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<< Text Pages >> Mes Aynak - Ancient Temple in Afghanistan

Submitted by Andy B on Tuesday, 18 January 2011  Page Views: 14862

Site WatchSite Name: Mes Aynak
Country: Afghanistan Type: Ancient Temple

Latitude: 34.400000N  Longitude: 69.371100E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
1
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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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"Mes Aynak" | Login/Create an Account | 5 News and Comments
  
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Mes Aynak: Afghanistan's Buddhist buried treasure faces destruction by Andy B on Sunday, 02 June 2013
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A long article by William Dalrymple:

n the spring of 1963, a French geologist set out from Kabul to carry out a survey in Logar province in eastern Afghanistan. His destination was the large outcrop of copper-bearing strata in the mountains above the village of Mes Aynak. But in the course of boring for samples, the geologist stumbled on something much more exciting: an entire buried Buddhist city dating from the early centuries AD. The site was clearly very large – he estimated that it covered six sq km – and, although long forgotten, he correctly guessed that it must once have been a huge and wealthy terminus on the Silk Road.

Archaeologists in Kabul did a preliminary survey of the site, mapping it and digging test trenches, but before they could gather the enormous resources needed for a full-scale excavation, first the 1978 Marxist coup then the 1979 Saur Communist revolution and the Soviet invasion intervened. In the chaos of conflict that followed, the Soviets visited Mes Aynak to dig test tunnels into the hillside and investigate the feasibility of extracting its copper. Later, during the Taliban era, one of the abandoned Soviet tunnels became an al-Qaida hideout, while the remote valley became a training camp: the 9/11 hijackers stopped off here en route to New York. During the American onslaught of December 2001, US special forces attacked the tunnel: an unexploded rocket lodged in the roof and burn marks at the cave mouth still bear witness to the attack.

By the time French archaeologists returned in 2004, they found that the secret of the buried city was out. As had happened in many other sites in the country, a large and highly organised team of professional art looters, probably from Pakistan, had systematically plundered the mounds at Mes Aynak and, judging by the detritus they left, had found large quantities of hugely valuable Gandharan Buddha images: the remains of many painted stucco figures deemed too fragile or too damaged to sell were left lying around the looting trenches which now crisscrossed the site. Beside them, the archaeologists found empty tubes of glue and bags of fine plaster – evidence of attempts at restoration and conservation.

More at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/31/mes-aynak-afghanistan-buddhist-treasure
[ Reply to This ]
    Afghanistan's heritage is at stake by bat400 on Friday, 03 January 2014
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    An article from the same time period.

    Mes Aynak is the latest piece of heritage facing an existential threat, only this time the threat is government sponsored. The Ministry of Mines sold rights to the copper reserves directly below and around the archaeological site to the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group (MCC) roughly four years ago. This despite international experts repeatedly describing it, since its rediscovery in the 1960s, as a hugely important cradle of Bronze Age, Buddhist and Islamic heritage.

    Mes Aynak also satisfies the criteria for becoming a Unesco World Heritage Site. Yet, unlike at Bamiyan, the process has never been initiated. Campaigners insist it is not too late. However, a valid proposal can only come from government officials, and herein lies the tragedy. No one with the power to save Mes Aynak will or, perhaps, can defy the Ministry of Mines to contact Unesco or another conservation body, such as the International Council on Monuments and Sites.

    A report released by the National Museum of Afghanistan in 2011, in collaboration with European experts, says that only 10 per cent of the Buddhist settlement has so far been excavated. Of that, much has been subject to the harsh procedures of "rescue" or "salvage" archaeology, which is necessary when time constraints and other pressures prevent the painstaking processes of conventional archaeology.

    Expert consensus currently holds that at least 30 years is needed, from now, to carry out a satisfactory excavation of the entire site.

    A 2012 report by the Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage (Arch), a US non-profit group, in collaboration with international experts, states that the site is "one of the most intriguing ancient mining sites in Central Asia, if not the world". It goes on: "While the Buddhist aspect is important, what makes the site special is this continuity of habitation across millennia … Over 5,000 years old, this is a site where early technology and society unfolded."

    Documentary filmmaker Brent Huffman is one of those fighting desperately to raise awareness of Mes Aynak's historical significance before the bulldozers roll in.
    Huffman's campaigning film, The Buddhas of Mes Aynak, is almost ready for release. He does not think a film alone can save Mes Aynak, but seeing the site close up changed everything for him, and he hopes if enough people are shown what is at stake, the momentum behind this issue might shift in favour of the preservation campaign. "What the film is doing is getting people to fall in love, to see why it's important and the incredible things that are found there."

    When asked about heritage preservation at Mes Aynak, the Afghan Ministry for Culture and Information's responses were vague.

    A search of Unesco's site lists, both proposed and tentative, shows no references to Mes Aynak. Ministry adviser Jalal Noorani said: "There is continuing work. This department sent archaeologists to Mes Aynak. They have found some historical things … so, we should protect these." He acknowledged the existence of a mining contract with MCC, but insisted that, "They will begin when we have finished our archaeological work. Maybe next year. We need another one year."

