Archeologists
find vast ancient city in Afghanistan
Posted By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted -41 sec ago (The Kingston Whig standard, Ontario, CA Aug.
7, 2008)
Centuries-old shards of pottery mingle with spent ammunition rounds
on a wind-swept mountainside in northern Afghanistan where French
archeologists believe they have found a vast ancient city.
For
years, villagers have dug the baked earth on the heights of Cheshme-Shafa
for pottery and coins to sell to antique smugglers. Tracts of
the site that locals call the "City of Infidels" look
like a battleground, scarred by craters.
But
now tribesmen dig angular trenches and preserve fragile walls,
working as labourers on an excavation atop a promontory. To the
north and east lies an undulating landscape of barren red-tinted
rock that was once the ancient kingdom of Bactria; to the south
a still-verdant valley that leads to the famed Buddhist ruins
at Bamiyan.
Roland
Besenval, director of the French Archeological Delegation in Afghanistan
and leading the excavation, is sanguine about his helpers' previous
harvesting of the site. "Generally the old looters make the
best diggers," he said with a shrug.
A
trip around the northern province of Balkh is like an odyssey
through the centuries, spanning the ancient Persian empire, the
conquests of Alexander the Great and the arrival of Islam. The
French mission has mapped some 135 sites of archeological interest
in the region, best known for the ancient trove found by a Soviet
archeologist in the 1970s.
The
Bactrian Hoard consisted of exquisite gold jewelry and ornaments
from graves of wealthy nomads, dated to the 1st century A. D.
It was concealed by its keepers in the vaults of the presidential
palace in Kabul from the Taliban regime and finally unlocked after
the militia's ouster.
The
treasure, currently on exhibition in the United States, demonstrates
the rich culture that once thrived here, blending influences from
the web of trails and trading routes known as the Silk Road, that
spread from Rome and Greece to the Far East and India.
But
deeper historical understanding of ancient Bactria has been stymied
by the recent decades of war and isolation that severely restricted
visits by archeologists.
"It's
a huge task because we are still facing the problem of looting,"
said Besenval, who first excavated in Afghanistan 36 years ago
and speaks the local language of Dari fluently. "We know
that objects are going to Pakistan and on to the international
market. It's very urgent work. If we don't do something now, it
will be too late."
Looting
was rife during the civil war of the early 1990s when Afghanistan
lurched into lawlessness. Locals say it subsided under the Taliban's
hardline
rule,
but the Islamists' fundamentalism took its own toll on Afghanistan's
cultural history. They destroyed the towering Buddha statues of
Bamiyan chiselled more than 1,500 years ago, and smashed hundreds
of statues in the national museum simply because they portrayed
the human form.
The
opening up of Afghanistan did little to curb the treasure hunters.
British author Rory Stewart, who made an extraordinary solo hike
across the country in 2002, wrote how poor tribesmen were systematically
pillaging the remains of a lost ancient city dating back to 12th
century around the towering minaret of Jam in western Afghanistan.
State
control is a little more pervasive in Balkh but still patchy.
The provincial culture authority says it has just 50 guards to
protect historical sites across an area nearly the size of New
Jersey.
Saleh
Mohammad Khaleeq, a local poet and historian serving as the chief
of the province's cultural department, said the guards ward off
looters, but concedes the only way to safeguard Afghanistan's
rich heritage is through public education.
"People
are so poor. They are just looking for ways to buy bread. We need
to open their minds as they don't know the value of their history.
We have to give them that knowledge and then they will protect
it," he said.
One
of the Afghan culture officials working at the Cheshm-e-Shafa
excavation was clearly anxious that media coverage could bring
unwanted attention to the site, where archeologists have uncovered
a two-metre-tall anvil-like stone believed to have been an altar
at a fire temple originating from the Persian Empire period around
the 6th century B. C.
"Hezb-e-Islami
and Taliban and other extremists might use explosives and blow
up this stone," said archeology department official Mohammed
Rahim Andarab.
Many
archeologists remain wary of working in Balkh as Islamic militancy
seeps into new regions of the country. Yet the sheer breadth of
history to be unearthed is enough to lure Besenval and his colleagues.
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