<< Text Pages >> Mes Aynak - Ancient Temple in Afghanistan
Submitted by Andy B on Tuesday, 18 January 2011 Page Views: 14905
Site WatchSite Name: Mes AynakCountry: Afghanistan
NOTE: This site is 23.495 km away from the location you searched for.
Type: Ancient Temple
Latitude: 34.400000N Longitude: 69.371100E
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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Last year the French archaeological mission, in cooperation with the Afghan National Institute of Archaeology, it began an excavation of an ancient Buddhist settlement at the Mes Aynak mine, which has the second-largest known unexploited copper deposits in the world. The team are racing to rescue as much as possible before the mining work begins.
The Afghan government has awarded the mining project to the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, which is keen to begin work at the site, 40 kilometres (25 miles) outside the capital Kabul.
First it was the Taliban that mindlessly destroyed the 1500 year old statues of Buddha. Now an ancient Buddhist monastery is under threat in Afghanistan from ... a copper mining company!
A Chinese company intends to blow up an ancient Buddhist monastery south of Kabul to make way for a massive copper mine. The plan has sparked outrage among Afghan and French archaeologists, who have recently uncovered more than 100 statues within a large religious complex that includes seven stupas, or tombs built to house the relics of saints.
Located in a mountainous region 40 kilometers southeast of the capital, Mes Aynak is a hill topped by a 4500-square-meter monastery. Although the site was spotted by archaeologists in the 1960s, it was never excavated. During the late 1990s, the hill was home to an al-Qaida training camp, according to the 2004 report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. In recent years, looters have damaged much of the monastery complex in the search for antiquities, says Nader Rassouli, director of Afghanistan's National Institute of Archaeology in Kabul, which is also participating in the current excavations.
Two millennia ago, this region served as a critical conduit in the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and China, says T. Richard Blurton, an archaeologist and curator at London's British Museum who has excavated in Afghanistan. He says Mes Aynak could provide new data on both the origin and demise of the religion here.
More at Science Religion News with a link to a paid article in Science and also AFP
Note: Mine in Afghanistan threatens ancient tomb complex, the excavators have unofficially been given three years but will this be honoured?
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