    It is unclear how official this timescale is, but either way, it falls well short of the 30 years deemed necessary by international experts. In addition, the work Mr Noorani described fits the definition of salvage archaeology, involving the deconstruction and removal, usually to Kabul, of archaeological material. There are many artefacts and structures that on-site archeologists say are too fragile to ever be relocated.


    Thanks to coldrum for the link. For the entire article see http://www.independent.co.uk
    [ Reply to This ]

Chinese mine in Afghanistan threatens ancient find - petition by Andy B on Sunday, 23 September 2012
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Another mining related petition at Change.org:

Please sign the petition to help save the ancient Buddhist city of Mes Aynak (Province Logar, Afghanistan) from needless destruction while preventing irreversible environmental harm to Kabul watershed and the Afghan people.

We, the undersigned, acknowledge the urgent need for revenue generation for Afghanistan. We also recognize cultural heritage is a treasure for the ages, and no amount of revenue can compensate for an environmental catastrophe.

1. We insist that the Mes Aynak mining project be conducted in accordance with international standards in a transparent manner that will safeguard public health, and ensure maximum protection for cultural heritage and the environment. International standards include publication of the final mining plan, the final, approved environmental impact plan, and the consensus advisory of archaeologists to optimize restoration of the site.

2. We strongly urge the Afghan government to set up a coordinating body composed of government and mining officials, neutral experts in the fields of environmental safety, archaeology and geology, and representatives of the local population and civil society to oversee the implementation of International standards. This body shall ensure that the mining plan is followed throughout the entire life of the mine.

Issue Briefing on the Campaign to Save Mes Aynak
In November 2007 the Afghan government granted a 30-year lease for the Mes Aynak copper mine to the China Metallurgical Group (MCC). The hope is that this mine could become a significant source of revenue for a country that is emerging from three decades of conflict and trying to stand on its own feet.
However, the same site also holds a buried Buddhist city with multiple temples, fortresses and commercial and residential areas. Below that are older historic remains going back to 3000 B.C. and possibly including Bronze Age artifacts. Experts call this one of the premier archaeological treasures in Asia. When mining begins in 2013, this unique heritage site will be destroyed forever. Currently, a small team of salvage archaeologists is rushing to save whatever can be removed from the location.

The copper deposit also sits atop the aquifer that supplies water to the surrounding agricultural province and to Kabul, a city with an estimated 3 million inhabitants. Copper mining is hazardous and there is a real threat of a catastrophic environmental disaster if the proper methods of mining are not applied.

So far, NO environmental impact plan and NO mining plan has been made public. There has been NO discussion of variable mining technologies that might allow for portions of the site to be saved. Local residents and the Afghan population have NOT been informed of the costs and significant risks of this endeavor. An atmosphere of secrecy prevails and destruction is scheduled to begin in just a few months.

There is a better way forward – identified by a group of renowned international experts who met specifically to find a solution in June of 2012. Their recommendations are reasonable and should be followed by the Afghan government, MCC, and their supporting partners, the World Bank and the U.S. Department of State.

For more information, please refer to

http://www.facebook.com/buddhasofaynak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mes_Aynak
http://www.archinternational.org/mes_aynak.html
http://www.apaa.info/APAA/APAA/CopperMineatMessAynak.html
[ Reply to This ]

Archaeologists Salvage 7th C BC Buddist site along the famed Silk Road by bat400 on Friday, 17 August 2012
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A Chinese company digging an unexploited copper mine in Afghanistan has unearthed ancient statues of Buddha in a sprawling 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery. The ruins, including the monastery and domed shrines, will likely be largely destroyed once work at the mine begins.

The ruins were discovered as labourers excavated the site on behalf of the Chinese government-backed China Metallurgical Group Corp, which wants to develop the world's second largest copper mine, lying beneath the ruins.

Hanging over the situation is the memory of the Buddhas of Bamiyan — dynamited to the ground in 2001 by the country's then-rulers, the Taliban, who considered them symbols of paganism.

No one wants to be blamed for similarly razing history at Mes Aynak, in the eastern province of Logar. MCC wanted to start building the mine by the end of 2011 but under an informal understanding with the Kabul government, it has given archaeologists three years for a salvage excavation.

Archaeologists working on the site since May say that won't be enough time for full preservation.

The monastery complex has been dug out, revealing hallways and rooms decorated with frescoes and filled with clay and stone statues of standing and reclining Buddhas, some as high as 10 feet. An area that was once a courtyard is dotted with stupas standing four or 5ft high.

More than 150 statues have been found so far, though many remain in place. Large ones are too heavy to be moved, and the team lacks the chemicals needed to keep small ones from disintegrating when extracted.

