Latest news with #BénédictedeMontlaur
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
100 new structures from Peruvian Chachapoya civilization found in Andes
World Monuments Fund (WMF) announced a monumental discovery at Gran Pajatén, one of Peru's most significant archaeological sites for its exceptional architecture from the Chachapoya civilization. In the 1960s, the Rio Abiseo National Park, a UNESCO Mixed World Heritage Site, quickly became known as one of the most remarkable surviving Chachapoya sites in the country. The complex included 26 ceremonial buildings decorated with stone mosaics depicting human figures, high-relief friezes, and more. Recently, researchers identified and documented more than 100 previously unknown archaeological structures. Described as a 'milestone,' the buildings have advanced archaeologists' understanding of their settlement organization, architecture, and regional influence, according to a press release. Earlier research unearthed the site, but much remained hidden beneath dense vegetation since the 1960s, shrouding the complex's chronology and scope in mystery. However, advanced technology, including aerial and manual LiDAR scanning, photogrammetry, topographic registration, and technomorphological analysis, enabled archaeologists to bring an unprecedented view of the Gran Pajatén to the surface without damaging the delicate ecosystem that holds it. 'What makes this moment so meaningful is not only the scale of what's been uncovered, but how we were able to do it,' Bénédicte de Montlaur said, President and CEO of World Monuments Fund. 'By using advanced technology, our team gathered extraordinary visual and scientific documentation that brings Gran Pajatén to life—all while preserving its delicate environment. Though the site remains out of reach for most, these tools will allow us to share its stories widely through thoughtful, immersive digital storytelling. 'This discovery radically expands our understanding of Gran Pajatén and raises new questions about the site's role in the Chachapoya world. Evidence now confirms that it is not an isolated complex but part of an articulated network of pre-Hispanic settlements from different periods,' Juan Pablo de la Puente Brunke, Executive Director of WMF in Peru, continued in a press release. As the age of Gran Pajatén remained elusive, archaeologists confirmed that it dated earlier than they thought, the 14th century. The soil revealed an even earlier use of the site. Furthermore, aside from a 'commanding view' of the cloud forest nearby, a nearby network of roads suggested an organized and well-connected territory. Known as 'the people of the cloud forest,' the Chachapoya civilization developed between the seventh and sixteenth centuries in the northeastern Andes of Peru. They settled about 6,561-9,842 feet above sea level. Often in hard-to-reach locations, they built sophisticated urban centers, ceremonial platforms, cliffside burial structures, and agricultural terraces. They demonstrated a 'distinctive' architectural and artistic language, as their unique circular buildings, geometric friezes, and highly decorated cliffside burials reflect. Though they successfully warded off the Inca superpower, they eventually were incorporated before the arrival of the Spanish. A free exhibition at the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Peru, on view from May 21 to June 18, offers visitors an opportunity to explore the Chachapoya culture in Peru and learn more about WMF's recent discoveries, the press release concludes.
