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| An old heritage building in Ahmedabad. |
Take for example the latest publication United 4Heritage: Cultural Diversity Under Attack, which highlights the loss of heritage in war zones. Welcome as this is, it’s worth pointing out that the vast majority of current active hot spots are in West Asia, with almost all the publicised losses of cultural heritage. What’s absent here is any study on how low-level societal violence/heavy resource competition can be equally, if not more damaging to such heritage. [...] there is limited focus on heritage-destruction in countries outside conflict zones, such as India. It is the implicit assumption that ‘heritage is destroyed only in conflict zones’ that is deeply disturbing.The authors argue that this focus on conflict antiquities "ensures that the real problem stays ignored"and that governments and philanthropists channel their money mostly towards ‘high visibility’ zones, such as West Asia.
Thus, if we’re not being either ‘protected’ or ‘projected’, but, rather being neglected by Unesco, what exactly is the point of being part of it, or indeed contributing to it?In India, theauthors argue, "we need whatever scarce resources we have diverted to protecting and projecting our own rather than subsidising the agenda of others who anyway get more than their fair share of attention".
those representing the interests of collectors, museums and the trade that raised the exact same issues about the credibility of these fantastical numbers early on have become targets for abuse from some of the very same individuals Press acknowledges for their contributions in exposing the truth.It seems that when academics question the false news they get a hearing, when it is the informed man in the street, they are treated with abuse and put-downs. As Peter Tompa rightly points out, there is an elephant in the room that is being avoided in the article:
Who was responsible for "weaponizing" antiquities in the first place? The ISIS killing machine was bad enough to justify military intervention, particularly given its terror threats not only in the region but to Europe and the US as well. Of course, the answer is quite apparent to those who represent the interests of collectors, museums and the trade. It is the State Department's Cultural Heritage Center, which worked along with ASOR, the State Department contractor mentioned in the article, and the Antiquities Coalition, a well-funded archaeological advocacy group with ties to ASOR, the Archaeological Institute of America, as well as authoritarian Arab regimes.Hipster Internet Art Newsletter Raises Alarm About Antiquities being "Weaponized" for Political Purposes
Gandharan period stone statues were discovered in a rubbish pile, visible from the street, at the National Museum in Karachi, Pakistan. The statues, which are said to be from the 3rd-5th century, have traveled from their original site, somewhere in Northwest Pakistan, to the Awami Colony in Karachi, where they were recovered from a Pakistani smuggling ring in 2012 , and finally to a trash heap at the National Museum. Two of the five statues were used to decorate the doorway of the antiquities director-general’s personal office, the others were tossed into a rubbish heap outside. There was no information on what happened to the other 390 “rare objects” recovered in the Awami Colony raid.One wonders whether the precious statues were hidden below rubbish so that one night a truck would appear in the museum courtyard and corrupt museum authorities can profit from their sale. The treatment of the Buddhist statues highlights the general neglect of antiquities and cultural heritage sites rampant under the archeology and antiquities departments of Pakistan. Not only these statues, but many other artifacts have been neglected and improperly stored.
"to be blamed...for owning objects with provenance issues, while simultaneously denied the ability to confirm whether those objects passed through the hands of these dealers.”Tsirogiannis: Master of the Blame-Game Goes After Frieze Masters
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| Even objects previously considered inauspicious, such as archaic jade from tombs, are being sought by Chinese buyers. |
Following the fashions to buy western art and classic wristwatches, historical Chinese artefacts are now the must-have item for the country’s wealthy collectors who are snapping up [...] objects that have been in foreign hands for often hundreds of years. Interest in Chinese artefacts has intensified since President Xi Jinping began pushing to highlight the role of the country’s heritage in the national narrative [...] The buying spree is supported by China’s government, which is backing a $450m branch of Beijing’s famed Palace Museum being constructed in Hong Kong, among other initiatives. “It’s about the emergence of China,” Mr Stone says. “The government sees art and culture as a key industry. It’s part of the strategy for the development of China.It's great the Chinese public is getting in touch with past, but makes no sense to restrict American collectors from buying what Chinese collectors can readily buy.
