Meteorieten door de eeuwen heen

Throughout the ages mankind has been confronted with the phenomena from the heavens. Among these, meteorites and cometsplayed a major role. Fear for these punpredictable signs exists from the very beginnings until today. They were considered to be penalties inflicted by the angry Gods, anouncements of many deadly epidemics and tokens for great men to die. On the contrary others saw them as good signs: a king to be born or a future victory. Fallen stones were hallowed or declared to represent a Goddess. And often a temple was built for a black stone from heaven. Iron stones provided mankind with the first iron and supplied him, even in the Bronze-age, with his first iron weapons. The Greenland Eskimos spent days of hacking to obtain just a few splinters of iron from an iron meteorite. Probably nickel-iron meteorites gave men the first inkling how to produce alloys. Even today astronautical research receives contributions from the knowledge gained by the study of the behaviour of meteorites during their flight and fall. A study started by the Chinese 700 years before Chr. and later carried on by the classical authors. They already saw meteorites as bodies originated from space. However, it was only at the end of the eightteenth century that the idea of falling stones from heaven became integrated in modern science.