meteorites

Before the dawn of the iron age, ancient humans had but one source of workable iron for their artifacts and weapons: meteorites. In this very-metal episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss various examples of meteoric metal artifacts, including several precious sky-weapons of antiquity. 

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Thousands of years ago, a massive meteoroid seared through the Earth’s atmosphere and split into fragments over Greenland. Its pieces were later used for toolmaking by the Inughuit that inhabited northwestern Greenland. In other words: Inughuit people used space knives.

This fact, featured in a viral Reddit post on r/todayilearned, spurred an Endless Thread deep dive into a forgotten history of American exploration and exploitation abroad.

In this special interview episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe chat with legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog and volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer about their new documentary "Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds," which deals with meteors and comets and their influence on ancient religions and other cultural and physical impacts they've had on Earth.

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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 and Joe discuss the mythic, historical and scientific substance of the Kaaba.

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