1000-year-old Buddhist statue made of meteorite

by Saravanan Jawahar on September 28, 2012 in Exclusive, News, Sci-Tech

Washington, Sep 28 (TruthDive): Scientists have discovered an ancient statue of Buddha, first found by Nazi expedition in the year 1938,which is engraved from a meteorite.

Ernst Schafer, the German scientist discovered it in Tibet. The 1,000-year-old statue discovered in Tibet by an expedition team was believed to be the origin of the pre-Buddhist Bon culture in the 11th century.

The statue, named as ‘Iron Man’, weighs 10 kg and is about 24 cm tall and is found to be made of a rare ataxite type of meteorite, the researchers said.

The researchers believe that the statue is part of a Chinga meteorite and meteorite is believed to have crashed to earth around 15,000 years ago. The 1,000-year-old statue with a swastika in its stomach is made by a rare form of iron, which contains high nickel.

Researchers also believe that the piece of Chinga meteorite crashed in the region of eastern Mangolia and Siberia, some 15,000 years before. The statue was brought back to Germany, was a part of private collection and disappeared from view until 2007. The new owner sought scientific advise for the statue.

Elmar Buchner of University of Stuttgart said that he was absolutely sure that it was a meteorite when he saw it first from a distance of 10 metres. The statue is believed to be the god Vaisravana. Iron Man is believed to signify a stylistic hybrid between the Buddhist and pre-Buddhist culture.

He said that its origin alone may be worth 20000 US dollars and their estimates of its age were correct and that it would be invaluable. The finding of this statue were published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

In the earlier age, meteorite was worshipped by a host of ancient cultures including the Inuit’s of Australia and Greenland’s aborigines. It was also believed that the fall of meteorites from sky has been interpreted as divine messages in prehistoric times.

The largest known meteorite of the world was the Hoba meteorite of Namibia and it is also an ataxite meteorite which weighs about 60 tonnes.