Current Archaeological Activity in Afghanistan

When I hear the word Taliban my hardwired neural response has brought up images of terrorists, Osama Bin Laden, and Afghanistan catalogued from National Geographic articles, James Michener’s words, and old news clips. I hadn’t thought about the huge Buddha statues that they destroyed since before the U.S. initiated a regime change, but I haven’t forgotten about it. I remember watching the reports about the Buddhas in the Hindu Kush being blown up and feeling a deep sense of despair, even though I am not Buddhist.
It seems that there are plans being made to sort through the broken pieces to reconstruct the Buddha of Bamiyan from the many pieces (check out this article at Discover Magazine). Apparently, some researchers were able to make a 3-D model of the Buddha by using the collective data of digital photographs. Another group is analyzing the distribution of specific materials used to construct different parts of the statue with the hope that this information might help to fit the pieces together precisely how they were to before the TNT.
The article also mentions that it is likely that a statue of a Sleeping Buddha is located nearby, just waiting to be excavated. It’s kind of ironic that this Buddha is safe (if it still exists) due to the Taliban’s own actions. If further excavation had been allowed in 1979, that Buddha might have been destroyed as well. It will be interesting to see how these archaological projects develop. I think that it would be cool if they could rebuild the Buddha of Bamiyan from the sum of its parts.
This article also reminds me of the Buddha of Leshan story, which any JET will recall reading and repeating to their students, possibly for the speech contest, if they have used the New Horizon textbooks in their Chugakko. That story was one of the rare few which I didn’t mind reading aloud 3 times in a row, unlike the one about the aincent tree narating its memory of seeing a little girl and boy die from radiation poisoning at the end of WWII. It is a powerful story, but quite painful in a different sort of way to hear 20 times in a row, narrated by student after student in the same theatrical style.