ISIS destroys ancient statues, shrines & artifacts

[ValentinianVictrix]

The spread of ISIS forces throughout Iraq and Syria does not bode well for those with an interest in preserving history-

http://www.aina.org/news/20140517025551.htm

[AMELIANVS]

What to say on this? :x

[John1]

the case for NOT repatriating antiquities

[Eleatic Guest]

And they are heavily active in the illegal antiquities trade to finance their war activities.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

I knew this would happen. They destroy everything pre-Islam.

[Robert]

This is untrue! Evan, get your facts straight. They also destroy holy Muslim sites not connected to their particular brand of the faith. The disrespect for all pre-Islamic sites is rife throughout all of Northern Africa, ISIS just takes it a long step further. It is religious insanity, just like the storming and defacing (literaly) of the Katholic churches by the protestants.1522 in Wittenberg, in 1523 Zürich, in 1530 Kopenhagen, in 1534 Münster, in 1535 Genève, in 1537 Augsburg, in 1559 Schotland and in 1566 France and the Nederlands. So there is nothing new here at all.

[Augustus Janus]

Nothing new for sure but still maddening. Fanaticism is a terrible arrogance where people only see their religious views as having any merit and such total unfeeling disregard for other beliefs and even their own history. Many of the pre-Henry VIII churches and abbeys in the UK are now only ruins all because one self-absorbed despot wanted a divorce.

I think any museum would be mad if they were to re-patriate anything to the middle east.

[Robert Vermaat]

I think we should bemoan the loss of world heritage, but take care (as Robert rightly mentions), not to play the blame-game because every nation seems to have done this at one time in history. The Nazis in Europe (and the allies afterwards), recent destruction of communist symbolism. Nothing new even in our own backyard. the list, sadly enough, is endless.

[Eleatic Guest]

I am dreaming of a project which digitally captures by scanners and the like all ancient artifacts and buildings, storing it in a database in order to reconstruct them in case of destruction.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

You mean, scan the thing and make a 1:1 3D model? I would support that.

[Augustus Janus]

Preserving the knowledge is a good idea and I'm all for it. A good reproduction however is still just a copy. Would you want to destroy the Declaration of Independence and replace it with a good scan? Reproductions are making the best of a bad situation but sometimes it may be the best you can do. When you have the Taliban destroying the largest ancient statues of Buddha they can never be replaced.

Sorry guys but the wanton and senseless destruction of ancient objects angers me deeply no matter who is doing it.

[tartaros]

this has already been happening to some extent. i found this article on a quick google search: http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/re...mmies.html and i heard about a similar project at a religious temple somewhere in asia, if i recall correctly. but yes, the more of this, the better!

[Scipio Second]

Robert,

You are correct. In a recent graduate course which I took on the late medieval period and the Protestant Reformation, destruction of churches and religious sites was a common theme in Western Europe. Religious and cultural intolerance has been practiced throughout the millennia. It was not until the 19th Century that European intellectuals began to engage in archeology and related sciences, and cultural destruction was condemned. Recent events inn the Middle East in which religious and cultural sites are destroyed is rampant and reflects the ignorance of participants.

Publius Quinctius Petrus Augustinus
(aka Pierre A. Kleff, Jr.)

[Eleatic Guest]

You mean, scan the thing and make a 1:1 3D model? I would support that.

Scanning and storing the data in a database yes, but not necessarily making a 3D model of it, which would be impossible for buildings anyway.

[Eleatic Guest]

this has already been happening to some extent. i found this article on a quick google search: http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/re...mmies.html and i heard about a similar project at a religious temple somewhere in asia, if i recall correctly. but yes, the more of this, the better!

The project I am thinking of should be of a far larger scale, a national Manhattan project if you like, funded by billions of taxpayers' money. It should make the national culture 'indestructible' in the sense that everything could be restored faithfully from hard disc if necessary.

Currently, in Europe we aren't thinking much out of the box, believing that war is a thing of the past, but it isn't and never will be, compare the dissolution of Yugoslavia and now the Ukraine conflict.