PARIS, Sept 27: A thousand-year-old Buddhist statue taken from Tibet in 1938 by an SS team seeking the roots of Hitler’s Aryan doctrine was carved from a meteorite, scientists reported on Wednesday.

In a paper published in an academic journal, German and Austrian researchers recount an extraordinary tale where archaeology, the Third Reich and cosmic treasure are intertwined like an Indiana Jones movie.

(The term ‘Third Reich’ is used to describe the Nazi regime in Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, from Jan 30, 1933, to May 8, 1945).

Called the “Iron Man” because of the high content of iron in its rock, the 24-centimetre-high statue was brought to Germany by an expedition led by Ernst Schaefer, a zoologist and ethnologist.

Backed by SS chief Heinrich Himmler and heading a team whose members are all believed to have been SS, Schaefer roamed Tibet in 1938-9 to search for the origins of Aryanism, the notion of racial superiority that underpinned Nazism. (’SS’ stands for Schutzstaffel _ a German word which means protection squadron or defence corps. It was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.—AFP