The Past in Ruins

From Newsweek Pakistan

Exploring Asia’s most endangered treasures.

By Kristian Jebsen | From the May 25 2012 issue

 

Bay Ismoyo / AFP

 

Throughout Asia, historical marvels are being imperiled by threats both natural—floods, earthquakes—and human, as the populations of developing countries expand at an exponential rate. Now the Global Heritage Fund has highlighted 10 archeological sites at imminent risk of disappearing. They are not alone: the sites were ­selected from a list of more than 500 locations where the need to preserve archeological marvels is particularly great and where the funding for preservation is disproportionately low. While the following sites are at serious risk, they possess considerable economic potential; if managed properly, they could provide much-needed jobs to local communities as tourist destinations.

 

PAKISTAN
A holy site for both the Buddhist and Muslim faiths, Taxila served as an intellectual center for almost a millennium until its final demise in the 5th century. Situated at the confluence of three ancient trading routes, the site is currently facing a triumvirate of threats: terrorists, grave robbers, and urban development.

 

Shah Marai / AFP

 

AFGHANISTAN
The ancient Buddhist monastery of Mes Aynak lies on the Silk Road, 40 kilometers south of Kabul. In its 1,400-year history it has served as both a site for prayer and an Al Qaeda training camp. It’s also home to vast copper deposits beneath its hallowed walls. A Chinese extraction company is set to destroy the entire site within two years, in order to access the minerals. A team of French and Afghan archeologists have been scrambling since 2009 to excavate the area, but time is running out.

 

Courtesy of Global Heritage Fund

 

INDIA
The 5,000-year-old site of Rakhigarhi contains evidence of the advanced urban infrastructure of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Currently lacking recognition and protection from the Indian government, local villagers use the deteriorating site to dry and harvest buffalo dung. With Delhi a mere 150 kilometers away, India’s population explosion is also threatening to further bury Rakhigarhi’s unexplored ­areas. To date, much of the site remains unexplored and underground.

 

Marianne Barriauxo / AFP

 

CHINA
Widely considered to be one of the most intact examples of a traditional Islamic city, the Old City of Kashgar is being destroyed at a frightening pace. The Chinese government is currently in the process of reducing 85 percent of the old city to rubble, on the justification that the ­thousand-year-old mud-brick ­residences—which house half the city’s population—are vulnerable to earthquakes and must be razed.

 

Saeed Khan / AFP

 

THAILAND
The ancient Siamese capital of Ayutthaya is known today as “The Venice of the East.” Like its European namesake, it remains vulnerable to flooding, which has severely eroded the foundation upon which many of the 14th- and 15th-century monasteries and temples are built. The most recent floods in 2011 inflicted more damage upon the monuments in six weeks than water damage over the previous three centuries.

 

Michelle Butalon / AFP

 

PHILIPPINES
The Intramuros Fortress in Manila serves as a testament to the country’s convoluted past. The stronghold was built by the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century in order to stave off British, Dutch, and Chinese attacks. Heavily bombed during World War II, the site remains underdeveloped. There is also a strong suspicion that the government will destroy its character by commercializing the area.

 

Jean Marie Hullot

 

BURMA
Once a vital religious and commercial hub, Myauk-U was the capital of the Arakenese Kingdom. Here, royals built a stunning collection of pagodas, stupas, monasteries, and temples. Today these structures are threatened by the construction of a railway line through the area, which has irrevocably damaged many cultural sites.

 

BANGLADESH
Dating from the 3rd century B.C., Mahasthangarh is the oldest archeological site in Bangladesh, and it’s proving difficult to preserve. Although a legal framework to protect the ancient city was set up in 1920, the law only covers government-owned land. As a result, the lack of residential infrastructure is pressuring the site as Bangladesh’s population continues to rise.

 

CAMBODIAThe 11th-century Khmer temple of Preah Vihear straddles the hotly contested border of Cambodia and Thailand. Since an international court ruling awarded the temple to Cambodia in 1962, it’s regularly been ravaged not only by annual monsoons and a shifting climate, but also by the bullets and bombs of clashing Thai and Cambodian forces. Although the atmosphere has remained calm since February of last year, the opposing armies remain in place, defying an International Court of Justice ruling that both sides must withdraw from the area.

 

LAOS
Thousands of jars litter the landscape at the Xieng Khouang Plateau, an Iron Age site in the country’s north. The megalithic structures, which have lent the area the fitting name of Plain of Jars, were presumably used in the funerary rites of the area’s ancient inhabitants. Carved from limestone, sandstone, or granite, the jars face an explosive threat: thousands of unexploded cluster bombs left over from the Vietnam War. The urns are also vulnerable to urban pressures: due to their shape, local villagers use them to collect garbage, or as chicken coops and animal troughs.

