Posted on 07/27/2011 3:47:58 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
When the Taliban controlled Afghanistan a decade ago, they were fanatical about eliminating everything they considered un-Islamic.
Their biggest targets — literally and figuratively — were the two monumental Buddha statues carved out of the sandstone cliffs in central Afghanistan. One stood nearly 180 feet tall and the other about 120 feet high, and together they had watched over the dusty Bamiyan Valley since the sixth century, several centuries before Islam reached the region.
Despite international opposition, the Taliban destroyed the statues with massive explosions in 2001. At the time they were blown up, the statues were the largest Buddha carvings in the world, and it seemed they were gone for good.
But today, teams from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, along with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, are engaged in the painstaking process of putting the broken Buddhas back together.
Up to half of the Buddha pieces can be recovered, according to Bert Praxenthaler, a German art historian and sculptor, who has been working at the site for the past eight years. He and his crew have sifted through 400 tons of rubble and have recovered many parts of the statues along with shrapnel, land mines and explosives that were used in their demolition.
But how do you rebuild the Buddhas from the rubble?
"The archaeological term is 'anastylosis,' but most people think it's some kind of strange disease," said Praxenthaler.
For those in the archaeology world, "anastylosis" is actually a familiar term. It was the process used to restore the Parthenon of Athens. It involves combining the monument's original pieces with modern material.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Ping.
The Taliban is so excited about blowing things up, they shouldn’t object when we fly Predators and Raptors over them.
The taliban will just blow them up again 5 minutes after we leave.
In the words of our Founding Fathers when they agreed on something said in the Colonial and Constitutional Congresses:
HEAR! HEAR! HEAR!
Don't be so pessimistic. It could take a couple days.
I can understand the Taliban being scared of Buddhism. It’s the empty hand that becons. Not their style at all.
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Thanks Pan_Yan."The archaeological term is 'anastylosis,' but most people think it's some kind of strange disease," said Praxenthaler... It was the process used to restore the Parthenon of Athens. It involves combining the monument's original pieces with modern material.To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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When the Buddhists first encountered the Muslims in Central Asia and Afghanistan (remember the Bamiyan Buddhas?), the Buddhist reaction was no reaction at all. The Buddhists tamely submitted to the Muslims. No they did not embrace Islam en masse; they just gave themselves up for being slaughtered en masse by the Muslims.
Many of the Buddhists never learned to resist the Muslims. Even when the Muslims raided famous Buddhist Universities like Nalanda in India’s Bihar province, the Buddhists died en masse when the Muslim swordsmen slaughtered them like hyena would devour a clutch of rabbits in a cage.
http://www.historyofjihad.org/thailand.html?syf=contact
Maybe that other material otta be some nice binary high explosive. The next time they blow them up the whole mountain lands on them.
Next time, I’d rather that the jihadists be strung up and left for the buzzards to pick at, in every town and hamlet in Afghellholeistan.
The case that Buddhists are peaceful and serene unless provoked by Muslims is weakened by the history of relations between Burma and Thailand, both Buddhist nations. At the time of the American Revolution the Burmese brutally sacked the Thai capital city of Ayutthaya, which caused the collapse of the kingdom and a move to a new capital, Bangkok.
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