The authorities reported on Monday that the company was using bulldozers and backhoes to carry out the works, chipping away at the pyramid’s sides until barely anything was left. Jaime Awe, the head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, said the construction had been detected the previous week.The ceremonial center at what is known as the Nohmul complex is estimated to be at least 2,300 years old and is considered to be the most important historical site in northern Belize, on the border with Mexico.”It’s a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity … they were using this for road fill,” Awe told AP. “It’s like being punched in the stomach, it’s just so horrendous.”Nohmul is located in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field and its structures lacked the tell-tale signs of a restored cultural site – like the evenly trimmed stone borders at the sides. Yet, Awe said this could not possibly have been an explanation for how the workers had managed not to take note of what they were doing. The pyramid is 100 feet (30 meters) tall, while the land around it is flat, so making that kind of mistake is difficult to imagine. ”These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It’s just bloody laziness”, Awe continued. “Just to realize that the ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these buildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the stone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump lines,” he said. “To think that today we have modern equipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but that this company would completely disregard that and completely destroyed this building. Why can’t these people just go and quarry somewhere that has no cultural significance? It’s mind-boggling.”An investigation is underway by Belizean police, with criminal charges looking like a possibility. Although the Nohmul complex is situated on private land, the law says that any ruins or monuments of pre-Hispanic origin are exempt from it and are under government protection.A community organization calling itself the Citizens Organized for Liberty through Action has condemned the demolition of the site as “an obscene example of disrespect for the environment and history.”Hundreds of Mayan ruins remain in Belize, which is largely covered with jungles and counts around 350,000 people among its population. Although this is not the first case that such lack of regard was employed in Belize, Nohmul is among the largest pyramids ruined by such activities.Many scientists spoke out against what happened. Arlen Chase, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida, told AP that “Archaeologists are disturbed when such things occur, but there is only a very limited infrastructure in Belize that can be applied to cultural heritage management.”The 70’s and 80’s saw much exploration take place around the Nohmul area, but it is important to understand that more knowledge could still be gained, as scientists say. And such instances of lazy negligence and destruction of Mayan cultural heritage aren’t limited only to Belize. The remnants of the great Mayan nation are under threat in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras as well. Francisco Estrada-Belli, a professor of anthropology at Tulane University, said “I don’t think I am exaggerating if I say that every day a Maya mound is being destroyed for construction in one of the countries where the Maya lived.” … Read More
‘Missing’ rune stone turns up near Stockholm
A Viking-era rune stone has been “rediscovered” near Vaxholm in the Stockholm archipelago after a group of university students stumbled across the historic rock that had been hiding in plain sight for nearly 300 years. … Read More
USA’s historie er disneyficeret
Den kontroversielle filminstruktør Oliver Stone har fået nok af ’disneyficeringen’ af amerikansk historieskrivning. Nu har han lavet sin egen tv-serie – med alle de rædselshistorier, som ignoreres i det officielle ’skønmaleri’ … Read More
Chasing Amanda Bynes: Is it ethical for outlets to pursue interviews with a damaged star?
A Britney Spears-sized vacuum in our culture demands to be filled.Britney Spears, in 2007 and early 2008, was notable not merely for a particular sort of aimless wandering through Los Angeles but an alternately hostile and coddling relationship with the press. She’d alternately romance a paparazzo and scream at the cameras who followed her around. An Allure magazine cover from the period, for which Spears consented to be photographed but interviewed, said it all: “Britney Spears Tells Us Nothing — and Everything.”Spears and the paparazzi, as documented in Rolling Stone and the Atlantic, had a symbiotic relationship. She rejected and sought their attention, all at once, on days-long, caffeinated drives to nowhere. But by now, with a return to apparent health and two albums and a season of TV under her belt, Spears is no longer the object of prurient interest she’d once been.Continue Reading… … Read More
FDA secretly retests 100 different drugs after testing company admits its work was all fraudulent
On the morning of May 3, 2010, three agents of the Food and Drug Administration descended upon the Houston office of Cetero Research, a firm that conducted research for drug companies worldwide. Lead agent Patrick Stone, now retired from the FDA, had visited the Houston lab many times over the…
Kid Rock: I’m “embarrassed to be a Republican”
Musician Kid Rock may have rallied support for Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign run, but lately he is at odds with Republicans. He recently told Rolling Stone that “Athletes and musicians make astronomical amounts of money.”"People get paid $100 million to throw a baseball! Shouldn’t we all take less and pass some of that money onto others? Think about firefighters, teachers and policemen. We should celebrate people that are intellectually smart and trying to make this world a better place.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Oliver Stone and the Curve of the Ball
Oliver Stone Pt.2: There are moments in history, from Wallace to Kennedy, where it could have gone another way … Read More
