This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Stones gathers eleven inscribed or shaped stone objects, and the group's real organizing question, as with the atlas's other artifact groupings, is not what each stone is made of but what kind of claim rests on it.
Several are securely ancient and religiously central. The Black Stone of the Kaaba, kissed by pilgrims circling the Kaaba during hajj, is not in question as the object of veneration even though geologists still debate whether it is meteorite, agate or basalt. The Aztec Sun Stone and the Coyolxauhqui Stone are both monumental Mexica carvings recovered from beneath modern Mexico City, the first a cosmological and dynastic monument popularly miscalled a calendar, the second a dismembered goddess relief whose 1978 rediscovery triggered the excavation of the Templo Mayor. The Narmer Palette, found at Hierakonpolis in 1897 and 1898, is treated by Egyptologists as commemorating the unification of Egypt under its first king. The Stone of Scone and the Lia Fail are both real enthronement stones of early kingship, in Scotland and Ireland respectively, historically distinct despite later legend confusing them.
The Nazareth Inscription is a real ancient edict whose religious significance remains genuinely disputed rather than settled either way. The Tablets of the Law survive only in scripture, with no physical tablets ever attested, so the atlas classes them as legendary rather than historical.
Three close the group as exposed forgeries: the Kensington Runestone, the Newark Holy Stones and the Ica Stones were each produced to support a claim, Norse exploration, ancient Hebrew presence and human coexistence with dinosaurs, that scholarship has rejected outright, though the Runestone still keeps a devoted local following.