Hindustan Times
03-05-2025
- Hindustan Times
India, Angola, Peru and the Moon: See who's on the endangered heritage sites list
If you're watching the full moon set behind the Taj Mahal, you're likely looking at two endangered heritage sites in one frame. The Sea of Tranquility on the moon recently became the first off-world site to make it to the list of most-endangered monuments, released every two years by the American NGO World Monuments Fund (WMF). The Taj Mahal, incidentally, was on the first such list, in 1996. Over nearly three decades, WMF has highlighted heritage sites at risk from factors such as excessive tourism, conflicts and wars, natural disasters, and climate change. The first list featured 100 sites, drawn from public nominations that were then vetted by an expert panel. The last list before this year's featured 25 sites, including Kolkata's Tiretta Bazaar, India's original Chinatown. Once a list is released, WMF collaborates with local governments and organisations to help raise funding, and to design targeted conservation programmes, for the monuments. In 2023, for instance, a Watch Day was organised in this manner at Tiretta Bazaar. It featured traditional Chinese dragon dances, lantern-making workshops and heritage walks. Celebrations culminated in a presentation at the historic Nam Soon temple, the result of a four-month study titled Know Your Cheenapara (Chinatown). Two Indian sites have made the list this year. In all, 25 have been added, including the one on the Moon. What threatens the most unusual of these? What will it take to protect them? The Sea of Tranquility There is, famously, a flagpole and a boot print here, dating to the earliest Moon landings. Because of its unusually flat surface, this plain has served as the landing pad for manned missions, rovers and landing modules over more than 50 years. So, there are also another 104 artefacts strewn about. These range from discarded equipment and human waste to a family photo and a tiny replica of an astronaut, placed there as a tribute to the lives lost in this quest. Now, with travel into space growing, and plans for tourism in Low Earth Orbit as well as construction on the moon, WMF is arguing that the Sea of Tranquility needs to be protected from incursions, souvenir-gathering and theft. 'The Moon is included on the Watch to reflect the urgent need to recognise and preserve the artifacts that testify to humanity's first steps beyond Earth,' WMF president and CEO Bénédicte de Montlaur said in a statement. 'Items… face mounting risks amidst accelerating lunar activities, undertaken without adequate preservation protocols.' Hamirsar Lake System, Bhuj, India Water is power, in a desert. It is prestige. And, of course, it is life. For all these reasons, nearly 500 years ago, a king in Kutch named Rao Khengarji commissioned a grand water-harvesting project. At the heart of it was the giant manmade Hamirsar Lake, 28 acres in area. Around it was a network of canals, stepwells and secondary reservoirs. The water system was designed to capture and capitalise on any rain that fell across a 35-sq-km area. And it did. Rao Khengarji lived to see visitors marvel at these expanses of shimmering water at the heart of the otherwise-arid walled city of Bhuj. 'As the city continues to change and expand, it urgently needs to invest in its historic water infrastructure, to build a strong and resilient community through culture-based climate action,' says Jigna Desai, who heads the Centre for Heritage Conservation at CEPT (Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology) University in Ahmedabad. She and colleague Jayashree Bardhan crafted the nomination for this site. Musi River Historic Buildings, Hyderabad, India The Musi River weaves through Hyderabad's historic city centre, through the premises of the high court, state central library and Osmania hospital, among other sites. It has been so encroached upon that it often causes flooding, inundating the basement of the hospital, for instance, with absurd regularity. In recent years, growing pollution from industrial effluents has made the water corrosive. This is affecting the structures that line its banks, most notably the hospital. Completed in 1925, Osmania General Hospital, with its many decorative domes, elaborate arches and once-striking white limestone and lime plaster exterior, is a historic example of Indo-Saracenic design. Now ravaged by time, poor maintenance and the frequent flooding, it is still in use. The Telangana government has yo-yoed in recent times between demolishing it and preserving the building as a heritage monument. The Waru Waru agricultural system, Peru This remarkable feat of engineering and adaptation dates to about 300 BCE. It consists of raised fields in the floodplains of Lake Titicaca that still grow potatoes and quinoa, and are still fed by ancient irrigation channels that form giant geometric patterns in the land. The raised cultivation beds still help protect fields from floods and frost. Efficient water management allows for greater crop diversity. But the system is now under threat from modernisation and climate change. Successive years of drought are causing families to migrate to cities, leaving their Waru Waru fields behind. Modern machinery and intensive livestock farming have caused disruptions too. There is concern within the community that the practises used to tend to such fields, for thousands of years, are being forgotten. WMF, in its citation, has announced plans to work with the local Suma Yapu Aymara indigenous association and the Regional Cultural Office of Puno, to preserve a system that represents ancient knowledge and potentially offers sustainable solutions, amid the climate crisis. Occaneechi aka Great Trading Path, USA This trade route started out as a group of minor footpaths through the hills of North Carolina's Piedmont region, in the 1600s. It was worn into the ground by members of indigenous tribes such as the Occaneechi and others of the Siouan language family. They prospered as middlemen in the fur and deerskin trade, doing business with colonial newcomers at the time. At its fullest extent, the Path stretched more than 400 km, from present-day Petersburg, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina. It then split into two and extended through South Carolina. Over time, paved roads, railways and highways appeared along the route. The segments of the path that remain intact hold sacred sites where Native American powwows (gatherings that involved dancing, singing and feasting) and religious ceremonies were once held. The listing by World Monuments Fund could help protect what's left of the ancient highway and the sacred sites along it from destruction and erasure, Dr Crystal Cavalier-Keck, an activist and a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, has said in interviews. Cinema Studio Namibe, Angola In the port city of Moçâmedes, Angola, is a cinema hall of soaring arches, designed to look like a domed spaceship or a giant, otherworldly tree. Construction on the structure was halted 50 years ago, and what was built is now slowly decaying. Cinema Studio Namibe was designed by the Portuguese architect José Botelho Pereira, and is an early example of tropical Modernist architecture. The structure is meant to represent is the primeval Welwitschia plant endemic to the Namib desert. In its decay, the structure echoes the recent history of Angola — construction began in 1973 and had to be halted two years later, amid a Civil War that broke out then and raged on for about three decades. The Provincial Government of Namibe has classified the cinema hall as a piece of historical and cultural heritage. There are plans to conserve it with help from corporate sponsors.