A dig on The Curse of Oak Island is brought to a halt by an archaeologist in a new sneak peek for Season 5 Episode 3 — after what appears to be a significant discovery. Laird Niven, an archaeologist who has previously worked with Rick and Marty Lagina and the team on the series, is shown telling Marty as he uproots trees using an excavator: “I think we have to stop.” It comes after Laird appears to see something in the ground that is being dug up. Marty, who is at the controls of the excavator, asks him: “You strongly suspect this is an artifact?” Laird says: “Yes, I do.” Footage then shows a close-up of some sort of debris before Laird is seen looking through the dirt that has been dug up [...] It also sees the team find “hard evidence” of a European presence on the island — thought to be a coin — more than a century before the Money Pit was discovered. Meanwhile, Rick Lagina recently gave a big hint that this season the team uncover evidence of some sort of link on the island to the Knights Templar.As has many times been pointed out, all that archeologists are concerned with is exercising control.
Indonesia's lost treasures keep going missing. Conservations say that a flood of illegal treasure hunters are digging up artifacts in rice paddies in the Central Java district of Sukoharjo—a region hundreds of miles outside Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta—and selling the valuable items on the black market. Local officials declared a site in Sukoharjo's Joho village a conservation zone three years ago after evidence of an ancient Buddhist temple was discovered nearby. But the classification has only increased the appetite of looters who are willing to pay local farmers as much as $222 a day for the right to dig for buried treasures under the cover of darkness. "We haven't calculated it, but if this has been happening since the 1990s, then we have lost so much money," Darno, the head of the local culture and heritage foundation, told VICE. "The government doesn't seem to realize the potential of historical sites." The money is a vital resource for the village's rice farmers, who would typically make nothing off their paddies during the dry season. But it's also proven to be a difficult crime to prosecute. And with little risk of being caught, there are few reasons for farmers in Joho village to not offer their fields up to treasure hunters who are willing to pay cash up-front. "I know nothing about the heritage," one farmer, a man named Mariman, told the Jakarta Post. "Someone says they want to rent my field... I just allow them.If the foreign government cannot look after its past, then why should collectors here tke the blame for their omissions?
Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky has described a decision by a Dutch court not to return a collection of Scythian gold to Crimea as a “most dangerous precedent,” and threatened to sever all museum ties with the Netherlands. [...] The minister was reacting to a decision by a court not to return 500 Scythian gold artifacts, which Dutch museums had borrowed from Crimean collections. [...] The exhibits of Scythian gold were delivered from several Crimean museums to the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam in February 2014, shortly before the Crimean Republic reunited with the Russian Federation following a referendum that attained almost universal support. [...] Russian officials have repeatedly condemned the ruling as a dangerous precedent that threatens the whole system of international cultural exchange.
An advance report authored by Ms. Katie Paul is circulating on the Antiquities Coalition website and was presented in public testimony to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) meeting on the request for renewal of import restrictions by Cambodia. The report not only illustrates how easy it is to tell half the story to advance an agenda – but also how easy it is to challenge it. CCP spent an hour or so on the Internet after listening to Ms. Paul’s statement to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, in which she asserted that there was a substantial US market for Cambodian antiquities, based upon online research at the popular LiveAuctioneers website. As a result of that hour or so of work, we beg to differ. [...] The Antiquities Coalition study could have revealed some useful information, but it chose to advocate for a position instead. All it does now is raise questions about her methodology. Certainly, her results do not seem to show that the United States remains a major market for Cambodian antiquities. But, take a look for yourself, and make up your own mind.
Perhaps one of the most important and visually captivating finds from the tomb occurred a full year after its discovery. Researchers uncovered a carved sealstone no larger than an inch and a half wide. The “Pylos Combat Agate” meticulously displays two warriors engaged in battle with bodies strewn at their feet, with some details less than a millimeter wide. The carving is perhaps most astonishing because it predates artistic skills that were not associated with Greek civilization for another millennium. “What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later,” said Jack Davis, Carl W. Blegen professor of Greek archaeology at the University of Cincinnati in UC Magazine. “It’s a spectacular find.” In a testament to the anonymous artist’s skills, it’s also worthy to note that magnifying glasses were not believed to be used for another thousand years. This ability and sophistication shows that the inhabitants of the area were creating art with an interest and knowledge of representational art not previously imagined. This new discovery, explained Davis and fellow dig leader Shari Stocker, is a catalyst to completely reevaluate the timeline and development of Greek art. You can read more about the miniature carving and the Griffin Warrior’s tomb in UC Magazine. (via Neatorama and The History Blog)Kate Sierzputowski, 'An Astonishingly Small Stone Carving That Has the Power to Change Art History', Collossal Nov 10 2017.
