Humans screw to hear about ancient story , but they are n’t always that gravid at preserving it . Here are some of the worst , most thoughtless , and just plain dumbest ways that humans have wrecked their own inheritance .
The discoverer and destroyer of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s
Schliemann found Troy in 1871 , but there were nine city stack on top of each other , so the inventive archaeologist find a young elbow room to dig to the legendary metropolis : using dynamite , which was invented only four eld before by Alfred Nobel .
( viaUniversity of Texas )
Buddhas of Bamiyan (or Bamiwam), two standing Buddha statues carved into a cliff in central Afghanistan, built in 507 and 554. Destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd7mv6e03Hg
( viaPhecda109 , AP / Murad Sezer and the top trope is by Majld Saeedi / Getty Images )
Tell Umm al-Aqarib, Iraq, shortly after the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003
After all-embracing , ungoverned robbery began during the mid-1990s , the Iraq State Board of Antiquities authorise excavation to preserve what stay at the situation . Looting has continued since 2003 . Gangs at the website are oftentimes armed .
In May , 2003 , Professor MacGuire Gibsonvisited this regionwith Col . John Kessel , Italian Ambassador Piero Cordone and a miitary contingent in a Marine Sea Stallion whirlybird . After touring the freshly - looted site Umma , Professor Gibson reported : “ We go in the south over Umm al Aqarib , a nearby site also excavated by the Department . Here , men were working , but not as many as at Umma . The fresh damage we were viewing has been done only since the kickoff of the war , when looters came out and drove the guard from the sites . ” – agree to Cultural Property Training Resource Iraq .
( viaCultural Property Training Resource )
Vandalism by American soldiers in Iraq during the Iraq War (2003-)
ruin of ancient Babylon at the metrical foot of Saddam Hussein ’s former Summer castle , 2003
harmonise toSimon Jenkins , writing in the Guardian , June 2007 :
“ Hussaini confirmed a report two years ago by John Curtis , of the British Museum , on America ’s conversion of Nebuchadnezzar ’s great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton . This think a 150 - hectare camp for 2,000 troop . In the unconscious process the 2,500 - class - previous brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the logic gate itself damaged . The archeology - rich subsoil was bulldoze to fill up sandbags , and large areas report in compacted crushed rock for helipads and car parks . Babylon is being give archaeologically barren .
Meanwhile the court of the 10th - one C khan of Khan al - Raba was used by the Americans for exploding captured insurgent weapon system . One bam demolished the ancient cap and drop many of the walls . The place is now a ruin . ”
( viaU.S. Navy )
Ten ancient tombs from the Six Dynasties (220-589) have been destroyed by excavation machines and bulldozers making way for an an IKEA store in Nanjing, China, 2007
accord to Reuters :
metropolis archaeologists told the newspaper the tomb might have been those of a wealthy family of the period as the workmanship was of high quality . The grave were constructed of unripened bricks embroidered with ornate Egyptian water lily patterns .
archeologist from the Nanjing Museum have asked the developers to halt building while they search the site and pick up the artifacts , the report say , but it was not clear whether the work had been stopped .
Under Chinese law , people or work units found destroying “ ancient grave ” can be fin 50,000 to 500,000 kwai ( about $ 6,600-$65,700 ) but the laws are weakly enforce , the newspaper said .
Developers would sometimes rather pay up the fine than delay or set off building projects , it add .
( Photo by Guang Niu / Getty Images )
Destruction at archaeologic sites on Dakar Rally, 2009, when it was run in Chile and Argentina instead of the usual places between Paris and Dakar
ExplainsThe Art Newspaper :
harmonise to the National Monuments Council ’s write up , four of the sites that sustained damage are in the neighborhood of Atacama and two are in the region of Coquimbo , around 500 km northerly of Santiago . The report concentrate specifically on Pelican Creek , near the town of La Higuera in Coquimbo , where a team of council archaeologists discovered a pre - Columbian hunting watch - gatherer camp , half of which had been demolish by the airstream . The vehicles destroyed stone implement such as knife , arrowhead , spear point and scrapers as well as fragments of ceramic and cuticle , human bones , and rock structure dating between 9000BC and 1500AD .
At the time the rally was held in January , Sergio Cortes , a local Texas Ranger and duty tour operator , told authorities that in the Tarapacá neighborhood south of Iquique , the Alto Yape geoglyphs and the singular dunes that preserve 18,000 - year - old wind radiation diagram had already been gravely damaged by 4WD tourist vehicles and off - road drive enthusiast . The Atacama Desert ’s 5,000 or more prehistorical geoglyphs are massive images depicting humankind , animals and geometrical patterns made from stones and pebbles on the level desert , which mysteriously seem only to be properly legible when attend from the air .
( viaLonnie Haymes - Schwartz )
Destruction of the ancient site of El Hibeh, 180 miles south of Cairo, Egypt, between 2009 and 2012
Excavations of archaeologist from U.C. Berkeley were end in 2009 and returned three years by and by , but they found “ hundreds of despoiler ’ stone pit , disclose tombs , destroyed walls , and even human remains , admit remainder ofdismembered mummiesand strewn mummy wrap , littering the site like tripe ” , according toPopular Archeology .
( viaSave El Hibeh / Facebookand Google Earth 2009/2012 )
Some archaeological treasures of Syria, damaged or destroyed during Civil War, (2011-) the 11th century mosque, large part of the old city of Aleppo and looting the ancient cities of Ebla and Apamea, among others.
Apamea , looted
shekels in big firmness of purpose
( viaLiveScience )
One of Belize’s largest Mayan pyramids, a 100 feet tall (30 m) from the 3th century BC at the Nohmul complex, destroyed by a construction company while digging for crushed rock for a road they were building, May 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKFliS6DlI4
( pic by Jaime Awe / AP )
A 4,000 year old pyramid, destroyed in El Paraíso archeological site, one of the largest settlements from the Late Preceramic period near Lima, Peru, June 2013
One of the some pyramids ( a 20 foot or 6 m tall ) on the site was destroyed , but the police foreclose at least three more from wipeout .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s47xDDFBbBo
( viaMarcogg )
Some area of Antinoupolis were leveled by local residents, or bulldozed and reclaimed for agricultural use, Summer of 2013
grant toEgypt Independent :
Moreover , [ Monica Hanna , a researcher with the University of Humboldt in Berlin ] articulate that Ministry of Antiquities has been unable to face up the destruction of Antinoupolis , which includes archeological finds dating from the pre - dynastic period , the Middle and Modern Kingdoms , and the Ptolemaic full point .
The site became famous during the Romanic earned run average after Emperor Hadrian established a huge Roman - style city named Antonio Polis , filling it with theaters , temples , schools and other historic building . Many of the building were still standing during the French intrusion of Egypt in the late 18th 100 , and assimilator later write about it in the book “ Description de l’Égypte . ”
The metropolis flourished after the eld of Hadrian until the Antinoë neighborhood became one of the largest regions of Egypt and include most of Upper Egypt , starting from the South of Fayoum until Sohag , with Antinoupolis as its capital , which is now called Sheikh Abada .
The importance of the region continued during the Byzantine era . By the bedspread of Christianity , the city became home to a bombastic episcopate . It also stay crucial during the Muslim era , as its name became Ansena .
( viaKristian Strutt )
ArchaeologyHistoryScience
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