'That site is so massive that it's easily a 10-year campaign of archaeology,' said Laura Tedesco, an archaeologist brought in by the US Embassy to work on sites in Afghanistan. 'Three years may be enough time just to document what's there.'

Philippe Marquis, a French archaeologist advising the Afghans, said the salvage effort is piecemeal and 'minimal', held back by lack of funds and personnel.

Around 15 Afghan archaeologists, three French advisers and a few dozen labourers are working within the 0.77-square-mile area - a far smaller team than the two dozen archaeologists and 100 labourers normally needed for a site of such size and richness.

'This is probably one of the most important points along the Silk Road,' said Marquis. 'What we have at this site, already in excavation, should be enough to fill the (Afghan) national museum.'

Mes Aynak, 20 miles south of Kabul, lies in a province that is still considered a major transit route for insurgents coming from Pakistan. Around 1,500 Afghan police guard the mine site and the road.

Mes Aynak's religious sites and copper deposits have been bound together for centuries — 'mes' means 'copper' in the local Dari language. Throughout the site's history, artisanal miners have dug up copper to adorn statues and shrines. Afghan archaeologists have known since the 1960s about the importance of Mes Aynak, but almost nothing had been excavated.

The mine could be a major boost for the Afghan economy. According to the Afghan Mining Ministry, it holds some 6 million tons of copper, worth tens of billions of dollars at today's prices. Developing the mine and related transport infrastructure will generate much needed jobs and economic activity.

Waheedullah Qaderi, a Mining Ministry official working on the antiquities issue, said MCC shares the government goal of protecting heritage while starting mining as soon as possible.


Thanks to coldrum for the link. Read more at the Daily Mail.
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Chinese mine in Afghanistan threatens ancient find by bat400 on Tuesday, 18 January 2011
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It was another day as archaeologists and laborers dug out statues of Buddha and excavated a sprawling 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery. A Chinese woman, carrying an umbrella against the Afghan sun, politely inquired about their progress.
She had more than a passing interest. The woman represents a Chinese company eager to develop the world's second-biggest unexploited copper mine, lying beneath the ruins.

The mine is the centerpiece of China's drive to invest in Afghanistan, a country trying to get its economy off the ground while still mired in war. Beijing's $3.5 billion stake in the mine - the largest foreign investment in Afghanistan - gets its foot in the door for future deals to exploit Afghanistan's largely untapped mineral wealth, including iron, gold, and cobalt. The Afghan government stands to reap a potential $1.2 billion a year in mine revenues, as well as the creation of jobs.

But Mes Aynak is caught between Afghanistan's hopes for the future and its history. Archaeologists are rushing to salvage what they can from a major 7th Century B.C. religious site along the famed Silk Road connecting Asia and the Middle East. The ruins, including the monastery and domed shrines known as "stupas," will likely be largely destroyed once work at the mine begins.

The Chinese government-backed China Metallurgical Group Corp., or MCC, wanted to start building the mine by the end of 2011. But under an informal understanding with the Kabul government, it has has given archaeologists three years for a salvage excavation.

Archaeologists working on the site since May say that won't be enough time for full preservation. "That site is so massive that it's easily a 10-year campaign of archaeology," said Laura Tedesco, an archaeologist brought in by the U.S. Embassy to work on sites in Afghanistan. Three years may be enough time just to document what's there, she said.

Philippe Marquis, a French archaeologist advising the Afghans, said the salvage effort is piecemeal and "minimal," held back by lack of funds and personnel.

Around 15 Afghan archaeologists, three French advisers and a few dozen laborers are working within the 2-sq. kilometer (0.77 sq.-mile) area - a far smaller team than the two dozen archaeologists and 100 laborers normally needed for a site of such size and richness.

The monastery complex has been dug out, revealing hallways and rooms decorated with frescoes and filled with clay and stone statues of standing and reclining Buddhas, some as high as 10 feet tall. An area that was once a courtyard is dotted with stupas standing four or five feet high. More than 150 statues have been found so far, though many remain in place. Large ones are too heavy to be moved, and the team lacks the chemicals needed to keep small ones from disintegrating when extracted.

MCC appears to be pushing the archaeologists to finish ahead of schedule. In July, the archaeologists received a letter from the company asking that parts of the dig be wrapped up by August and the rest to be done by the end of 2010.

A copy of the letter - signed by the joint venture in charge of the mine, MCC-JCL Aynak Minerals Co. - was provided to The Associated Press by the head of the archaeological team. MCC and MJAM officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Promised funding from foreign governments has yet to materialize.

Afghan archaeologists have known since the 1960s about the importance of Mes Aynak, but almost nothing had been excavated. When the Chinese won the contract to exploit the mine in 2008, there was no discussion with Kabul about the ruins - only about money, security and building a railroad to transport the copper out of Logar's dusty hills.

But a small band of Afghan and French archaeologists raised a stir and put the antiquities on the agenda.



Thanks to coldrum for the link: times-journal.com.
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