Now, now, the fact that the sky is full of great big fucking rocks that occasionally fall out of it and hit the Earth has only been known for about two hundred years
> Although meteors have been known since ancient times, they were not known to be an astronomical phenomenon until early in the nineteenth century. Prior to that, they were seen in the West as an atmospheric phenomenon, like lightning, and were not connected with strange stories of rocks falling from the sky. In 1807, Yale University chemistry professor Benjamin Silliman investigated a meteorite that fell in Weston, Connecticut.[30] Silliman believed the meteor had a cosmic origin, but meteors did not attract much attention from astronomers until the spectacular meteor storm of November 1833.
It takes time for these things to sink in (apparently, despite e.g. the Chelyabinsk meteor, and all the craters, and how all the dinosaurs have wings now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Eart... )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#History
> Although meteors have been known since ancient times, they were not known to be an astronomical phenomenon until early in the nineteenth century. Prior to that, they were seen in the West as an atmospheric phenomenon, like lightning, and were not connected with strange stories of rocks falling from the sky. In 1807, Yale University chemistry professor Benjamin Silliman investigated a meteorite that fell in Weston, Connecticut.[30] Silliman believed the meteor had a cosmic origin, but meteors did not attract much attention from astronomers until the spectacular meteor storm of November 1833.