 

Buddha statues at National Museum of Afghanistan

: Xinhuanet May 18, 2012




































































KABUL, May 17 (Xinhua) -- A few hundred meters from Dar-ul-Aman Palace, a destroyed historic citadel, the two-story Kabul museum showcases the cultural relics of Afghanistan, a crossroad of the ancient world, to the war-weary Afghans and foreign visitors. "Afghanistan itself is similar to a museum," said Fawzia Hamraz who is in charge of the ethnographic department of the Afghan National Museum (Kabul Museum), referring to the numerous archeological sites across the militancy-hit country. After Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and collapse of the Soviet-backed Najibullah government in 1992, fierce fighting occurred particularly in western and southern Kabul and also during the Taliban regime (1996-2001) when most of the treasures in the museum were looted and some were deliberately destroyed, she said. Now in ruins, the Dar-ul-Aman Palace is a European-style palace located about 16 kilometers southwest of the center of Afghan capital Kabul. The palace was built in the early 1920s as a part of the plan by King Amandullah Khan. Hamraz was one of the staff members who rushed to the museum as soon as she heard that Taliban were driven out of the city in late 2001. "The moment when I came to museum after Taliban pulled out the city, the scene around the museum building was disastrous and the building was ruinous," said Hamraz who has been working for 28 years at the museum excluding a six-year gap when Taliban who confined women to house were in power. "All these wooden sculptures from eastern Nuristan province were like a mound of wood after I came back to museum and I began to renovate them in early 2002 before an expert arrived in Kabul to help me from Austria," she said. The 50-year-old museum protector recalled that the Soviet- backed President Najibullah, whose government fell in 1992, also played a role to preserve several dozens of items by moving them to a safer place inside the presidential palace in central Kabul. "Everything that we remember is that the decision was made by a committee and President Najibullah ordered the objects to be moved to the presidential palace in fears of being looted in upcoming fighting," she said. "Most of our visitors are university students and school children who frequently get transportation provided by government and private education institutions, but we also have foreign tourists," she said. The International Museum Day falls on May 18 every year but there has been no official gathering or meeting to mark the event in Afghanistan. In an effort to attract visitors, the admission is free on Fridays, an official holiday in Afghanistan. "The Kabul museum is open seven days a week, and it is aimed at arousing viewers' interest in cultural relics, heritage and ancient objects as well as raising public awareness about protecting the historic articles and artifacts," Hamraz said. According to the director, the Kabul museum was first founded in 1919 when Afghanistan declared its independence and King Amaullah Khan begun to modernize the country. "Initially the items displayed at this museum included embroider clothes, elaborated silky clothes, military uniform and equipment, but later on all historic articles were collected from across the country and put here for display," she said. Hamraz hoped that the Afghan government and the international community enhance the support to their efforts on museums and cultural heritage sites. Earlier this year, Germany has given back an ancient pre- Islamic sculpture looted during the civil war, giving confidence to every Afghan that one day the rest of the stolen items would return home and would be in display in Kabul museum again. A cemented plaque in front of the Kabul museum states that "A NATION STAYS ALIVE WHEN ITS CULTURE STAYS ALIVE".

Yuan Dynasty Artefact Found in Bayankhongor

The Administration of the National University of Mongolia reports that a historically and nationally significant buried cave artefact from the Middle Ages has been found in the Bayan-Undur som of the Bayankhangor aimag.
The artefacts were found in the Bayan-Undur som’s Dund Mountain Shuut cave and Burgast and Gozgor hills. The burials show an important aspect of the customs and culture of the nomadic culture. No other burials such as these have been found in Mongolia or Central Asia. The Governor of Bayan-Undur, B.Idermunkh, came in person to the Social Science School of the National University of Mongolia to discuss the find on May 5th. He stated that he didn’t want the wrong kind of people to “mess it up”.
When the research team arrived at the Shuut cave, they found the slat burial destroyed and the ger wall and horse saddle had been used for they were broken. The administrations of National University of Mongolia are now studying the remaining pieces of bones and clothing at the Social Science School. The burial in Burgast contained the remains of a 60 year old man found wearing a deel (traditional Mongolian clothing), belt and remains of a bow. The burial in Gozgor was that of a Yuan dynasty Mongolian queen buried with her newborn baby. This burial too had been squandered and some artefacts were missing, yet the remaining artefacts are of immense value to Mongolian history-never before seen in the world. Researchers have determined that the mother and the child died of some kind of plague or contagious disease. The child was wrapped in sheepskin with scented plant and had stayed in this condition for almost 800 years – demonstrating the Mongolian mummification technique. This is a rare opportunity for anthropologist to study Mongolian history on a genetic level.

