Researchers found a timber structure at a site long-believed to be the Buddha's birthplace; the discovery could help researchers put a date on the Buddha's life.
"Very little is known about the life of the Buddha, except through textual sources and oral tradition," archaeologist Professor Robin Coningham of Durham University, U.K., who co-led the investigation said in a National Geographic Society news releases. "We thought 'why not go back to archaeology to try to answer some of the questions about his birth?' Now, for the first time, we have an archaeological sequence at Lumbini that shows a building there as early as the sixth century B.C."
The findings were made at a Buddha shrine in Nepal that may have been the birth of the religious leader. Until now the oldest-known structure in Lumbini was from the third century B.C., when Emperor Asoka was working to spread Buddhism from what is now Afghanistan to Bangladesh.
The research team used radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence techniques to date the timber shrine.
"UNESCO is very proud to be associated with this important discovery at one of the most holy places for one of the world's oldest religions," UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, said.
"These discoveries are very important to better understand the birthplace of the Buddha," Ram Kumar Shrestha, Nepal's minister of culture, tourism and civil aviation, said. "The government of Nepal will spare no effort to preserve this significant site."
Buddhist tradition claims the leader's mother, Queen Maya Devi, gave birth in the garden of Lumbini while holding onto a tree branch. The researchers believe the newly-discovered timber shrine may have once held a tree.
The shrine was found in a circle of empty space between other structures, even brick temples built much later were composed around the shrine.
"The sequence (of archaeological remains) at Lumbini is a microcosm for the development of Buddhism from a localized cult to a global religion," the authors wrote in the paper on the subject published in the journal Antiquity.
