Ancient Buddhist Statue, Acquired by Nazis in 1938, was Carved From a Meteorite

Posted on September 26, 2012

Scientists have announced that an ancient Buddhist statue was carved from a meteorite. The 1,000 year-old ancient Buddhist statue is known as the Iron Man. The statue portrays the god Vaisravana, the Buddhist King of the North, also known as Jambhala in Tibet. The findings were published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

The statue was discovered in 1938 by an expedition of German scientists into Tibet led by zoologist Ernst Schafer. The scientists say the large swastika carved into the center of the statue may have encouraged the Nazi scientists to take the statue back to Germany. The researchers say this particular expedition was supported by Nazi SS Chief Heinrich Himmler.

Scientists, led by Dr. Elmar Buchner from Stuttgart University, analyzed the statue and found it contains ataxite, a rare class of iron meteorite with high contents of nickel.

Dr. Buchner said in a statement, "The statue was chiseled from a fragment of the Chinga meteorite which crashed into the border areas between Mongolia and Siberia about 15,000 years ago. While the first debris was officially discovered in 1913 by gold prospectors, we believe that this individual meteorite fragment was collected many centuries before. The Iron Man statue is the only known illustration of a human figure to be carved into a meteorite, which means we have nothing to compare it to when assessing value. Its origins alone may value it at $20,000; however, if our estimation of its age is correct and it is nearly a thousand years old it could be invaluable."/p>

ARCHAEOLOGY