Scientists have found that a 1,000-year-old ancient Buddhist statue, which was first recovered by a Nazi expedition in 1938, is carved from a meteorite.
The findings reveal the priceless statue to be a rare ataxite class of meteorite.
Known as the Iron Man, the statue weighs 10kg and is believed to represent a stylistic hybrid between the Buddhist and pre-Buddhist Bon culture that portrays the god Vaisravana, the Buddhist King of the North, also known as Jambhala in Tibet... Others take a different stance and say it is a statue of an ancient warrior. Everyone has a different theory on this one - though whatever it is meant to depict, one thing is certain, it is an incredible piece of art.
A Tibetan expedition organised by Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler and led by Ernst Schafer found the statue in 1938. The expedition probably took the statue to Germany because of its Swastika carved in its centre - a good luck sign that existed in Tibetan Culture long before the Nazis used the symbol for their racist ideology.
The first team to study the origins of the statue was led by Dr Elmar Buchner from Stuttgart University. The team was able to classify it as an ataxite, a rare class of iron meteorite with high contents of nickel.
“The statue was chiseled from a fragment of the Chinga meteorite which crashed into the border areas between Mongolia and Siberia about 15,000 years ago,” said Dr Buchner.
Iron meteorites have been carved into more ancient objects such as knives, beads and fishhooks, McCoy says. "But this is the most elaborate object I've ever seen carved from a meteorite. Somebody put a lot of work into this. Iron meteorites are basically an inappropriate material for producing sculptures," the study finds. "The challenging use of the 'iron man' meteorite as well as the partial gilding of the statue implies that the artist was certainly aware of the outstanding (extraterrestrial) nature of the object carved.