A Buddhist statue brought to Germany from Tibet by a Nazi-backed
expedition has been confirmed as having an extraterrestrial origin.
Known as the ‘iron man’, the 24-centimetre-high sculpture may
represent the *** Vaiśravaṇa and was likely created from a piece of the Chinga meteorite
that was strewn across the border region between Russia and Mongolia
between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, according to Elmar Buchner, of the
University of Stuttgart in Germany, and his colleagues.
In a paper published in Metoritics and Planetary Science,
the team reports their ******** of the iron, nickel, cobalt and trace
elements of a sample from the statue, as well as its structure. They
found that the geochemistry of the artefact is a match for values known
from fragments of the Chinga meteorite. The piece turned into the ‘iron
man’ would be the third largest known from that fall.
Given the extreme ******** of the meteorite — “basically an
inappropriate material for producing sculptures” the paper notes — the
artist or artists who created it may have known their material was
special, the researchers say. Buchner suggests that it could have been
produced by the 11th century Bon Ben
[Corrected 27/9] culture, but the exact origin and age of the statue —
as opposed to the meteorite it is made from — is still unknown. It is
thought to have been brought to Germany by a Nazi-backed expedition to
Tibet in 1938–39. The swastika symbol on the piece — a version of which
was adopted by the Nazi party — may have encouraged the 1938 expedition
to take it back with them.
“While the first debris was officially discovered in 1913 by gold
prospectors, we believe that this individual meteorite fragment was
collected many centuries before,” said Buchner in a statement. “The Iron
Man statue is the only known illustration of a human figure to be
carved into a meteorite.”
Although this item may be the only known human figure carved into a
rock fallen to Earth, other meteorites have also been used by many
religions across the world. A 15-tonne example in North America called
the Willamette meteorite is sacred to some native Americans, and some have suggested that the Black Stone in the Kaaba in Mecca is a meteorite.
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