A prosecutor from the New York County District Attorney’s office walked into the booth of English art dealer Rupert Wace at the gala opening of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) at New York’s Park Avenue Armory on October 27. He was holding a search warrant and accompanied by uniformed police officers, who seized a limestone bas relief from Persepolis in Iran. The relief was worth $1.2 million. Wace had purchased it from an insurance company, which had acquired it from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The New York District Attorney’s office, under the aggressive direction of DA Cyrus Vance and dedicated anti-art trade crusader Assistant DA Matthew Bogdanos, has made two cultural property seizures in recent weeks. Neither object was recently looted; together, they had been in museums or private collections for over 115 years. There was no evidence of wrongdoing by the collectors or dealers involved. Wace had purchased the bas relief after it was given up by the Canadian museum. The other seized object, a fragment of mosaic from Italy, was purchased in the 1960s by a journalist and his wife, an antique dealer, from an aristocratic family in Italy. According to the couple, the deal was brokered by an Italian police official “famed for his success in recovering art work looted by the Nazis.” These cases raise serious questions, impacting both private and museum collections in the US. When an artwork is well-known to scholars, published or exhibited, how long is too long for a country to make a claim? Will museums and collectors in the US that are second, third, or fourth generation owners be held to vague, ambiguous, and unenforced laws in foreign nations, when those nations have failed to make any claim for decades? At what point do US judges or law enforcement consider whether the evidence, or the terms of the foreign laws, actually provides a reasonable basis for a claim that an object is ‘stolen’?Read more here
Up to 80 percent of the antiquities for sale online are likely looted or fake, according to new research. The Wall Street Journal has conducted a thorough investigation into the surge in illicit antiquities bought and sold online. Neil Brodie, a senior research fellow in Endangered Archaeology at the University of Oxford, estimates that 80 percent of the 100,000 antiquities available online at any given moment have no recorded provenance—which means they are probably looted or fake. These objects have a combined total asking price of more than $10 million, he says. The explosion of fake and looted antiquities is the result of two combustible factors. First, ISIS has conducted unprecedented looting across the Middle East in recent years, bringing a wave of illicit objects into the marketplace. Second, novice collectors now have unprecedented access to un-vetted material thanks to the rapid growth of outlets like Facebook, WhatsApp, eBay, and Amazon.There are many ways to avoid buying either, like stay with respected dealers with a clean record.
GHA advocates that archeological digs should be subject to reasonable regulation aimed at ensuring site security, the prompt publication of finds and the provision for fair, living wages for local employees.Global Heritage Alliance thinks that the archeological profession opposed to the private collection of artifacts itself is in need of closer regulation to combat the abuses that so often are covered-up. Archaeologists who complain about looting of archeological sites need to do more to make sure that they are properly protected from theft, even when they themselves are not on site. In order to prevent local people who have worked on the digs coming back between seasons to rob them, using the knowledge they gained while working there, should be paid a fair living wage to remove the temptation. All finds from archeological excavations must be promptly published with sanctions against those who do not comply. The GHA should begin pressurising archaeological organizations like the AIA and SAA to make sure these measures towards a more responsible archeology are introduced immediately.
Indeed, though most of the twenty-one (21) comments were supportive of the renewed MOU, virtually all these came from archaeologists who depend on Cambodian excavation permits or their associated archaeological advocacy groups. Meanwhile, it is finally dawning on some in Congress that MOUs have devolved into special interest programs for archaeologists. Significantly, Congressional appropriators have required CPAC to report on the expenditures of MOU partner countries make in securing their own cultural patrimony. Hopefully, this will help change a culture that has vilified collectors to help divert attention away from poor stewardship of archaeological resources by source countries.
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| President Donald Trump and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley |
“The purpose of UNESCO is a good one. Unfortunately, its extreme politicization has become a chronic embarrassment. The Tomb of the Patriarchs decision was just the latest in a long line of foolish actions, which includes keeping Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on a UNESCO human rights committee even after his murderous crackdown on peaceful protestors. Just as we said in 1984 when President Reagan withdrew from UNESCO, US taxpayers should no longer be on the hook to pay for policies that are hostile to our values and make a mockery of justice and common sense.”
