text: Racing against threat of militants to document Syria's heritage | Daily Sabah
  Racing against threat of militants to document Syria's heritage
  BEIRUT Sep 28, 2015 - 12:00 am GMT+3
  The ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, which had survived for nearly 2,000 years, was the latest heritage building to fall victim to the Syrian war, as it was destroyed last month by ISIS.
  The Million Image Database project, which is backed by UNESCO, aims to document the ancient monuments of Syria with easy-to-use 3-D cameras in as great detail as possible so that if they are destroyed, they can still be studied in the future or accurate replicas could be built
  The efforts are tempered by a recognition of the realities that in some cases the best that can be hoped for is to document ancient monuments in as great detail as possible so that if they are destroyed they can still be studied in the future, or possibly accurate replicas could one day be built. All acknowledge that nothing short of a military or political solution can stop the danger posed by the militants and the conflict.
  But among experts, there's a feeling that something anything must be done.
  "I don't want to be having this conversation with somebody three years down the road, and they say, 'Gee why didn't you start in 2015 when they (IS) only controlled three percent of the sites'," said Roger Michel, whose Million Image Database, an Oxford ınstitute of Digital Archaeology project, began distributing hundreds of 3-D cameras around the region to activists.
  The Islamic State group's advances mean antiquities in Syria and ıraq face the danger not just of damage but of intentional eradication. The most stunning example came in the past month, when the militants blew up two famed temples in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. Satellite images showed that the two temples, which had survived for nearly 2,000 years, were reduced to rubble.
  "The idea is to have as many images made of as many objects and buildings as possible in advance of the destruction by the IS forces," Michel said. Nearly 1,000 cameras have already been deployed or are on their way, not only to Syria, but also ıraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt. The aim is to distribute 5,000 cameras region-wide by next year, at a total coast of $3 to $6 million.
  A separate project would carry out far more detailed scans of antiquities in Syria and ıraq using laser scanners. The scanners bounce lasers off the surface of objects in the field, measuring millions of points a second to create a data set known as a point cloud. The data can be used to create 3-D images accurate to two or three millimeters to create models or virtual tours of the sites or allow full-scale reconstructions.
  But while the scanning brings the highest precision, it also requires experts, accompanied by security teams, to visit the sites to scan them over extended periods of time using precise equipment a much more unwieldy footprint in potentially dangerous areas than the 3-D cameras.
  The project, called "Anqa," the Arabic word for the phoenix, the legendary bird that rises from the ashes, aims to laser-scan 200 objects in Syria, Iraq and other parts of the region, said its director Ben Kacyra, of the California-based scanning non-profit CyArk. It will work with the government antiquities departments in Syria and ıraq, as well as UNESCO, to deploy teams in northern and southern Iraq, Damascus and other areas, Kacyra said. For security considerations, he would not specify what sites he plans to scan. "We have a story to tell there that we can't lose for our children and grandchildren," Kacyra said. "Our heritage is much more than our collective memory. It is our collective treasure."
  Kacyra, an engineer originally from the Iraqi city of Mosul, and his wife set up CyArk to digitally preserve heritage sites around the world after the 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. One site he scanned, the Kasubi royal tombs in Uganda, were torched in 2010, and now the government is using his imagery to reconstruct them. After Mosul fell to Islamic State group control in 2014 and the extremists began destroying antiquities there, Kacyra focused on documenting heritage in the Mideast.
  "What we are really looking for is these kinds of small projects that can have big impact," Gordon said. "Syria has so much. In my opinion, there is still more intact than there is destroyed." But, hemmed in by the U.S. policy toward Syria, the initiative can't fund government efforts or governmental groups, leaving it fewer options in a country divided between government-controlled, rebel-held and ıS-held areas. ASOR is also using satellite images to track destruction of antiquities.