U.Erdenebat, head of the Archaeological and Anthropological Department of Social Science School, stated, “Many jewels made of copper, mussel, mother of pearl and other valuable materials, clothing and other artefacts used by queens of that era were found with the burials. Other clothing such as a red silk deel and head ornaments were found which were all intricately made and extremely detailed. The artefacts were those used and developed by Mongols and the people in Central Asia. These are artefacts and evidence of the Mongolian Empire established by Chinggis Khan. A red wooden cup was also found along with the burial, marked with square letters at its base which read “Khiyan,” which could be the name of the cup’s owner. This suggests that the Mongolian queen buried in Gozgor Hill is a descendant of the Chinggis Khan’s royal blood of Khiyad Borjigin.”
The Cultural Heritage Centre has been officially informed of the findings, and special archaeologists are working to clean and reconstruct the ancient artifacts.

By B.KHASH-ERDENE

Source: UB Post

Mes Aynak

A gold-plated seated Buddha overlooks the China Metallurgical Group Corporation mine. (Brent Huffman)

Locals from relocated villages in the Mes Aynak area in Logar province working for low wages to remove dirt and rocks from the site exposing buried artifacts. (Brent Huffman)

A head sculpted in the Gandhara style. (Brent Huffman)

Abdul Qadeer Temore, lead Afghan archaeologist, working on the large standing Buddhas. (Brent Huffman)

Brent Huffman filming one of the temples set for destruction. (Frank Petrella)

Brent Huffman interviewing lead Afghan archaeologist Abdul Qadeer Temore. (Frank Petrella)

 Source: The Asia Society,May 17, 2012

Brent Huffman, a documentary filmmaker and assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, is currently working on a film about a Chinese state-owned copper mine in Mes Aynak, Afghanistan. The mining operation, which Huffman says is a precursor to potentially $1 trillion worth of extraction potential in the country, uncovered a 2,000 year-old religious site with over 200 Buddha statues, devotional temples called stupas, and a monastery complex.

In the following account, Huffman gives an update about the historical site under threat in Mes Aynak, as well as the dangerous environment the mine has created for archaeologists, Chinese workers, and local Afghans. The piece adds to Asia Society Blog's ongoing coverage of the site.

The Buddhists that picked the location of a religious center in Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, some 2,000 years ago did so in part to make ornaments and coins from the copper at the site. Today, a Chinese mining company may destroy what they left behind to extract that same resource.

That is, unless a team of Afghan archaeologists led by Philippe Marquis, director at the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA), can put a stop to it. While making a documentary film about the mining project from July 2011 to April 2012, I filmed Marquis and his team frantically searching for artifacts and others attempting rescue preservation with limited equipment like cloth wraps and plastic tarps. 

“We have only discovered the tip of the iceberg, a mere 10 percent of the site,” said Marquis, who believes this could easily be a 10-year excavation project. 

Efforts to save and preserve the massive site have been drastically scaled back to a project whose best hope is to merely document the site before the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) begins copper excavation in 2014. The remaining cultural relics and immense structures, which are both too large and fragile to be moved, will all be destroyed.

MCC, for its part, said it did not know the archaeological site existed when they took on the project, and that the site will not stand in the way of the excavation of copper valued at over 100 billion dollars.

“We believe it will not take long for the problem to be solved,” Executive Deputy President Zhenguo Liutold me in an interview.

Meanwhile, the archaeologists fear for the future of the site. Lead Afghan archaeologist Abdul Qadeer Temore has been tirelessly working at the excavation site for nearly a year. He told me last July he hadn’t received any pay for the past four months from the Afghan government while struggling to feed his three young children.

“I feel like a mother and the artifacts feel like my children,” Temore said. “We work so hard uncovering the pieces and protecting them. When they get destroyed, it will feel like losing a child.” 

To make matters worse, the Mes Aynak site is located in the heart of Taliban country. Abdul gets regular death threats from the Taliban on his cell phone demanding cash for his life. Early this year, two Afghan workers were severely wounded when they dug up a land mine buried at the archaeology site. One worker lost his eyes and another lost his legs in the blast. Abdul stressed to me that despite the extreme risk, he and his team of Afghan specialists would keep excavating on the site until they are forced to quit.

