2300 year old Mayan pyramid bulldozed for Belize road project

[Warpaladin]

BELIZE CITY — A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Maya pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced Monday.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.

http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/201...d-project?lite

A piece of history destroyed for a road o.O

[Gratlim]

Sad really. But the modern world has little care for the treasures of history.

If you think about the war in Irak, at least 80 percent of the 170,000 separate items stored at the National Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad were stolen or destroyed during the looting rampage that followed the US military occupation of Baghdad. The museum was the greatest single storehouse of materials from the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, including Sumeria, Akkadia, Babylonia, Assyria and Chaldea. It also held artifacts from Persia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and various Arab dynasties.

Some of those were 5000 years old.

[EyelessCrow]

The modern world has little to nothing to do with it. It's called greed and historical objects have always taken a backseat to greed. That is nothing new.

[Kulanae]

http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/201...d-project?lite

A piece of history destroyed for a road o.O

Just think what was destroyed to make NY.

[Deleted]

The modern world has little to nothing to do with it. It's called greed and historical objects have always taken a backseat to greed. That is nothing new.

Indeed. Many people today care more about money then anything else. This is an example with the pyramid, but in the end, this would not have affected them if it wasn't uncovered, but what about people putting dangerous chemicals in some foods? It makes them richer but in the end it would affect them too, but they don't care.

Yes, greed is the worst problem of modern times... no, I'm wrong, not modern times in general, the worst problem of humanity from the start. And there's a point where it just destroys history, culture, knowledge etc, just for money. And it's sad.

What is worse is that people don't care. I mean, think about it, that pyramid wasn't destroyed in a day. So people must have seen.

[Aspect of Death]

What.. the.. fuck... I hope this is an old april fools joke ;(

[StayTuned]

Just think what was destroyed to make NY.

Just imagine what we destroyed so far every time we made something new.

Oh shit... looks like we sometimes have to get rid of old stuff to make some new stuff. One day, someone will go "omg" over the destruction of a 2012 build penny mart building. Had to make space for a space warp station.



This is however totally unrelated to the story. OP post was just about retarded destruction. They could have gotten the stone from somewhere else. This was just cheaper.

[Sunseeker]

It's one thing to be unaware of a site and cause damage to it for that reason, but as the article says, everyone knows this was there and it was just damn lazy to do this.

And it's not even as if we're building "something new". It's one thing to destroy parts of history to build something new and creative and amazing. But this is a road. There's nothing new or creative or interesting about a road.

[ParanoiD84]

Thats really sad, greedy fuckers and for what? a new road.

[Korgoth]

Roads are more important then old buildings. Practicality trumps Sentimentality.

[Hooked]

From the picture it doesnt look like much of a historical loss, that pyramid was a pos.

[Deleted]

I hope the grave of whoever is in charge of this will also someday meet a bulldozer.

[Tinykong]

Looks like they were slightly off on their apocalypse date.



Too soon?

[Ssith]

I hope the grave of whoever is in charge of this will also someday meet a bulldozer.

me too. it's called progress. old != important.

the article even says it wasn't excavated and preserved. it was essentially just a mound in a field. just because it's an old mayan building does not mean that it's an important or historically significant structure.

[Warpaladin]

I was watching a documentary where Rome is constructing a new engineering project and they have archaeologists to survey any possible historical artifacts as they dig and continue to build underground.

[Gheld]

We no longer need a stone pyramid for human sacrifices. But we do need stone for road beds. Taking it from the pyramid is not only cheaper but has less environmental impact than quarrying new stuff.

Win-win situation.

Maintaining historical buildings is only worthwhile as long as they can still be used for something practical. Otherwise you might as well just deem every building historical and watch the landscape get flooded with obsolete constructs

[Nadev]

Watch their country sink into the sea come the next "apocalypse".

[Kalis]

Watch their country sink into the sea come the next apocalypse.

When was the previous one?

[Nadev]

When was the previous one?

Forgot my quotations. Fixed.

[CaptainArlong]

We no longer need a stone pyramid for human sacrifices. But we do need stone for road beds. Taking it from the pyramid is not only cheaper but has less environmental impact than quarrying new stuff.

Win-win situation.

Maintaining historical buildings is only worthwhile as long as they can still be used for something practical. Otherwise you might as well just deem every building historical and watch the landscape get flooded with obsolete constructs

No, we don't need roads, but oil companies are preventing any other technologies that doesn't use oil for fuel from ever coming to be, so it makes it look like we do need roads.