This Buddha Statue Is Made From Meteorites 10,000 Years

It sounds like the plot of Indiana Jones movie, but a team of German researchers said the heavy statue of Buddha, which was brought from Nazi Europe, is sculptured meteorite. Space rock is thought to fall to Earth 10,000 years ago on the border of Siberia and Mongolia.

Buddha statue from outer space that has been nicknamed the "iron man" by the researchers, it is not known exactly his age, although the best estimate at this time, it comes from a time between the 8th century and the 10th century AD.

Sculpture measuring 24 cm high and weighs 10.6 pounds it depicts a man, may god in Buddhism, in a sitting position, holding some object in his left hand. On his chest was a swastika, a symbol of good luck and then co-opted by the Nazi Party of Germany.

"People can speculate, swastika symbols on the statue was the motivation to move artifacts meteorites 'iron man' it to Germany," the researchers wrote in the online journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

"Iron Man" the first time up in Germany after the expedition to Tibet in 1938-1939 by an ethnologist and zoologist Ernst Schäfer, who was sent to find the roots of Nazi Aryan origin. The statue changed hands to a private owner.

Researchers Stuttgart University, Elmar Bucher and colleagues first analyzed the statue in 2007, when owners allow experts to take five small samples. Two years later, in 2009, a larger sample taken from the inside of the statue, which contain less contamination of the weather and the human touch.

Scientists found that the statue was carved from a rare space rocks called meteorites ataxite. Iron meteorite containing a high content of nickel. The largest meteorite ever known of this type is the Hoba meteorite in Namibia, which can weigh more than 60 tons.

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Based on the chemical analysis of samples of "iron man", approached a stretch of meteorite types that exist on the border of Siberia and Mongolia: Chinga. In Chinga, found at least 250 meteorite fragments, mostly relatively small, although there are two who weighs 10 pounds. Scientists estimate that the meteorite fell there around 10,000 to 20,000 years ago.

Chinga discovered the first time in 1913, but the presence of the statue proves, people in the past to mine the meteorite as an ingredient to make works of art. Who is the object of the statue is not known, but scientists suspect that he may god Buddha, also called Jambhala Vaisravana.

Vaisravana is the god of wealth or war, he is often depicted holding a lemon, a symbol of prosperity, or a bag of money in his hand. However, what really held "iron man" has not been ascertained. Known before, that some cultures use meteorites as a dagger, sword, and even jewelry. And offerings in the form of ordinary meteorites in ancient cultures. However, carved in the form of Buddhist sculpture is unique.

"Statue Iron Man is the only figure statue carved from a meteorite," said Buchner. Its value is estimated to infinity.