The Chinese workers are also in constant danger. In 2011, an SUV full of MCC workers hit a land mine on one of the winding gravel roads, killing all passengers in the vehicle. The compound itself is often a target for rockets fired from the surrounding mountains. As a result, the Chinese MCC compound looks like a military fortress complete with bomb-resistant barricades filled with sand outlining the area, numerous outposts where armed guards keep watch, and concrete walls topped with razor wire around the compound itself. 

Six Afghan villages in Logar province, most with a 500-year history, have to be relocated because of the pending excavation at the copper mine. Many of these villages have already been leveled and residents have been forced to move into other areas. Due to poor negotiations with rural Afghan elders, many of the former inhabitants of the now destroyed communities feel angry and disenfranchised by MCC and the Afghan government. 

“We are helpless,” said Akbar Khan from the nearby village of Adam Kaley.  “We do not have the means to fight for our rights. When people ask for their rights the government comes to coerce them, beat them, humiliate them and take their property. We are forced to fight the state with violence.” 

Khan and other villagers had signed petitions from the Afghan government promising them compensation for the destruction of their villages and livelihood, but so far the men say they have not been adequately reimbursed. 

“These villages were everything to us,” said Abdul Raham, a village elder from Bar Chinaria. “Our families have lived off this land for hundreds of years and now we are begging in the streets.”

As archaeologists scramble to save what they can from the site before the 2014 deadline, it has become clear to me that another cultural wonder in Asia will be lost to a future focused on resource extraction, ultimately benefiting countries like China over the citizens of Afghanistan.

Huffman will be attending a conference in Washington, D.C., June 4-5 hosted by the Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage about solutions to save Mes Aynak.

Related Links

The Buddhas of Aynak Documentary

Asia Society Blog Post On Mes Aynak

Photos: The 10 Most Endangered Heritage Sites in Asia

Silk Road on the East Sea

Hanoi museum to host Silk Road on East Sea exhibition 

From: Thanhniennews.com March 8, 2012

A three-month exhibition titled Con duong to lua tren bien Dong, or Silk Road on East Sea, will be held at the Vietnam National Museum of History in Hanoi.

Dr. Nguyen Van Doan, head of the museum’s exhibition department, said the exhibition would showcase Vietnam’s role in and dominion over the East Sea as part of the route.
The Silk Road was a network of interlinking trade routes on land, but also by sea, on the Afro-Eurasian landmass connecting most of Asia with Europe between the 2nd century BCE and 15th century CE.
The exhibition, to open in early May, will be categorized into four periods: prehistory, recorded history from the 1st to 10th centuries, 11th to 15th centuries, and the 18th century.
Artifacts found at Ha Long Bay will be in the prehistory section, while the rest will feature artifacts from in many parts of the country.
The Silk Road also engendered business between locals living along rivers in Ke Cho, Pho Hien, and Hoi An and traders from Japan and the Netherlands.
The exhibition will feature artifacts from shipwrecks in the 17th and 18th centuries as well as other documents and maps created by evangelists and traders.
Doan said there was a bustling Silk Road in the East Sea in the past, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries, and the exhibition is “the most lively example of the country’s role in the Silk Road on the sea.”
“Vietnam was not only a transit point but also a departure and destination point for many ships.”
Last July the museum, in cooperation with the Museum of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China’s Guangxi Province, held an exhibition titled “Treasure of Silk Road” which displayed ceramics salvaged from shipwrecks in Vietnamese waters.
In 2006 it showcased artifacts found off the coast of the southern province of Ba Ria – Vung Tau.
But the upcoming exhibition will be the biggest about the Silk Road on the East Sea.

Tombs with undamaged mural paintings from Tang Dynasty

From: CNTV

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In one ongoing excavating section of Anyang's Yinxu Ruins, scholars found two family tombs with undamaged mural paintings.

According to the archaeologists, the two large-scale tomb sites sit side-by-side possibly belonging to imperial families from the Tang Dynasty. Although the sites have been heavily damaged by tomb robbers in past years, the mural paintings seem very well preserved.

He Yuling, archaeologist, Anyang, Henan, said, "This is a floor lamp, and there are three oil lamp dishes on it. This is a maid pouring lamp oil into the dish. It's a scene in the family mansion. The costume of the maid, as well as the way she wears make-up, is very typical of late-Tang Dynasty style."

Judging from the details of painting skills, a series of scenes including house building, home furniture, flowers and birds also supported the deduction that the murals are from the late Tang Dynasty. Similar mural paintings have been discovered in Shanxi and Shandong Provinces, but it's only the second time that late Tang Dynasty murals have been unearthed in Anyang, which has provided ground material for the local historical studies.