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said he had instructed his foreign ministry to prepare Israel's withdrawal from UNESCO in parallel with the US. "I welcome President Trump's decision to withdraw from UNESCO," he said in a statement posted to Facebook. "This is a courageous and ethical decision because UNESCO has become a theater of the absurd and instead of preserving history, distorts it."In the UNESCO response to our leaving, much was made of the work of the organization "to protect humanity’s shared cultural heritage in the face of terrorist attacks and to prevent violent extremism through education and media literacy". The idea you can stop ISIS with books is laughable.
In the modernist but faded headquarters of UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural agency on Paris’s elegant Left Bank, more than a few diplomats wandered the corridors on Friday wondering if the organisation has a future. The agency, founded in the ashes of World War Two to protect the common cultural inheritance of humanity, was due to elect a new head later in the day. But a sudden announcement that the United States was quitting over anti-Israel bias meant that whoever wins the top job would inherit a body in turmoil, with huge questions over its future funding and mission.[...] For some of its diplomats, Washington’s decision to quit represented a corner being turned, and puts even more pressure on whoever is elected to lead it. “This is the most critical election. There can’t be four more years like this,” said a Western diplomat, bemoaning the leadership of outgoing director Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, whose critics say she failed to persuade member states to pay their dues and stop politicizing UNESCO’s work.[...]Without U.S. money, UNESCO, which employs around 2,000 people worldwide, has been forced to cut programmes, freeze hiring and fill gaps with voluntary contributions. Its 2017 budget was about $326 million, almost half its 2012 budget. Including the United States, which has some $542 million in arrears, the organisation is owed almost $650 million, according to figures on its website. At this stage, UNESCO officials still don’t know if the United States will make up its arrears before it officially exits on Dec. 31, 2018.
Other major contributors such as Japan, Britain, and Brazil have also yet to pay their dues for 2017, sometimes citing objections to the body’s policies. “The fact is that UNESCO was all about solidarity and creating a climate for peace between countries, but nations now use their dues to influence programmes,” said a UNESCO-based diplomat. “That needs to change.” Japan, for example, has threatened to withhold dues over the inclusion of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in the body’s “Memory of the World” programme. Russia and Ukraine have been at odds over Crimea, with Kiev accusing Moscow of trying to legitimise its annexation of the territory through UNESCO. “Whoever takes over at the helm has to tackle this head on. They need to find ways of getting nations to talk these issues through, but if they can‘t, then the director-general needs to be able to say ‘no’ and kill these texts,” said a second UNESCO-based diplomat. Unlike at the U.N. Security Council, where five powers wield a veto, UNESCO takes decisions based on majority votes, either of its General Secretariat that includes all 195 nations, or of the 58-member Executive Board. Israel says this creates a built-in majority for states that are hostile to it. Big countries like the United States that provide most of the funding say their single votes give them little input into how their money is spent.
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| Assad crony Abdukarim |
Palestinian and French archaeologists began excavating Gaza’s earliest archaeological site nearly 20 years ago, unearthing what they believe is a rare 4,500-year-old Bronze Age settlement. But over protests that grew recently, Gaza’s Hamas rulers have systematically destroyed the work since seizing power a decade ago, allowing the flattening of this hill on the southern tip of Gaza City to make way for construction projects, and later military bases. There is a clear destruction of a very important archaeological site,” said Palestinian archaeology and history professor Mouin Sadeq, who led three excavations at the site along with French archaeologist Pierre de Miroschedji after its accidental discovery in 1998. “I don’t know why the destruction of the site was approved.”It is among the earliest sites indicating the emergence of the “urban society” concept in the Near East, when communities were transforming from farming villages around 4,000 BC, and it was on trade routes between Egypt and the Levant, The area “was the first city of Palestine to have a city wall,”
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| “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” – of Jews and of Israel. This is an Arab Final Solution |
Since the Arab “spring” with its multiple civil wars broke out, the Kurds are the one nation that have managed to remain united and hold on tot their territory, retaking control and a semblance of independence after decades of repression by the Arab countries who previously controlled their territory. They have been amongst the prime fighters against ISIS and have stayed out of the Israeli-Arab conflict altogether. [...] Last week the Kurds held a referendum amongst its people asking if they wanted independence. The answer of course was a resounding yes. However the answer from almost the entire world (the UN, the US, Iran, Iraq, Turkey) was a resounding “no”, or a hostile neutral silence. The only country that lent its solid support to the Kurdish nation was Israel.We should all pray that Kurds are successful in their bid for independence and that there will be a peaceful solution to this brewing crisis. Shame on the world for denying this brave, big-hearted people their rightful claim to their own territory and self-determination.
