Contractor Bulldozes Mayan Temple
Over the past 100 years countless archaeological sites have been destroyed to provide road fill for America’s growing transportation network. Sadly, this tradition appears to be alive and well in Belize where a contractor recently bulldozed a Mayan temple at a site known as Noh Mul (“Big Hill”) in order to provide fill for a road in a nearby village. Unlike the many restored and reconstructed Mayan temple sites in Mexico, the site of Noh Mul is still in its “natural” state and appears as little more than mounds upon the landscape covered with trees. Most tourists have no idea that this is what all Mayan sites looked like before they were restored to their former glory. Read more below:
Noh Mul. it’s name means the Big Hill but it’s not so big any more, this once towering and stout ceremonial center in San Jose/San Pablo has been whittled down to a narrow core by excavators and bulldozers. Whodunnit? Contractors who’re using the rich gravel and limestone content to fill roads in nearby Douglas Village.
Now, this was the main temple, the ceremonial center for Noh Mul, at about 20 metres among the tallest buildings in Northern Belize – and it’s not centuries old, it’s millennia, thousands of years old and the thought that it’s rich limestone bricks cut with stone tools in the BC era, the thought that this could be used for road fill is a manifest outrage and a particularly painful one for these Archeologists who were called out to the area today. We were there when they first arrived and got their initial emotional reaction:
Dr. Allan Moore – Archaeologist, Institute of Archaeology
“This is one of the largest bulding in Norther Belize. I am appalled! I was hoping that when I was driving up from the main San Juan road that it would not be this one but when I got closer I couldn’t believe it when I saw all the trucks. This is an incredible destruction.”Read the full story here: http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=25471
