Tibetan Buddhist statue carved from iron meteorite

[ellisonz]

Iron Man, a Buddhist statue stolen from Tibet by the Nazis in 1938. It is thought to be 1,000 years old. Chemical analysis by scientists at Stuttgart University reveals it as a fragment of an iron meteorite. The statue is 24 centimeters – about 9.5 inches – high.

Deborah Byrd Oct 09, 2012
Scientists at University of Stuttgart found that a Buddhist statue known as Iron Man has geochemistry matching the 15,000-year-old Chinga meteorite.

This story made the rounds in late September 2012, but I didn’t want you to miss it. It’s a 1,000-year-old Buddhist statue – returned to Germany shortly before World War II by a Nazi-backed expedition to Tibet – that’s now believed to have been carved from a meteorite. The statue is known as Iron Man. It bears a swastika on its chest, a symbol that dates back to ancient India as well as classical antiquity. Scientists from Germany and Austria determined the meteoritic origin of the statue through chemical analysis. The statue is believed to be carved from a piece of the Chinga iron meteorite that fell near the border of Siberia and Mongolia around 15,000 years ago.

Iron Man, a Buddhist statue stolen from Tibet by the Nazis in 1938. It is thought to be 1,000 years old. Chemical analysis by scientists at Stuttgart University reveals it as a fragment of an iron meteorite. The statue is 24 centimeters – about 9.5 inches – high.

The expedition to Tibet, in 1938, was backed by Heinrich Himmler, a military commander and leading member of the Nazi party. He’s said to have believed that the secret origin of the entire Aryan race could be uncovered in Tibet. It was manned by members of the Schutzstaffel – often abbreviated SS – a paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party

More: http://earthsky.org/human-world/buddhist-statue-taken-from-tibet-by-nazi-ss-carved-from-meteorite

[navarth]

1. and a backwards swastika at that!! how strange

I still remember walking around in Bali, Indonesia in the early 80's and flipping when I saw swastikas everywhere. Obviously I didn't know yet that it was an ancient symbol. I'm kinda surprised to see it mirrored on this guy. Interesting.

[AmyDeLune]

2. The Nazi Swastika is backwards

Hitler flipped it, I don't remember why, but before it was appropriated by Nazis it was (and still is) a symbol of good luck and fortune. Some thought that his reversal of the swastika (thus reversing fortune) is one of the things that brought about the fall of the Third Reich.

If you look at pre-World War II buildings you'll often see swastikas in the designs.

[navarth]

4. I believe you, but

we've got a library here in Detroit (the downtown branch) which has an architectural flourish encircling it with a band of swastikas and, as I remember it, they are also flipped. When I first saw it, it was a complete WTF moment for me just like in Bali. I'll have to go and see if I remember it correctly.

Nothing like a swastika-orientation discussion in the morning to get your day going!

[JDPriestly]

3. I met a real NAZI, the real thing, on a train out of Vienna some years ago.

He went on and on. I was so frightened I had goosebumps.

One of his theories was that the Christian religion really came from India. I wonder if his theory had anything to do with this statue or whether the expedition to India and Tibet that resulted in the looting of this statue had to do with his theory. Anyway, the NAZIs did seem to think that the origins of religion were in India. Or something like that.

[ellisonz]

6. All part of their Aryan race nonsense...

[JDPriestly]

8. I was literally shaking. And this guy was on a commission or council in the town in which

I lived -- spouting utterly NAZI propaganda. I was terrified.

I should add that the NAZI tirade from this man is one of the reasons that I so strongly support Israel even though I am not Jewish. I cannot imagine the fear that many Jewish people felt when, after the war, they immigrated with their families to Israel. It was a safe haven for a people who had been persecuted for centuries.

If the anti-Israel DUers had heard this man, they would agree with me about Israel.

[greiner3]

9. "If the anti-Israel DUers had heard this man, they would agree with me about Israel."

Sorry dude, just another straw man from you.

[JDPriestly]

13. I stand by my statement.

[Hestia]

5. Another tidbit from history - the Kaaba stone in Mecca is a fragment left from the meteorite

that was worshiped in Cybele's cave. It was brought to Mecca about 1,000 years ago and was chipped away until all that is left is like a 12 x 12 piece of the meteorite. Interesting that Muslim's kiss a piece of women's history.

Swastika's - Named from the Sanskrit "so be it," or "amen," the swastika has been a religious emblem of worldwide occurrence since at least 10,000 B.C.E....
A swastika with arms pointing clockwise was generally regarded as a solar emblem. a counterclockwise (sauvastika) represented the moon, night and the feminine principle.

[proud patriot]

7. I had no idea ..

just how ancient the symbol was ... too bad it was hyjacked by the nazi's.. I love religious history, and ancient things.

[Saviolo]

10. Little info on the Swastika

The Swastika is the SS shape (the upright arms are shaped like an S instead of a Z).

The leftward facing is sometimes known as a Sauwastika, but is also frequently called a Swastika, as well.

And yes, they're both ancient Indian symbols, later used by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jainists.

The article on Swastika: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

The part where they talk about the shape: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Geometry

The article on the Sauwastika: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauwastika

Hitler didn't invert a holy symbol to make it evil, he wrongly appropriated a holy symbol wholesale, without alteration, and associated it with his own brand of evil in the minds of everyone. The only thing he did to make the Nazi Swastika stand apart was he tilted it on its corner. Both directions of the Swastika are traditional symbols of sun and good fortune, and has been found in use in the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000BCE.

[byeya]

11. American Pueblo Indians occasionally used the reverse swastika as a decorative

element.

A huge iron meteorite in the far north of Canada provided the American Indian people with iron for knives and harpoon barbs and was a sought after trade item by other tribes.

[classof56]

12. This is interesting. Explains something I've wondered about since childhood.

When I was quite young, a few years after WWII, my family relocated from the Pacific Northwest to New Mexico. The house we rented had a woven rug with a swastika (something familiar during the war years), which I recall gave me chills. The town we lived in was not far from pueblos, so I am thinking that was the source of the rug and the symbol. Appreciate your message--a light bulb moment for this now-elderly lady!

OBAMA/BIDEN 2012

[ellisonz]

14. Buddha statue: Possibly fake, still from space

Researchers who made original finding say they expected such a reaction
By Stephanie Pappas Senior Writer
updated 10/25/2012 3:37:10 PM ET

Researchers who reported that a potentially ancient Buddha statue is carved from a meteorite said they are not surprised that an expert in Buddhist history believes the statue to be a fake.

"Honestly, that is what we expected," said Elmar Buchner, who along with his colleague reported on the statue in September in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. "We heard so many opinions from so many experts in art history and experts for Buddhism on the origins and the age of the statue prior to and after the publication."

The most public of these consultations is a new report from Achim Bayer, a Buddhism expert at Dongguk University in South Korea. In a report released online, Bayer writes that the features of the statue are "pseudo-Tibetan" and are more likely to be a European reproduction dating from 1910 to 1970 than a true ancient carving dating back 1,000 years, as Buchner and his colleagues had estimated.

Bayer did not contest that the statue is a made of meteorite.

"The non-Asian features of the 'lama wearing trousers' should be immediately obvious to any scholar in the field," Bayer wrote, referring to the statue as a "lama" or guru. The shoes, pants and sleeves of the man's garments are all wrong for ancient Tibet, he wrote. The statue's hands, eyes and ears are also shaped unusually for Tibetan art, he said.

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49556803/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.UIogmIVGSCM

[geckosfeet]

15. very interesting - thanks for posting