But somehow, the Palestinians, who already have independence from Israel, and who run their own affairs, are considered perfectly legitimate when they demand not only independence, but an end to the State of Israel. They demand this loudly and clearly and can be heard in demonstrations across the world: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. This is no less than an Arabic “final solution” for the Jews. In case you haven’t looked at a map lately, the space between the river (Jordan) to the (Mediterranean) Sea is occupied, for want of a better word, by Israel with over 6 million Jews as well as another 2 million Muslims, Christians and other minorities."Hypocrisy: A state for the Palestinians but not for the Kurds or Catalonia" Anne's Opinions 2 Oct 2017
Ivan Maquisten writes that EU bureaucrats believe the absence of evidence that ISIS looted material is entering the market is reason for more draconian controls, not fewer. The bureaucratic thinking is that vast amounts of looted material must be entering the market unnoticed under current customs regimes. Of course, those who seek to justify draconian regulation will not consider the distinct possibility the extent of ISIS looting has been greatly overstated by Russian and Syrian propagandists and archaeological advocacy groups for their own purposes.
The EU cultural bureaucracy- like its US counterpart- only considers archaeologists and foreign governments legitimate stakeholders in the issue. No wonder the cultural bureaucracy is so distrusted by collectors and the small businesses of the antiquities and numismatic trade.Peter Tompa "Eurocrats Find Little Evidence Terrorist Artifacts Entering Market, But that Does Not Stop Calls for Draconian Legislation" September 27 2017.
Egyptian parliamentarian Ghada Agami will submit a draft law to intensify the punishment for illicit trafficking of antiquities and illegal excavation to the death penalty. Agami told Egypt Today that her philosophy behind increasing the penalty is that the one who "sells his history will sell his honor."Agami said that the intensification the punishment for illicit trafficking of antiquities and illegal excavation will stop the “continuous bleeding of Egypt's history”. First of all, this history belongs to the world, not one country ruled by a military dictatorship. Secondly, the anti-collecting lobby should not get ideas above their station.
Some of the materials were originally confiscated from Iraqi Jews who were forced to leave their country under Saddam Hussein. Others appear to be taken from schools and synagogues after they left. All the material was stored in the basement of Iraqi secret police headquarters, and became waterlogged after the building was bombed during the liberation of Iraq. The US Government spent considerable time and money restoring and digitizing them. This is yet another situation where UNESCO's repatriationist dogma has been allowed to take precedence over not only the facts, but what is right. The archive should not be returned to sectarian Iraq. Or, at a minimum, the entire contents of the archive should be publicized so that individual Iraqi Jews can make claims on what is rightly the property of their own families.
A rare mosaic has been found on an amateur excavation in England. It is fourth century. We tend to think of the fourth century as a period where the Roman Empire was in crisis, a prelude to the collapse of the Western Empire in the fifth century. However, in Britain it was something of a golden age for mosaic production. This has been described as the most important mosaic find in Britain from the last 50 years. Less than half the mosaic, a six-metre strip richly patterned with mythical characters, was uncovered in the last two weeks. It has now been buried again to protect it. The central panels depict the Greek hero Bellerophon riding the winged horse Pegasus. They are shown attacking the fire-breathing monster Chimera, then being offered the king’s daughter as a reward, a legend that would later be Christianised as St George and the dragon. Other scenes on the mosaic include imagery not known from any other British site, according to the experts. The find was made at a Roman site near Boxford where residents and amateur archaeologists and historians, supervised by Cotswold Archaeology, have been excavating since 2011.Mosaic with Classical Mythology Images Found in EnglandIt is nice to see amateur explorers of the past getting some praise from the media.
For the last decade, around 900 pieces of art works which are valued at an estimated amount of Rs.1,800 crore are kept locked in a godown of a police station in Jaipur, without any expert supervision and at a risk of getting damaged. The artefacts are predominantly from 2nd-12th century and are from various archaeological sites of the state such as Jhalawar, Kota and Udaipur, a senior police officer said. These artefacts are at the police station due to a long-running court case that hasn't decided their final fate yet. The antiquities are a part of the art works seized from the alleged antique thief, Vaman Ghiya, after he was arrested in 2003. "[...] Ghiya was acquitted by the Rajasthan High Court in 2014 and since then the case is pending at the Supreme Court, resulting in a deadlock over the fate of the antiquities. The sight of the ancient statues of gods and goddesses scattered in the open at the Vidhyadhar Nagar police station in Jaipur is quite an unlikely one. Some of them are kept in the open with no roof over them, at the risk of getting damaged or weathered by constant exposure to rain and heat. There are no efforts by the authorities to get an expert opinion about their current condition or to preserve them. Ironically, the police at present don't even have the key to the godown where the rest of the artifacts are kept.
