Ancient Buddhist statue made of meteorite, new study reveals

An ancient Buddhist statue which was first recovered by a Nazi expedition in 1938 has been analyzed by a team of scientists. The probably 1,000-year-old statue, called the “Iron Man”, weighs 10 kilograms, portrays the Buddhist god Vaisravana and is believed to originate from the pre-Buddhist Bon culture of the 11th Century. Geochemical analyses by the German-Austrian research team revealed that the priceless statue was carved from an ataxite, a very rare class of iron meteorites.

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