In
my head, I'm picturing Indiana Jones swooping down and stealing the subject of
this post out from under the noses of the SS. Unfortunately, things don't work
that way in real life, and on Wednesday, Nature magazine reported that a Buddhist statue
taken by the Nazis in 1938-39 was actually carved out of a meteorite -
specifically the Chinga
meteorite.
TIBETAN BUDDHISTS
The
statue weighs in at 10 kg or around 22 pounds. It is 24 centimeters tall, and
depicts the Buddhist god Vaisravana
(also known as Kubera), the King of the North. This particular statue is
known as the "Iron man." The exact origin of the statue is not known,
but experts believe it to have been created by the indigenous Tibetan people, the Bon.
Picture from: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/09/buddhist-iron-man-found-by-nazis-is-from-space.html
NAZIS
An
expedition lead by Ernst
Schäfer in 1938-39 into Tibet is believed to be the expedition
during which the statue was found. The statue probably struck the Nazis' fancy
due to the swastika found
on it's abdomen. The original meaning of the swastika is far from the way the
Nazis bastardized it. A swastika's literal meaning is "to be good".
In Tibet specifically, it was a symbol known as "yung
drung"and represents eternity.
ALIENS
No, not the little green men kind, but instead the giant, extraterrestrial rock
kind. The image of the "iron man" as it is known, is carved into a
large piece of extraterrestrial iron. The composition of the rock included an
abnormally high content of nickel, and it was from this that it was determined
to be a member of the rare ataxite
meteorite class. It is believed that the meteorite fragment is a remnant of the Chinga meteorite that
fell in the area that is now Russia, tens of thousands of years ago. According
to Nature magazine, this is the only known figure of a human carved into a
meteorite.
Original article from Nature magazine - here
Scientific American article - here
The journal abstract from Meteorites & Planetary Science
can be found - here
Tell me again how science isn't awesome?
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