[meteorite-list] The black stone in the wall of the Ka'ba (Part 3 of 3)

From: bernd.pauli at paulinet.de <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: 06 Oct 2010 19:24:55 UT
Message-ID: <DIIE.000000AF0000516F_at_paulinet.de>

BURKE J.G. (1986) Cosmic Debris, Meteorites in History, pp. 221-223:

Partsch evidently favored a meteoritic origin of the stone, both because of von Laurin's
description of the black exterior of the fragment he viewed, its interior texture, and its
purported heaviness, and because Muslims said that it came from heaven and venerated it
as the Greeks and Romans venerated similar stones not too far distant in time and place.
In 1974 Dietz and McHone emphasized that the Muslims do not claim that the stone is a
meteorite. They postulated that the stone is an agate, because of the high polish it displays
among other physical attributes and because an Arab geologist, who studied the stone carefully
during a pilgrimage to Mecca, reported that "diffusion banding is clearly discernible within
the stone.
In 1980, however, Thomsen presented a different hypothesis. She suggested that the stone may be a
chunk of impactite glass, mined from one of the meteorite craters at Wabar in the so-called Empty
Quarter of central Saudi Arabia, about 1,100 km from Mecca. She pointed out that the "whiteness
may derive from an exposure of the interior white core of a bomb or... from a large fragment of
white glass or sandstone," and that the whiteness remains only where it is protected by cement.
Further, she wrote: "The yellow and white spots may be remnants of glass and/or sandstone.
The porosity which allows it to float is due to vesicles in the glass, and the resistance of the
material to abrasion due to the hardness of the glass. The blackness results from the nickeliferous
iron spherules captured from an explosion cloud of Ni and Fe." Thomsen also thinks that ancient
Arabs may have observed the meteorite fall, estimated to have occurred about six thousand years
ago, and that natives later carried the impactite glass to Mecca along a caravan route.

Thus, there is now considerable doubt that the black stone of the Ka'ba is a meteorite.

Partsch Paul (1857) ?ber den schwarzen Stein in der Kaaba zu Mekka
(Denkschriften der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, 13, pp. 1-5).

Dietz R., McHone J. (1974) Kaaba Stone: Probably an agate (Meteoritics 9, pp. 173-179)

Thomsen Elsebeth (1980) New light on the origin of the Holy Black Stone
of the Ka'ba (Meteoritics 15, pp. 87-91).

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Regards,

Bernd
Received on Wed 06 Oct 2010 03:24:55 PM PDT