ISIS is destroying ancient artifacts

ISIS is destroying ancient artifacts in Syria.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-fighters-destroy-antiquities-Iraq-video.html

Some people argue that ancient artifacts, including ancient coins, belong in the territory where they were produced or found. There is evidence this is not always a good idea.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

WHY? I'm sorry, but I just don't get the mentality. Even the insane can appreciate antiquities and their beauty.

 

So sad. How can the world combat such insanity?

 

here's an article from a couple years ago...

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...s-are-intent-on-destroying-cultural-artifacts

 

Yup, they've been doing that for a while now...

 

This makes me sick.

 

Often, putting in place your ideology requires destroying the previous ones. These people are fanatics, bent on the total destruction of existing civilization.

 

This pic has been trending twitter for a while. I really started to cry when I saw this pic

 

I know their logic, but again I ask why? Are they so ignorant? Do they have no sense of history? I can ask questions which I fear have no answers. It looks like the images I've seen of the night the Nazi's burned all the books with which they didn't agree. So sad.

 

Fear of the Other.

 

Sadly, EVERY civilization has done this at some point, including us. The Puritans who first came here called the indigenous Indians savages and destroyed their artifacts also, including totems using their religion as an excuse for imposing their own on them. So too the Spanish, French and English. It's awfully hard to be tolerant when one sees this happening. Before we can help others we must first help ourselves.

 

In this case they are destroying relics of ancient Assyria... Mesopotamian polytheism has not really been a player in the Abrahamic fighting...

 

Conan the Barbarian must be rolling in his grave.

 

You're looking for an erudite explanation of thuggery? It doesn't matter whose descendents they are. They are a gang. They are no different than the gangs we have in our inner cities. They are motivated by fear and attempt to rule by fear.

 

Collectors of ancient coins and all lovers of history and archaeology have one thing in common: we revel in ideas, whether we agree with them or not. We are the quintessential multiculturalists. That's why we find it incomprehensible that someone should destroy their own cultural heritage.

But Tommy is right - they are not so different from us. I don't say that to condone their actions in any way, but if we merely look upon their actions with condemnation, we've missed an important lesson for ourselves.

We don't even need to go back in time to see the paranoia in our own thinking. The NSA is spying on everyone and the police have run amok. We are a paranoid species, driven by fear of the Other. Our survival depends on transcending that paranoia, but I'm not at all certain we will succeed. In fact, I doubt it.

 

The reports about what those IS "fighters" have done or are doing to those objects are saddening. (And what they do in other regards is even worse.) Problem is, what if soldiers invade, in the name of freedom, a country and steal lots of ancient objects, or if the locals do the same thing in such a phase? They will do it for the money, sure, so they are unlikely to destroy what they stole, but the objects are still not public any more. Another question is, who gets to decide whether cultural heritage can be "exported"? The Moroccan government, just as an example, is unlike to OK such measures, Morocco is politically quite stable. Now of course the latter may change, but is it really legitimate to say that - because the situation may become troublesome one day - exports should now be allowed?

Christian

 

I live in Michigan, When I was a teenager, me and some of my friends went to the DIA ( Detroit Institute Of Arts ) to see king Tutankhamun, or king tut, along some other mummies, now, after Egypt wanted all of the artifacts back from around the world, we all miss out on the history.... And we all know what happen in the up-rise of Egypt...

 

Maybe I am over-simplifying, but to me what is happening in the Middle East today is pure evil including the destruction of artifacts. But, then again, I am a simple man.

 

Not much different then Egypt, then destroyed lots of their artifacts there too....

 

Its the youth gone wild ..