{"id":33323,"date":"2013-05-14T03:16:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T02:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/ancient-mayan-pyramid-destroyed-by-construction-company-in-belize\/33323\/"},"modified":"2013-05-14T03:16:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T02:16:00","slug":"ancient-mayan-pyramid-destroyed-by-construction-company-in-belize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/ancient-mayan-pyramid-destroyed-by-construction-company-in-belize\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Mayan pyramid destroyed by construction company in Belize"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The authorities reported on Monday that the company was using
\nbulldozers and backhoes to carry out the works, chipping away at
\nthe pyramid\u2019s sides until barely anything was left. Jaime Awe, the
\nhead of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, said the construction
\nhad been detected the previous week.<\/p>\n

The ceremonial center at what is known as the Nohmul complex is
\nestimated to be at least 2,300 years old and is considered to be
\nthe most important historical site in northern Belize, on the
\nborder with Mexico.<\/p>\n

“It’s a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the
\nignorance and the insensitivity … they were using this for road
\nfill,”<\/i> Awe told AP. “It’s like being punched in the stomach,
\nit’s just so horrendous.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Nohmul is located in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane
\nfield and its structures lacked the tell-tale signs of a restored
\ncultural site \u2014 like the evenly trimmed stone borders at the sides.
\nYet, Awe said this could not possibly have been an explanation for
\nhow the workers had managed not to take note of what they were
\ndoing. The pyramid is 100 feet (30 meters) tall, while the land
\naround it is flat, so making that kind of mistake is difficult to
\nimagine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It’s
\njust bloody laziness”<\/i>, Awe continued. “Just to realize that
\nthe ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these
\nbuildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the
\nstone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump
\nlines,”<\/i> he said. “To think that today we have modern
\nequipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but
\nthat this company would completely disregard that and completely
\ndestroyed this building. Why can’t these people just go and quarry
\nsomewhere that has no cultural significance? It’s
\nmind-boggling.”<\/i><\/p>\n

An investigation is underway by Belizean police, with criminal
\ncharges looking like a possibility. Although the Nohmul complex is
\nsituated on private land, the law says that any ruins or monuments
\nof pre-Hispanic origin are exempt from it and are under government
\nprotection.<\/p>\n

A community organization calling itself the Citizens Organized
\nfor Liberty through Action has condemned the demolition of the site
\nas “an obscene example of disrespect for the environment and
\nhistory.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Hundreds of Mayan ruins remain in Belize, which is largely
\ncovered with jungles and counts around 350,000 people among its
\npopulation. Although this is not the first case that such lack of
\nregard was employed in <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s sides until barely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}