Tragedy and Hope at Bamiyan

An update from BBC about the ongoing archaeological work to learn what remains to be learned about the ancient Buddhist site at Bamiyan. The video suggests a number of interesting points:

1. The loss of the great statues is a cultural tragedy of incalculable proportions. This is reason enough to continue to resist the persistent attempts of the Taliban to return to influence in Afghanistan.
2. The hopefulness stems from two points: the opening up of caves containing the remains of what were beautiful oil paintings on Buddhist themes, and the possibility of a large--1000 feet long--reclining Buddha still buried under the accumulated river silt at the site. The paintings are possibly the world's oldest oil paintings.
3. The reporter stresses how the area was in ancient times at a convergence of major trade routes which joined the Roman world with the Indian and the Chinese worlds. We don't yet appreciate how much commerce, in the broadest sense, there existed between ancient cultures.
4. The video shows a very green valley stretching out before the Bamiyan cliff face. Here is another broken stereotype of Afghanistan as a sort of desert land. No place on earth is without its natural beauties; therefore, no place on earth that folks call home can be considered God-forsaken.