The fall or discovery of a meteorite seems to have always been an event of great significance to man. In ancient civilizations, the spectacular fireball accompanying most meteorite falls, along with the unusual appearance of the meteorite's surface, led to the belief that meteorites resulted from actions of the gods. Numerous mentions of meteorites exist in recorded ancient history, and most of them associate the fall with some momentous event such as the decisive turn of a battle. Meteorite cults, based on the worship of stones from the sky, even existed in some regions of the Mediterranean for several hundred years before and after the birth of Christ.

But their importance to the ancients was not all mystical. Beads, daggers and swords made from an apparently nickel-iron alloy have been unearthed in the Middle East, suggesting that iron meteorites may have been some of man's first "iron mines". In fact, the word for iron in some modern languages is related to ancient Sumerian and Egyptian words for "fire from heaven" and "metal from the sky".

In spite of their great historical significance, however, meteorites have only been fully accepted as extra-terrestrial by the scientific establishment since the start of the 19th Century. Scientists viewed the ancient accounts as being more myth than fact, tied as they were to the supernatural. In addition, it was hard to prove that meteorites originated outside the Earth; they came from the sky, obviously, but could they not have been earth rocks somehow projected into orbit? As more meteorites were studied, however, chemical evidence began to emerge which showed meteorites to be unlike earth rocks yet similar to one another. This was the beginning of the acceptance of their extra-terrestrial origin.