Meteorito Armanty China

Nicholas Roerich and the Chintamani stone

:13 The strange case of the wandering stone:The Armanty stone has seemingly eluded thorough scientific scrutiny in the West. This may in partaccount for the details of its fall site in the Catalogue of Meteorites being open to question –certainly the location in the scientific record is at odds with the information given by Namnandorjin Meteorites of Mongolia. The co-ordinates of the site in the Catalogue entry are 47 N, 88 E,locating it in Mulei county of Xinjiang province, at this latitude some 150 miles or 240km insideChina, while following the information given by Namnandorj from the Mongolian records, thestone lay close to the Chinese-Mongolian border on the Mongolian side, at a site whoseco-ordinates would be closer to 47 N, 91 E. Not only from Namnandorj, but in Mongoliantradition, and demonstrably in the view of the Mongolian government in the 1920′s, the stonebelonged in Mongolia. Clearly one of the locations put forward is erroneous. The problem may have arisen becausethe fall site lay on a disputed strip of land between the Chinese-Mongolian border and the Bulganriver, which runs to the east of it. The issue is discussed by Namnandorj, where it is mentionedthat the Chinese territorial claim at this point extended eastwards up to the river. For this reasonthe Chinese disputed Mongol ownership of the stone, which certainly at that time lay in thelocation described by Namnandorj. Maps, both contemporary and modern, clearly show that theborder is drawn to the west of the river, so that the site of fall as the Mongols knew it and as citedby Namnandorj, lay in Mongolian territory. The only other factor having a bearing on ownershipmight have been whether the site asserted to be the correct one by Namnandorj was affected atthe time by a legitimate border dispute. The Chinese, who also know the stone as the Gobi or Xinjiang meteorite, have providedco-ordinates – those given in the Catalogue – which at first appear to support their claim to thestone. Had it been true that the fall site was located 240km inside Chinese territory, this wouldnever have given rise to a disputed ownership. Importantly, however, according to a report publishedin Sky and Telescope in December 1965, the Chinese undermined their case in two respects – bytheir removal of the stone from its actual impact site, and by initially stating that this site lay inChingho county, on the Chinese side of the border with Mongolia – in reality this was adjacent tothe actual Mongolian site – but then subsequently providing the demonstrably false co-ordinates. Thusit was that earlier in 1965 the Chinese authorities had sent a detatchment of forty men with alarge tractor and a specially-built 24-wheel trailer with the task of transporting the stone acrossthe Gobi desert to the city of Urumqi, a journey of some 400km from the original site. The tworemarkable photos starting the sequence below seem likely to have been taken by the Chineseteam sent to remove the stone and clearly show the shallow impact pit created by the fall. There

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appears to have been little or no disturbance at this stage in either the position of the meteorite orthe impact pit; as such the first photo compares well with the depiction of the stone in Fig. 1 inthe subsequent sequence. In Urumqi the meteorite was at first mounted on a stone platform,then on remounting placed on the present marble plinth, outside the Xinjiang Geology andMineral Museum in the city.

(http://roerichandchintamani.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/armanty-removal.jpg):

(http://roerichandchintamani.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/armanty-removal21.jpg)The Armanty stone insitu - two photos probably taken at the time of its removal in 1965:

(http://roerichandchintamani.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/armanty-1965-1.jpg) :


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(http://roerichandchintamani.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/armanty-1965-2.jpg)Two views of the Armanty stone as mounted after its removal to Urumqi in 1965:

(http://roerichandchintamani.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/armanty-in-urumchi.jpg)The stone remounted, as exhibited today in Urumqi : It is an open question whether the removal of the stone was an action jointly agreed by theChinese and Mongolian jurisdictions, or was carried out unilaterally. The removal also deprivedscience of the opportunity of studying the stone insitu, its fall in the distant past having created alarge shallow impact pit. At the time of its removal, some organic material beneath the stone wassaid to have been taken away by the Chinese for scientific analysis to try to determine the date offall, although the results of this are not known. To this day the Chinese continue to assert the correctness of the co-ordinates they gave for thelocation from which the stone had been taken. The Chinese view was personally confirmed inAugust 1994 by Dr Robert Hutchison, the then leader of the Cosmic Minerology Programme atthe Natural History Museum, in conversations during a visit to Xinjiang hosted by the ChineseAcademy of Sciences. The Chinese offered no reason to Dr Hutchison for the removal of thestone to Urumqi. Although a visit to the fall site specified by the Chinese was said not to havebeen feasible at the time for ‘logistical’ reasons, Dr Hutchison was able to visit the stone itself inUrumqi on two occasions, 9th and 29th August. Subsequently he made two observations relatingto its date of fall: he stated that the lack of legendary accounts of sightings of the passage of its fallthrough the atmosphere – which was likely to have been spectacular – and the surface conditionof an exposed area of the stone which was likely to have been in contact with the soil insitu, wereboth characteristic of an ‘old’ fall – that is, one which took place in the distant past. Regarding thearea of the stone Dr Hutchinson commented on, the appearance of the stone as mounted inUrumqi is on first inspection difficult to reconcile with its depiction in Figs. 1 and 2 below- and even the horizontal symmetry of the stone itself is such that, on overlaying outlines of thestone before and after removal, the possibility cannot be completely excluded that the stone hasbeen mounted upside-down. Nowadays the question of the site of fall can undoubtedly be settled by examining satellitemaps, both to locate the impact pit and to examine the surrounding landscape. Fortunately there


