chemical analyzes have revealed that the impurities in the dagger are nickel, suggesting that the iron came from a metallic meteorite, whose composition is essentially the same. Is it possible that the first thing blacksmiths used was iron melted by our own atmosphere? The Hittites and Sumerians recognized this connection by calling iron “the fire of heaven”; even the Egyptian word for it means “thunder from heaven.” Moreover, the Assyrian term is “heaven metal .” With meteorites as inspiration and guide, recognizing iron ores on Earth was almost inevitable. Meteorites allowed the jump to the Iron Age.
One of the surprises to early European explorers of the arctic is that the Eskimo tribe of Inuits in northwestern Greenland used knives, harpoon points, and engraving tools made of iron…and they had no mines . Its source was a meteorite that was more than 2,000 km away.
Between 1818 and 1883, five expeditions set out in search of the “Iron Mountain” and failed. In 1894 Robert E. Peary, guided by a local who led him to a certain place on Saviksoah Island, north of Cape York, found the legendary meteorite that was divided into three parts: Ahnighito (34 Tm), the Woman, ( 3 tons) and the dog (0.5 tons). How could it be otherwise, the next three years Peary dedicated to taking them from the place: he had to face the inhospitable climate and engineering problems to build the only train that has traveled Greenland. In the end the Inuit iron “mines” were sold for $40,000 to the American Museum of Natural History and can now be seen in the Arthur Ross Meteorite Hall.
Ironically, our civilization also makes use of heaven-sent metals. 27% of the world’s nickel comes from the Sudbury astrobleme , in Ontario (Canada), the second largest crater on the planet formed by the impact of a large meteorite composed mainly of iron and nickel that hit the Earth 1,850 million years ago . So if you have any coins with a certain nickel content, such as the American nickel, it is very likely that you have metal on your hands that came to Earth from the asteroid belt.
But not only meteorites serve to enhance technology; they are also considered as tests of the ability of the gods to make things. And even as an amulet. That happened in 205 a. C. when Hannibal was prowling around Italy threatening the stability of the Republic. The Sibyl prophesied that Hannibal would be defeated if the Ideana Mother of the Gods were brought from her temple at Pessinus, in Phrygia (central Turkey), to Rome. In search of a second opinion, the Roman senators consulted the oracle of Apollo, which gave them the same answer: the Magna Mater had to return to Rome. A ship was built that departed on such a sacred mission with five senators commanded by M. Valerius Laevinus. All that display for what is believed to be a cone-shaped piece of meteorite.
With such religious air, the Romans were able to defeat Hannibal and in a short time they conquered Carthage. In gratitude, they built a temple dedicated to her on the Palatine Hill where the meteorite was worshiped for 500 years until it fell into oblivion. In the excavations that were carried out in the 1730 area, it was found but was left aside because no one recognized it. And it was lost forever.
One of the last emperors of the decadent Roman Empire, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus also has his relationship with meteorites. As a young man he was ordained a high priest in the temple of Emesa (today the Syrian city of Homs). He took his duties so seriously that he changed his name to the god who was worshiped in that temple, Elagabalus. His cult was centered around the Black Stone of Emesa, a large cone-shaped meteorite .
It is also possible that this is the origin of the Black Stone of the Kaaba , a pre-Islamic place of worship that contained 360 idols until in 630 Muhammad, after worshiping the Black Stone, cleansed it of all of them. Three hundred years later the sect of the Carmatians stole it and it was recovered two decades later: it was identified because, according to legend, it floats in water.
Islamic tradition states that it came from heaven and was the color of hyacinth but changed to black because of the sins of mankind. According to the testimonies of those who have seen it, it is reddish black in color and on its surface there are some fringes and crystalline inclusions. In 1980 Elsebeth Thomsen proposed that it could be an impactite, molten sand with meteoritic material, obtained from the Wabar craters in the inhospitable Saudi desert of ar-Rub Al-Jali. Wabar impactites have the appearance of a hard glass with a porous structure (it can float) with white crystal and sandstone inclusions (the fringe).
In the most recent year of 1853, a meteorite fell in East Africa and he was declared a god by the Wanika tribe, until a famine and massacre carried out by the Masai forced him to rethink his divinity. On December 2, 1880, a meteorite literally fell at the feet of two Brahmins near Andhara (India), who immediately proclaimed themselves ministers of the “Miraculous God” and managed to attract 10,000 pilgrims in one day. Finally, on August 14, 1992, dozens of rocks fell from the sky in Mbale, Uganda. The locals decided that, conveniently pulverized, they would take them as medicine: the gods had sent them to cure AIDS.
