Scientists race to safeguard ancient relics that could be erased by war.
BEIRUT — Scientists are slipping 3-D cameras into Syria to local activists and residents to scan antiquities. A U.S.-funded project aims to provide local conservators with resources to help safeguard relics. Inside Syria, volunteers scramble to document damage to monuments and confirm what remains.
The rush is on to find creative and often high-tech ways to protect Syria’s millennialong cultural heritage in the face of the threat that much of it could be erased by the country’s war, now in its fifth year. Giving the drive new urgency, experts are desperate to stay a step ahead of the Islamic State group, which has ruthlessly destroyed and looted sites that fall into its hands as it spreads across Syria and neighboring Iraq.
The efforts are tempered by a recognition of the realities — that in some cases the best that can be hoped for is to document ancient monuments in as great detail as possible so that if they are destroyed they can still be studied in the future, or possibly accurate replicas could one day be built. All acknowledge that nothing short of a military or political solution can stop the danger posed by the militants and the conflict.
The campaigns are also fraught with risks. Getting supplies to activists on the ground can expose them to retribution from Islamic State militants or others suspicious of outside powers. As a result, the various efforts under way are mostly cloaked in secrecy, with their organizers reluctant to give specifics on their activities for fear of endangering those on the ground.
But among experts, there’s a feeling that something — anything — must be done.
“I don’t want to be having this conversation with somebody three years down the road, and they say, ‘Gee why didn’t you start in 2015 when they (the Islamic State) only controlled 3 percent of the sites,’ ” said Roger Michel, whose Million Image Database, an Oxford Institute of Digital Archaeology project, began distributing hundreds of 3-D cameras around the region to activists.
Historical sites have been damaged constantly since the war began, struck by shelling and government air strikes or exposed to rampant looting. Syrian government officials already say they have moved some 300,000 artifacts from around the country to safe places over recent years, including from Islamic Statecontrolled areas.
The Islamic State group’s advances mean antiquities in Syria and Iraq face the danger not just of damage but of intentional eradication. The most stunning example came in the past month, when the militants blew up two famed temples in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. Satellite images showed that the two temples, which had survived for nearly 2,000 years, were reduced to rubble.