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exist the two photographs previously referred to, showing the stone insitu prior to its removal in1965, which, being possibly unique in also giving a good indication of the background landscape,can be used as cross-references. The pictures illustrate a short article about the Armanty meteoritepublished in the Soviet journal Meteoritika, Volume 22, 1962.

(http://roerichandchintamani.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/meteoritika-1.jpg)Fig. 1:

(http://roerichandchintamani.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/meteoritika-2.jpg)Fig. 2:When I carried out my own investigation of satellite maps, I first went to the vicinity of thelocation Namnandorj described, 47 N, 91 E, and then searched the surroundings for terrainsimilar to the Meteoritika photographs. Scanning the Chinese-Mongolian border areas a shortdistance to the south, I found a surface feature which seemed to match the characteristics of boththe fall site given by Namnandorj and the reference photographs. Adjacent to the border on the Mongolian side is a rimmed oval feature, slightly narrowed atthe eastern end, like a shallow pit or crater, and measuring approximately 1200m west to east and600m north to south. Within the feature there appears to be a secondary elongated oval featureabout 600m long, somewhat off-centre to the east, with a number of surface disturbances, ridgesor undulations near its eastern end. The feature suggests that it may be of meteoritic origin, and ifso is consistent with the angular descent of a stone from the east, impacting and settling near theeast side of the ‘rim’, which itself would have been created by the scattering of debris forwards. Iwould place the impact point of the meteorite at 46 52′ 37″ N, 90 58′ 35″ E. The site can be viewedon Google satellite maps by entering the co-ordinates in the search field. The characteristics of the site’s surroundings observable in the Meteoritika photographs – a flatrock-strewn landscape fringed by foothills – are a convincing match with those in the satellitephotographs. The picture on the title page of the article (Fig. 1) would look south across the


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Chinese border: the foothills and ridges in the middle distance, and the mountains beyond,correspond well with the satellite image. The other picture (Fig. 2) would look north-east: theescarpments in the middle distance match particularly well. Considering the probability of twosets of landscape features matching the satellite imagery in the close vicinity of the given location,many would say they provide incontrovertible proof that this is the Armanty site. Whether or notthe site has been acknowledged and documented as such in current scientific literature, I havenot hitherto encountered it; the recent history of the stone seems to have been forgotten about, orat least overlooked. As a corollary, using the co-ordinates given by the Chinese, a search on Google satellite mapsfor an impact feature, or for landscape characteristics similar to the Meteoritika photographs,yields nothing that can be imagined to match the features of the actual fall site which they depict. If the Mongolian feature is accepted as the Armanty site, we may draw a number ofconclusions: that Namnandorj is correct in the information he gives and in stating that the sitewas in Mongolian territory, provided that the border was at that time also to the west of the site;that the site is located today in Mongolian territory; that the co-ordinates given by the Chineseare incorrect, being three degrees of longitude or about 240km to the west; and that since theseare the ones given in the Catalogue of Meteorites, the entry should be amended. On the presentevidence, the co-ordinates given by the Chinese are not only incorrect, they would appear to havebeen falsified in an attempt to demonstrate ownership of the stone; ironically however, they alsoprovide the clearest indication that the removal of the stone was an illegal act. Far from lendingsupport for their claim, their culpability would be compounded by the removal of the stone fromits actual impact site. Thus unfortunately the great meteorite is no longer at the site of its fall, as it was during theRoerichs’ lifetimes. However, it will not go unnoticed by those who have followed and understoodthe direction of these researches, that if the meteorite is correctly identified as the parent of theRoerichs’ Stone, and if the site of fall is also correctly identified, then the location of the impactpoint of the great meteorite discloses the actual focus of the earthly Shambhala as the Roerichsunderstood it.:

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Meteorito Armanty China