The data also shows money being paid via the British companies to Kalin Mitrev, a Bulgarian appointed last year to the board of the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Mitrev received at least €425,000 for private consulting work from a local Azeri company, Avuar Co. [...]</div>
The revelation that her husband consulted for an Azeri company might prove awkward for Mitrev’s wife, Irina Bokova, who is the director general of Unesco. Bokova has bestowed one of Unesco’s highest honours, the Mozart Medal on Azerbaijan’s first lady and vice-president, Mehriban Aliyeva. She also hosted a photo exhibition at Unesco’s headquarters in Paris, entitled Azerbaijan – A Land of Tolerance. The Heydar Aliyev foundation organised the event
The United Nations was quick to realise that in addition to the funds generated through the gas fields of Mosul, bank robberies, human trafficking and ransom, trafficking of art and antiquities was also being used by the Islamic State (IS) to finance terror activities. The IS had made a grand show for its followers by demolishing monuments after wresting control of the areas nestling cradles of ancient civilisations-Palmyra, Aleppo, Mosul and Raqqa in Syria and Iraq. Therefore, whilst IS publicly destroyed Saint Elijah's Monastery in Mosul and Roman era monuments in Palmyra, ostensibly as an obligation to religious tenets, they had no qualms in surreptitiously pilfering the heritage and art items into the international antiquity market to fund itself.There is no proof to substantiate this speculation. This is fiction. It must be ghost written. Shame! India Times journalists DO NOT write like this. Bad!
The Committee for Cultural Policy has pointed out on several past occasions that exaggerated media reports, of Islamic State (ISIS) income from the sale of looted antiquities to art and coin collecting communities, are and have from the start been unfounded. The persistence of outright lies has cast a cloud over the credibility of several major media outlets and their academic "experts" who fed the flame for what is obviously an ideological anti-trade agenda. In their August 2017 newsletter, the CCP presents a report on the findings of a Dutch National Police investigation that flatly debunks this supposed collusion. In all fairness, similar findings have been reported by respectable archeologists who value truth over public brainwashing—for what some believe to be the "greater good". Sadly, these laudable professionals have rarely been quoted and certainly are not heralded by their more radical peers. Who could ever have imagined that Cultural Property Nationalists would lead Archeology down such a destructive path?This is a great contrast to the tenets of transparent honesty held by cultural property internationalists. We should do everything to promote these approaches by taking every opportunity to disseminate the truthful writings of representatives of this approach like Mr Sayles.
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| Tikal Temple 33, Guatemala |
THis photo is a dramatic example of "before and after" the archeological approach to the "preservation of history". Shocking.
A 100ft tall Mayan funerary pyramid in the ancient city of Tikal, 33 was one of many temples uncovered by archaeologists in the 1950s and 60s. When researchers wanted a better view of earlier phases of the city's construction, the 1,500-year-old Temple 33 was chosen as the sacrificial lamb. Completely dismantled in 1965, the Temple's lower layers brought to light fascinating and groundbreaking information vital to the piecing together of Mayan history, revealing tombs and shrines within. Uncovered History writes that "sadly, Templo 33 is [now] a stunted pile of rubble", but adds that "fortunately, the deconstruction did reveal a hidden history that may otherwise have laid buried and undiscovered".
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| Temple ruined by archaeologists and one they did not have time to destroy |
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| The ancient Turkish town of Hasankeyf |
Turkish construction crews started dynamiting neolithic caves this week to accommodate a new hydroelectric dam. The Ilisu Dam, the building of which has been delayed for years by protests, is also likely to flood the ancient town of Hasankeyf on the Tigris River. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth, with evidence of human habitation dating back to 10,000 BC. "They are not only destroying our past, but also our future by taking away this as a source of income and heritage," one resident told Deutsche Welle. "We would like to apologise to the future generations for allowing this."The preservation of the past by collectors for future generations to enjoy and profit from offsets this damage, but source countries criticize collectors while unthinkingly obliterating the world's heritage in pursuit of short-term goals and profits.
