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… Read more.

In many parts of southern England until the middle of the nineteenth century, another name commonly used for fossil Echinoids was ‘thunderstone’, though other fossils such as belemnites and (rarely) ammonites were also used for this… Read more.

During the Middle Ages many of these well-wrought thunderstones were venerated as weapons, which during the “war in heaven” had been used in driving forth Satan and his hosts. Hence, in the 11th century… Read more.

The Greeks and Romans, at least from the Hellenistic period onward, used Neolithic stone axeheads for the apotropaic protection of buildings. A 1985 survey of the use of prehistoric axes in Romano-British contexts found forty examples, of which twenty-nine… Read more.

Albanians believed in the supreme powers of thunderstones (kokrra e rrufesë or guri i rejës), which were believed to be formed during lightning strikes and to fall from the sky. Thunderstones were preserved in family life… Read more.

A folk tradition in Denmark and southern England imagined sea urchin fossils to be thunderbolts, able to ward off harm by lightning or by witchcraft, as an apotropaic symbol. Another version supposed they were… Read more.