Copper load of this! Company digging mine in Afghanistan unearths 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery, page 2

Originally posted by jimmyx

Originally posted by ellbell
Wow !! Thats amazing, its such a shame they only have the 3 years, and then it will be demolished

hey...there are profits to be made. can't let ancient artifacts and 1000's of year old history get in the way of money. this is globalization baby, and we have to keep the wealthy going strong.

Originally posted by RedCairo
S&F, thanks for posting, that is really cool!

I'm sure to some people, an eroded statue of the Buddha is no different than thousands of others around the world.... it's just a crumbling rock after all. I mean realistically there are good archeology reasons not to build, or dig, in so many places around the world, that we'd have to remove half of civilization if we were to be picky that something was underneath us.

But I think it's really cool that it turns out it's a really big place -- big enough to get a stay of 3 years at least, which is not at all enough (archeology is SLOW work), but is better than nothing. I imagine nobody wanted to put the money into digging there previously even though it was known about, perhaps because they didn't know the scope of it, and the military dangers there are an obvious problem.

RC

Originally posted by wayno
The mine is projected to raise billions of dollars. I say whoever will be on the receiving end of those billions (the Chinese company?) should be charged with the task of preserving everything there of historical merit. Surely this cost would be minimal in comparison to what they will be getting from the mine.

The only way that will happen is with continuous public attention to the project.

If anybody wants to volunteer in raising the public attention they will be some decades late already and be prepared for a lot of non stop work. There are vast areas around and in middle east that became battlefields and host or hosted the most significant evidence for the human civilization.

Originally posted by Jamjar
What I find extremely wierd is that the earliest date for Buddhas birth is 625BC but the most common date is around 563BC yet this is a 7th century BC Monastary.

I know the current Buddha is the Fourth Buddha, so the dates for the Afgan find are thought provoking indeed.

Originally posted by grey580
That's some ways west.
Makes you wonder how far west the chinese really were back in the day.
good find.

Originally posted by JohnySeagull

Originally posted by mcrom901

luckily this one escaped the taliban...

isn't it the US bombing the crap outta Afghanistan. maybe it should read, 'luckily this one escaped the US missiles/drones.

There seems to be a huge area that islam flourished geographically this used to be a vast reservoir of antiquities which for one another reason were destroyed, left forgotten, and are continuing to be destroyed either by deliberate negligence or become "the casualties of modern war" IF there isn't any organized schemes behind their destruction, that collects all the important stuff and leaves no witnesses.
Up to Afghanistan and going through Anatolia there used to exist numerous dwellings and cities dating even from the pre Alexandrian era that flourished onmce again some couple centuries before Christ. Uppon inspection of the remnants of far eastern religious sites that will be found in those areas from Afghanistan and beyond to the far east what might be discovered will eb that the oldest remnants of religious art will be more detailed than the ones found at later centuries at the far East which is the cradle of many religions. There is ahuge piece of civilization in between that is missing or either destroyed and pillaged through the last 5 centuries.
I wonder who would bennefit from such things.

I believe that somebody wanted Islam there and did and is still doing everything in their powers for islam to stay there and even expand way beyond these areas.

Why is it that the US led institution teams that most are privately funded are always being so much involved in all that since from the eighteenth century? Why is it that foreign countries are forced by diplomatic means to report immediately upon the discovery of any sites of significant archaeological evidence and it's always the US led teams that demand to inspect the discoveries first?

If China is willing to have a foothold on middle eastern antiquity maybe at least THEY will set the records straight about ancient history and not the distorted version we have been learning lately from the officials of the Western institutions with an agenda.

edit on 17-11-2010 by spacebot because: (no reason given)