Can We Digitize History Before ISIS Destroys it?

[KoKo]

With ISIS waging war against the Middle East’s ancient monuments, can archaeologists capture digital renderings of the sites before it’s too late?

This past June, 14 years after the Taliban bombed Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddha statues, a Chinese couple created life-sized holograms of the ancient artifacts and projected them back into their cliffside home.

Now, archaeologists hope that the Middle East’s historical sites can be captured with 3-D photography, printed out and reassembled if they’re ever destroyed.

As ancient sites across Syria and Iraq crumble under bombs and mortar from the region’s battles, archaeologists and technologists are racing to be able to one day reproduce them. In the coming months, they will be distributing thousands of low-cost, high-quality 3D cameras across the Middle East that will hopefully capture these ancient sites before they disappear.

The Institute for Digital Archaeology, a joint venture between Oxford and Harvard Universities, is spearheading a $2.3 million project to digitally preserve the world’s most treasured sites.

Once one of Syria’s top tourist attractions, the ancient city of Palmyra has been turned into a battleground by ISIS’s forces. Just as the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas, the jihadists have been on a culturally destructive rampage. Earlier this year, militants destroyed priceless statues in Mosul’s museum and bulldozed the 3,000-year-old city of Nimrud, both in Iraq. Now, with news that the Baal Shamin temple in the ancient site of Palmyra was destroyed by militants in late August, the project has become increasingly urgent.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/02/can-we-digitize-history-before-isis-destroys-it.html

[potone]

1. I know that they're madly working to do it.

And it certainly is a good idea, but it won't make up for the destruction of ancient monuments and artworks that have survived for millennia.