According to the archaeologists, the two large-scale tomb sites sit side-by-side possibly belonging to imperial families from the Tang Dynasty. Although the sites have been heavily damaged by tomb robbers in past years, the mural paintings seem very well preserved.

Although the sites have been heavily damaged by tomb robbers in past years, the mural paintings seem very well preserved.

Khitans and the Liao Dynasty

From CNTV: Journeys in Time

Journeys in Time 20120508 The Khitans and the Liao Dynasty part 1

Journeys in Time 20120510 The Khitans and the Liao Dynasty Part 3

Journeys in Time 20120511 The Khitans and the Liao Dynasty Part 4

Journeys in Time 20120512 The Khitans and the Liao Dynasty Part 5





Journeys in Time 20120515 The Khitans and the Liao Dynasty Part 6





Journeys in Time 20120516 The Khitans and the Liao Dynasty Part 7

Stone carvers defy Taliban to return to the Bamiyan valley

Afghan students learn the centuries-old skills that carved out the giant buddhas blown up by extremists

• 
  Emma Graham-Harrison in Bamiyan
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 May 2012 15.02 BST

Afghans learning the skills of stone-working in the Bamiyan valley, where the Taliban blew up two giant buddhas in 2001.

Under perfectly carved niches that once held dozens of small buddha statues, the purposeful tap of chisel on stone echoed over the Bamiyan valley for the first time in centuries.

Twelve young Afghans had gathered to take the first tentative steps back towards a stone-working tradition that once made their home famous, at a workshop in a cave gouged out as a monastery assembly hall more than 1,000 years ago.

The cave-hall was part of a complex built around two giant buddhas that loomed serenely over Bamiyan for about 15 centuries – until the Talibangovernment condemned them as un-Islamic in early 2001 and blew them up.

"I was interested in this course because I want to restore our culture," said Ismael Wahidi, a 22-year-old student of archeology at Bamiyan University, who set aside more conventional studies for a week to learn how to turn a lump of stone into a sculpture. "If you want to destroy a people, you first destroy their heritage and history."

The workshop, held just a few metres from where the larger buddha's face was once carved from the cliff face, aimed to reintroduce stone-carving to the valley by showing that creating basic pieces is easy, even if mastery takes years.

Under the guidance of Afghan, American and German artists, the group picked the stone they would shape from some of the rich seams of marble, quartzite and travertine [a form of limestone] that thread through the local mountains, foothills of the Himalayas. Then they set to work, with chisels forged by local blacksmiths from the suspension springs of old cars. "We wanted to give young people the idea that it is possible to do stone carving with what you have here," said Bert Praxenthaler, a sculptor and conservationist who has been working on the valley's monuments for several years, including stabilising the niches that once held the buddhas.

The Bamiyan valley is pockmarked with hundreds of caves that were once part of sumptuous monasteries, packed with statues and lavishly painted with frescoes. This rich artistic heritage was funded by centuries of taxes on caravans passing through what is now an isolated backwater, but was once a wealthy and important stop on the silk road.

"There must have been at least 2,000 years of sculptural tradition," said Praxenthaler. "Even excavating the caves is a kind of architectural sculpture. It was not just hacking holes into the cliff but also shaping the rooms, and they are quite extraordinary."

That tradition was probably killed off around 1,000 years ago, Praxenthaler said, when the valley was conquered by Mahmoud of Ghazni, a leader whose epithet suggested little interest in figurative art. "Anyone who calls themselves the 'destroyer of idols' probably wouldn't support further stone carving," Praxenthaler said.

Sculpture has remained largely off limits in Afghanistan because of strict Islamic prohibitions on idolatry. Depictions of any human or animal are strongly discouraged in art, and calligraphy, floral and geometric patterns dominate the country's more recent cultural heritage, from the majestic minaret of Jam, to mosques and monuments in cities such as Kabul and Kandahar.

"As you know, extremists often make propaganda about idols. But this is our heritage, not something religious," said 20-year-old Abdur Rahman Rosta, one of the student sculptors. He added that that in Bamiyan itself the sculptors were feted. The valley's people suffered badly under the Taliban, and have little sympathy for their hardline views, and Bamiyan has remained one of the most peaceful places in Afghanistan as insurgent violence spreads elsewhere.

The provincial governor came to a small ceremony unveiling the sculptures, and picked up a chisel herself as musicians played in a niche that once held the cave's largest statue – and might perhaps one day hold another.

"During this course we realised we had much more ability for working with stone than we could have imagined, and we understood we can do so much more," said Jawed Mohammadi, a 20-year-old history student at the university, who used the week to chisel out a human face. "The buddhas were destroyed, but maybe we can build them again."

Source: The Guardian