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Mayan Pyramid In Belize Leveled By Construction Crew
An anonymous reader writes "If an imposing 2300-year old Mayan temple situated at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was on your list of things to see before you die, you're too late. The monument was essentially destroyed by a construction crew in order to provide gravel for road construction. Archaeologists expressed shock, as Nohmul (the "great mound") was a major Mayan religious center in its day. While the pyramid was situated on private property, such historical sites are supposedly protected by ordinance, and officials may file criminal charges."
In with the new.
Humanity needs to stop hording and learn to let things go.
You stupid fuck, when the British wanted to build a railroad in Bolivia and there weren't any handy gravel deposits nearby they smashed up big chunks of Tiahuanacu. You can still see pieces of statues in the foundations for the railroad bridges in the area. Greed and laziness will win out over respect for the past pretty much every time that money is involved.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
This is nothing new. Just look throughout the Middle East and Europe and you'll find all kinds of plundered and recycled architecture. Mostly because it's easier to have your stone masons rework something to fit rather than carve something from scratch.
The Great Mosque of Kairouan is a good example where it used to be punishable by death to count the columns. The real reason is they didn't want people looking at them too closely because they were mostly stolen from places like Carthage and are a mix of Greek, Roman, and Christian designs.
The major cities of the Indus Valley civilization were dismantled for railroad ballast for the same reasons.
This kind of destruction for the pettiest of reasons isn't anything new. In Malta, a group took a bulldozer to the stone temples at Mnajdra, a glorious megalithic site, older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids. Mnajdra is breathtakingly lovely and enigmatic and fascinating. Fortunately, it's largely been restored and is again open to the public. Why? People had constructed illegal bird-hunting hides on the adjacent land and objected to their hides being destroyed. People will be vicious destructive assholes for any number of reasons, including just because they can. Profit, sheer revelry in destruction (Persepolis), symbolism of dominance or victory (Summer Palace in Beijing), religious fanaticism (Buddha statues), a fanatical dislike of cities (Mongols and most of the cities in their way), to discourage attacks (Carthage), any number of reasons.
Religion is not an ethnicity. And religious fanatics deserve no consideration of respect.
Visual impressiveness is rarely an indication of archaeological importance. In fact, something that looks like a pile of rocks is often a structure that hasn't been studied yet. The fantastic pyramids and temples you see are often the result of best-guess reconstruction.
I agree. My point was that in the few pictures I was able to find of it prior to being destroyed, it didn't look like much more than what could have been a natural limestone formation covered by vegetation. Again I think it's a stretch, but it's possible the workers didn't realize they were digging up a temple. After reading some of the local news coverage though, this seems very unlikely.
Anyway, I'm disappointed that the article pictured the wrong temple and I suspect that it might have been intentional.