Elaine Velie

“Jean Fouquet’s “Melun Diptych” (c. 1455) is one of the Northern Renaissance’s most iconic — and creepiest — paintings. Among other inexplicable motifs, it features an oddly shaped rock resting on a bible. An art historian and paleoanthropologist had a hunch about the stone and paired up to discover that it was a Paleolithic tool. Millenia after our prehistoric ancestors used it to cut wood, slice meat, and dig for root vegetables, Europeans thought the artifact was a “thunderstone” shot from the heavens during lighting storms.

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