Ammon
30-01-2025
- Ammon
Moon added to list of threatened cultural sites for first time
Ammon News - The moon has been placed on a list of threatened heritage sites, owing to fears of potential looting and destruction caused by planned commercial trips. The watchlist of the World Monuments Fund (WMF) usually includes vulnerable cultural sites on Earth. This year's selection – the first since 2022 – includes Qhapaq Ñan, a pre-Hispanic Andean road system. Antakya in Turkey and the Noto peninsula in Japan, which were damaged by earthquakes, also made the list. Bénédicte de Montlaur, the president and chief executive of WMF, said the moon was included among the 25 sites because of 'mounting risks amidst accelerating lunar activities', which were, in the WMF's opinion, 'undertaken without adequate preservation protocols'. SpaceX launched two lunar landers on Wednesday to conduct research for future missions. Only five countries – the US, China, India, Japan and the former Soviet Union – have successfully landed vehicles on the moon since the 1960s. Private trips to the lunar surface are expected after Nasa's Artemis III mission, scheduled for mid-2027, makes the first crewed touchdown since the early 1970s. These visits and other government-funded missions are the main cause for concern for the WMF. There is particular anxiety about tourists disturbing sites such as the footprints left by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. 'For the first time, the moon is included … to reflect the urgent need to recognise and preserve the artefacts that testify to humanity's first steps beyond Earth – a defining moment in our shared history,' Montlaur said. 'Items such as the camera that captured the televised moon landing; a memorial disk left by astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin; and hundreds of other objects are emblematic of this legacy … the inclusion of the moon underscores the universal need for proactive and cooperative strategies to protect heritage – whether on Earth or beyond – that reflect and safeguard our collective narrative.' Montlaur told the Art Newspaper that amid a new era of space exploration, it was important to establish international mechanisms to protect the moon's cultural landscape. 'Safeguarding lunar heritage will prevent damage from accelerating private and governmental activities in space, ensuring these artefacts endure for future generations,' she said. The vast majority of the list is made up of sites that are either in conflict zones, such as Ukraine and Gaza, or at risk from the climate crisis. The Swahili coast of Africa, which includes sites such as Lamu Old Town, Kenya; Fort Jesus, Kenya is listed, as is the Island of Mozambique, which is under threat from coastal erosion. The WMF has also added 'Gaza's historic urban fabric', which has been devastated by the war with Israel. There are also sites the organisation thinks could benefit from more sustainable tourism, such as the Orthodox monasteries of Drino Valley in Albania, and it flags that overcrowding at other sites, such as China's Buddhist grotto sites Maijishan and Yungang, is putting them at risk. The list in 2022 featured prehistoric cave paintings of Monte Alegre state park in the Brazilian Amazon, the Aztec ruins of Teotihuacán in Mexico and the pre-Columbian archaeological site Garcia Pasture in Texas. The Guardian
