Thunderstone (folklore)

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For the item in the Pokémon series of role-playing video games, see Gameplay of Pokémon § Evolutionary stones.

A thunderstone is a prehistoric hand axe, stone tool, or fossil which was used as an amulet to protect a person or a building.[1] The name derives from the ancient belief that the object was found at a place where lightning had struck.[2]

Thunderstone folklore

bifaces

European tradition

good fortune, prosperity, and progress to people, especially in livestock and agriculture, or that rifle bullets would not hit the owners of thunderstones.[3] Thunderstone pendants were believed to have protective powers against the negative effects of the evil eye and were used as talismans for both cattle and pregnant women.[4]

Classical world

The Greeks and Romans, at least from the

temples, and kilns.[6]

Middle Ages

During the

Bishop of Rennes
asserted the value of thunderstones as a divinely appointed means of securing success in battle, safety on the sea, security against thunder, and immunity from unpleasant dreams.

European folklore

Axe heads found at a 2700 BC Neolithic manufacture site in Switzerland, arranged in the various stages of production from left to right.

In

Passion Week they have the property to reveal hidden treasure.[8]

Asian tradition

In Burma they are used as a cure and preventative for appendicitis. In Japan they cure boils and ulcers. In Malaysia and Sumatra they are used to sharpen the kris, are considered very lucky objects, and have been credited with being touchstones for gold.[8]

North American tradition

In North Carolina and Alabama there is a belief that flint stones placed in the fire will keep hawks from molesting the chickens, a belief which probably stems from the European idea that elf arrows protect domestic animals. In Brazil, flint is used as a divining stone for gold, treasure and water.[8]

Native American folklore

The flint was an object of veneration by most American Indian tribes. According to the

Pueblos there were flint societies which, in most tribes, were primarily concerned with weather and witchcraft, but sometimes had to do with war and medicine.[8]

Fossils as thunderstones

In many parts of southern England until the middle of the nineteenth century, another name commonly used for fossil

ammonites were also used for this purpose.[2]

In 1677

pagan folklore.[9]

In Sussex in the early 20th century fossil echinoids were also used on the outside windowsills of kitchens and dairies to stop milk going off (because thunder was believed to be able to sour milk).[2]

Decline of thunderstone mythology

Boucher de Perthes

Even as late as the 17th century, a French ambassador brought a stone hatchet, which still exists in the museum at Nancy, as a present to the Prince-Bishop of Verdun, and claimed that it had healing properties.[9]

Michael Mercati
tried to prove that the "thunder-stones" were weapons or implements of early races of men; but for some reason his book was not published until the following century, when other thinkers had begun to take up the same idea.

In 1723

Joseph-Francois Lafitau, who published a work showing the similarity between the customs of aborigines then existing in other lands and those of the early inhabitants of Europe. So began, in these works of Jussieu and Lafitau, the science of ethnology
.

It was only after the

French Revolution of 1830, more than a century later, that the political climate in Europe was free enough of religious sentiment for archaeological discoveries to be dispassionately investigated and the conclusion reached that human existence spanned a much greater period of time than any Christian theologian had dreamt of.[10]

Boucher de Perthes

In 1847, a man previously unknown to the world at large, Boucher de Perthes, published in Paris the first volume of work on Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities, and in this he showed engravings of typical flint implements and weapons, of which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in the high drift beds near Abbeville, in northern France. So far as France was concerned, he was met at first by what he calls "a conspiracy of silence", and then by a contemptuous opposition among orthodox scientists, led by Elie de Beaumont.

In 1863 the thunderstone myth was further discredited by

human antiquity, and his changing sides gave further force to the scientific evidence.[10][unreliable source?
]

See also

Look up thunderstone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. S2CID 149605516
    .
  2. ^ a b c Jacqueline Simpson; Steve Roud (2003). "Thunderstone". A Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford University Press.
  3. ISBN 99927-938-9-9
    .
  4. ^ Tirta 2004, p. 101.
  5. doi:10.4000/kernos.2283
    .
  6. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0092.1985.tb00231.x
    .
  7. S2CID 245150023
    .
  8. ^ a b c d Leach, Maria. ""Flint"." Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. 3rd ed. New York, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1972. Print.
  9. ^ a b McNanamara, Kenneth (2007). "Shepards' crowns, fairy loaves and thunderstones: the mythology of fossil echinoids in England". Myth and Geology. 273: 289–293.
  10. ^ a b White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. New York: George Braziller, 1955. 266–283
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