One of the oldest and most famous Mayan pyramids has been destroyed by a construction company in Belize, while digging for crushed rock for a road they were building.
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
This article originally appeared on : RT