ISIS’ archaeological destruction creates a new Dark Age

Archaeologists call it a new Dark Age.  

The barbarians of the Islamic State, or ISIS, and its ancillary hordes are pulverizing and plundering millennia-old heritage sites, museums, and ancient artwork across Syria and Iraq. A Minnesota-sized chunk of the cradle of civilization is now occupied or under siege by these religious ultra-fundamentalists intent on forging an Islamic caliphate, governed solely by religious law. A proclaimed mission of ISIS is to “purify’’ areas under its control of carved images, non-Islamic texts, and architecture and monuments belonging to other ages and other faiths. The movement also destroys mosques, shrines, and holy structures erected by Muslims, past and present, whom they deem apostate or less righteous than themselves, especially the loathed Shiites.

The wonders daily assaulted by bulldozers, jackhammers, high-explosives, and homely pickaxes belong to Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine times, as well as to lesser-known recesses of the Bronze and Iron ages.