Tourist attacked by locals after climbing forbidden Mayan temple in Mexico
Tourist attacked by locals after climbing forbidden Mayan temple in Mexico
A German tourist was arrested and attacked by locals after he illegally scaled the side of the Temple of Kukulcan in Yucatan, Mexico — a popular landmark at spring equinox that has been named a UNESCO World Heritage site and is known as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
Summary
A German tourist was arrested and attacked after climbing the Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza, Mexico, during the spring equinox.
Video footage shows locals shouting insults and physically confronting the man as National Guard personnel detained him.
The temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, is off-limits to climbers due to preservation laws and safety concerns.
Violators face fines up to $16,000 and possible prison time.
The incident occurred amid a crowd of 8,000–9,000 visitors.
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You got to wonder how much damage that thing gets just being constantly exposed to the weather
Normally ruins like that have jungle right up to the edges or its partially buried.
At any point would it be worth trying to put some sort of protective coating on it like a type of historically accurate stucco to recreate what it looked like in the past?
No.
Restoring historical artefacts in a way that is sympathetic to its age is more or less impossible.
You're not protecting what's there, rather creating something new.
Well, in 500 years it may be destroyed anyways. Isn't it a little selfish to not try and preserve it in some form for future generations?
My point is, adding a protective coating would be the opposite of preserving it.
Yeah, I didn't mean that's the only thing that could possibly ever be done tiehr I'm not an archaeologist or whatever would be relevant.
Maybe it would be possible to just encase it is a giant glass cube, who knows. But is nothing the best thing to be doing? I'm just asking.
Yeah, I'm not an archaeologist either.
I've been to a few places where attempts to repair or actively preserve monuments have been made, it just never seems to go well.
We don't have skilled artisans of the techniques used, nor the workforce. Operating on a budget is kind of antithetical to building or maintaining monuments like this.
I was watching something about the NESS of brodgar recently. A fascinating Palaeolithic site completely buried. Excavations have been ongoing for several years, but now they're just going to re-bury the whole site so as to minimise any disruption. Most of the site has not yet been excavated. The thinking is, if you excavate it in 20 years time our tech will have advanced and more will be learned.
I'm just saying that steps taken to actively preserve something need to be very carefully considered and in almost all cases the solution is simply to not touch it.
Stucco is much more fragile and degrades rather quickly.
That's why it usually hasn't survived in these monuments and why it usually isn't restored, it would cost way too much on maintenance.