Cultural artifacts are at risk of destruction during war, but Ukrainian archivists, curators and librarians have been working to protect them during the war.
The Tailban destroyed this Buddha statue dating to the 6th century AD in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in March 2001. The photo on the left was taken in 1977.
AP Photo/Etsuro Kondo, (left photo) and Osamu Semba, both Asahi
From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban outlawed almost all forms of art while looting and destroying museums. With their resurgence, Australia must strengthen measures to stop trafficking of antiquities.
Tourists visit Persepolis, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, northeast of the Iranian city of Shiraz.
AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
Costanza Musu, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
When the loss of this heritage is used as a weapon of war, it represents a loss for the country affected as well as for humanity. It targets the memories, history and identity of a people.
Golden Iwan, Shrine of Fatima Masuma, built in the eighth century, is also a leading Shii seminary in Iran.
Kishwar Rizvi
Trump recently warned Iran that the US could target its cultural sites. Many of Iran’s cultural sites carry deep religious meaning for a global Shii community and such a threat risks alienating them.
Iraqi soldiers gather near the remains of wall panels and colossal statues of winged bulls that were destroyed by Islamic State militants in the Assyrian city of Nimrud, late last year.
Ari Jalal/Reuters
Islamic State has destroyed globally-significant sites in Iraq and Syria, but not as wanton acts of destruction. Instead, they are calculated political and religious attacks.
UNESCO-listed heritage site Machu Picchu attracts around 1,000 tourists a day.
Rodrigo Argenton/Wikipedia
Hand over your travel photos and help build digital 3D recreations of threatened heritage sites.
Entrance to the gate of Nimrod, destroyed by the IS group and digitally reconstructed as part of Project Mosul.
Model by ruimx from photos at projectmosul.org
Researchers are making 3D scans, architectural plans and detailed photographic records of cultural heritage sites around the world, knowing they could be destroyed at any time.
The temple of Baal Shamin in Palmyra, which has been destroyed by ISIS in Palmyra.
Bernard Gagnon
Barely a week after ISIS beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, the Syrian expert who devoted his life to the study of Palmyra, the group is reported to have destroyed a nearly 2,000-year-old temple dedicated to Baalshamin…
Professor of Anthropology and Geosciences, and Executive Director of the Center for Virtualizaiton and Applied Spatial Technologies (CVAST), University of South Florida