(Transcript from World News Radio)
This month, the self-proclaimed Islamic State released a video showing its destruction of artefacts in the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, in northern Iraq, before blowing up the site
The ruins of the city founded in the 13th century BC were one of the most famous archaeological sites in a country often described as the cradle of civilisation.
It was a brutal illustration of the rate of destruction of significant sites over the past decade, which is being described as 'unprecedented.'
And, as Rachael Hocking reports, it may have huge repercussions on the rebuilding of affected nations.
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The United Nations scientific and cultural agency has described the IS demolition of Nimrud as a war crime.
UNESCO's Giovanni Boccardi says there's sound legal reasons for the description.
"If you read the statute of the International Criminal Court, it is explained that the intentional destruction of religious or historical, cultural buildings is considered a war crime, unless it is justified on military basis. And clearly in this case there was absolutely no military justification for the blowing up of an archaeological site."
Dr Benjamin Isakhan from Deakin University in Melbourne says what happened to the sacred site at Nimrud comes in an era of unprecedented heritage destruction.
He's been mapping the destruction of heritage sites in Iraq since the US led invasion in 2003.
Dr Isakhan says what IS is doing to historic sites hasn't been seen in any other war in history
"What you see there is the capacity of a group like the Islamic State to destroy a 3,500 year old archaeological site in a single day. And this is a site that has stood firm for 3,500 years, that has withstood all of the different empires, all of the different wars. And yet in one single day the Islamic State are able to completely destroy a big section of that site."
The devastation has been described as heartbreaking by experts, who say areas under IS occupation are almost impossible to protect.
But satellite images mapping the destruction into databases can provide vital information to international bodies.
Dr Isakhan says not only does the information tell us where archaeological sites are, but it reveals patterns in history.
"It enables us to understand it, not only principally to understand what has occurred historically, but also to understand future conflict scenarios."
Dr Isakhan says more can be done to protect ancient ruins, such as creating systems to remove significant objects from museums when states are facing threat.
And while he says these sorts of projects are not more important than human lives, he says preservation affects a country's cultural identity.
"Because how do you rebuild the idea of the united and prosperous Iraq or a united Syria, when the collective history of the Syrian or Iraqi people is being so systematically destroyed."
UNESCO's Giovanni Boccardi says the biggest threat to preservation is not war, but looting, which he describes as "rampant".
He says it's happening in countries that are not at war, such as Cambodia.
Mr Boccardi says the illicit trafficking of cultural objects can be tackled on the demand side of the market, by trying to identify where that objects that leave occupied regions end up.
Archaeologist James Fraser says the onus is also on those in the safety of the west to shut that black market down.
"We're part of this story in the west. If we continue to buy these artefacts on the black market, that demand is driven by people like us buying them off the internet, or buying them through dealers, and that ultimately leads all the way back to the workmen with a spade, in the middle of nowhere in Iraq, digging these sites illicitly and destroying what we know."
But he says much more is lost by looting than just the objects themselves.
"While the destruction of Nimrud is an absolute travesty, the building that was destroyed - we know about it and we have documents of what sort of statues were there and the information has been recorded to an extent. The problem with looting is it goes on in sites we haven't excavated before or we haven't understood very thoroughly. People come in and rip through archaeological deposits to find objects that we will never know about, taking them from contexts we'll never understand and in that way we're not just losing the objects themselves but we're losing all the information they represent. And that's a greater loss."
UNESCO's Giovanni Boccardi says sites such as Nimrud are pivotal to our understanding of civilisation.
"This part of the world is not just any part of the world; we are in the heart of what was called by historians 'the fertile crescent,' at the foot of the Anatolian plateau which has seen the invention of agriculture, the invention of writing, the invention of the wheel, the first cities, the first legal systems. It is what is called the cradle of civilisation."
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