Friday, October 26, 2012

Nazi Buddhist Space Statue. Yea. Right.

To paraphrase slightly: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably wasn't actually discovered by Nazis.
Last month, researchers announced they had identified a "priceless," 1000yr.old swastika-emblazoned statue of buddha carved from a meteorite, and discovered by a Nazi ethnologist before WWII!
Now, according to The Guardian, Buddhism specialist Achim Bayer claims the 24cm statue features over a dozen "pseudo-Tibetan" characteristics that cast serious doubts on whether the figure was really sculpted in the pre-Buddhist Bon culture of the 11th Century...such as the statue's shoes, trousers and hand positioning, and that the buddha has a full beard rather than the thin facial hair usually given to a deity in Tibetan and Mongolian art. Bayer says he believes the statue's a European fake made sometime between 1910-1970.
An earlier expert had claimed the statue's previous owner told him it had been brought to Europe by Ernst Schäfer, a Nazi ethnologist. In the late 1930s, Schäfer led an SS expedition to Tibet in search of ze Aryan race's origins. But historian Isrun Engelhardt (an expert on zat expedition) is unconvinced: "There is an extremely precise list of the purchased objects, including date, place and value, but this statue is not on it." Achtung! Ze list has over 2,000 pieces but ze meteorite statue is not a piece purchased privately by Schäfer.
Vell, ve VOULD haf found it,
if it wasn't for zat meddling
Doctor Indiana Jones!
In fact, there seems to be only one piece of the statue's story that IS true: that it was in fact hewn from a piece of the famed Chinga iron meteorite, strewn across the border region between Russia and Mongolia 10-20,000 years ago.
Ach, at least it's still a statue from space, ja? Just don't mention ze vor!

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