Mes Aynak
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عينک د تامبې کان Mes Aynak |
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| Coordinates | 34 ° 24 ' N , 69 ° 22' E | ||
| Basic data | |||
| Country | Afghanistan | ||
| Lugar | |||
| District | Mohammed Agha | ||
| ISO 3166-2 | AF-LOG | ||
| height | 2120 m | ||
 Remains of the Kafiriat Tepe monastery, Mes Aynak
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Mes Aynak ( Dari : copper spring, copper shaft) is a place 40 kilometers southeast of Kabul in the Mohammed Agha district of the Afghan province of Lugar .
Mes Aynak was a sprawling Buddhist settlement from the late Kushana period to the late Shahi period (2nd to 9th centuries) . The settlement consisted of several ornate monasteries with stupas and hundreds of Buddha statues as well as residential and commercial buildings. Remains of a prehistoric settlement from the Bronze Age have been discovered below the Buddhist monastery ruins .
Mes Aynak is also home to one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the world. The Afghan government has awarded the 2007/08 prospecting rights to the Chinese mining company China Metallurgical Group (MCC), which offered $ 3.5 billion for them. Since the historical monastery complex is to give way completely to the open copper mine , the Afghan Mining Minister Mohammed Ibrahim Adel agreed with the MCC to carry out archaeological rescue excavations with the involvement of the National Institute for Archeology of Afghanistan. The excavations in Mes Aynak, which are being carried out with international support, began in 2009. They should be completed after three years, but are currently continuing (as of August 2013).
In connection with increasing international coverage of the endangered historical cultural site, the Afghan government postponed the start of the copper mine to 2014.
The historical settlements
Archaeological evidence suggests that the Mes Aynak region was first settled during the Bronze Age. The extensive copper deposits of Mes Aynak were already known back then, as evidenced by a Bronze Age copper mine discovered during excavations. Advances in metalworking had made copper a raw material required for the production of bronze alloys.
Another settlement was for the period from the late Kushan be detected -Reich to late Shahi rule (to 9th century 2.). During this period there was an extensive Buddhist settlement in Mes Aynak, which included several separate monastery complexes. In addition to the previously documented monasteries “Kafiriat Tepe” and “Gol Hamid”, there should have been at least two other facilities. Without the monastic tradition of these monasteries being able to be identified so far, finds of stone reliefs by Bodhisattvas like Avalokiteshvara indicate one of the precursor schools of Mahayana Buddhism.
The decline of the settlement, which also functioned as a trading center, is likely to have begun in the 8th century at the latest, when Islam slowly asserted itself in what is now Afghanistan as a result of the invasion of the Muslim Arabs . It is possible that the settlement was not finally abandoned until the 13th century. The historic Buddhist monastery complex, which lies on a hill at an altitude of 2,400 meters and covers a total of one and a half square kilometers, was rediscovered in 1963. Several geological exploration projects in the following years provided further evidence of the Buddhist monastery ruins. When more and more Buddhist artefacts appeared in the capital Kabul in the course of illegal robbery excavations from 2004 , the National Institute for Archeology of Afghanistan became aware of the historical cultural heritage in Mes Aynak.
From the Buddhist monastery complex in Mes Aynak, in addition to the remains of buildings, individual coins (the oldest from the Kushana ruler Kanischka ), ceramics, wall paintings, rock reliefs and slate and clay sculptures in the Graeco-Buddhist Gandhāra style have been preserved. The cultural and historical significance of the complex corresponds roughly to that of the Hadda site and the monastery complex in Bamiyan . All three Buddhist sites in what is now Afghanistan were created around the same time as Buddhism spread through the region along the Silk Road to Central Asia and China.
Planned open cast copper mine and rescue excavations
China is the world's largest buyer of refined copper. Since domestic stocks are no longer sufficient, Chinese companies are increasingly investing in undeveloped copper deposits in the face of rapidly growing demand. In November 2007, after two years of negotiations, the China Metallurgical Group (MCC) was awarded the mining rights to the copper deposits in Mes Aynak for 3.5 billion dollars. The contract period is 30 years. It is the largest foreign investment project in Afghan history . The MCC puts the volume of the copper deposit in Mes Aynak at around 11 million tons of copper with a total value of tens of billions of dollars. The MCC plans to build new roads, a railway line and a 400-megawatt power plant for copper mining.
The planned open cast copper mine threatens the historical cultural sites. In the wake of press reports of the impending destruction of Mes Aynak, in which the MCC was compared to the destroyers of the Buddha statues in Bamiyan , the MCC approved plans for a rescue excavation. As part of the rescue excavation, which began in 2009 and is being carried out by a team of 16 archaeologists under the direction of the "Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan" (DAFA) and financially supported by several states and institutions such as the World Bank , as many artefacts as possible are to be saved and quickly be transported away. The excavation project was the subject of international meetings of geologists, mining engineers, archaeologists and development experts (e.g. in Washington, DC , 2012).
A film project also contributed to the international attention that the threatened Afghan cultural site has attracted since 2007. The documentary film Die Buddhas von Mes Aynak (The Buddhas of Mes Aynak) by the American filmmaker Brent E. Huffman , which was completed in 2013, tells the story of the excavation site and describes the precarious situation in which the planned copper mine has brought archaeologists, Chinese workers and locals. The film shows the planned open pit copper mine and the rescue excavation from the point of view of various archaeologists and a manager of the MCC. In the film, member of the DAFA team Philippe Marquis speaks of the fact that so far only ten percent of the existing artifacts could have been secured and that one An excavation project lasting at least ten years is required in order to be able to uncover and document a large part of the still-hidden buildings and art treasures.
In July 2013, Wahidullah Shahrani, Adel's successor as Mining Minister, was disappointed about the delay of the project by the Chinese contractors. In view of the poor security situation in the region and the Taliban's high demands for protection money, the MCC no longer considers the treaty with Afghanistan to be profitable and wants to renegotiate it.
Photo gallery of the archaeological excavation site (2011)
Stupa, Mes Aynak
Historic monastery complex of Mes Aynak
Mes Aynak monastery complex, northern view
Historic monastery complex of Mes Aynak
Panoramic view of the monastery complex
Excavation site at the top, Mes Aynak
Excavation site at the top, Mes Aynak
Digging forces at the summit
Excavation site on the eastern slope
Excavation sites on the eastern slope
Web links
- Joachim Hoelzgen: Raw material boom: Coal children toil for the upswing in Afghanistan , Spiegel Online, June 15, 2009
- Andrew Lawler: Chinese mining threatens cultural sites , Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 14, 2012
- New excavations in Afganistan: Mes Aynak (PDF; 4.1 MB), exhibition catalog of the National Museum Afghanistan , Kabul 2011 (English)
- Mes Aynak , website of the Global Heritage Network (English)
- German Camera Productions , production company of The Buddhas of Mes Aynak (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ New excavations in Afghanistan: Mes Aynak ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.1 MB), National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul 2011, p. 5
- ↑ Only the undeveloped copper deposits of Ojuu Tolgoi in southern Mongolia (31 million tons), Reko Diq in Pakistan (24 million tons) and Tampakan in the Philippines (13 million tons) are said to be larger than the 11 million tons of copper Estimated undeveloped deposits of Mes Aynak ( Strategic Report , July / August 2009 (PDF; 111 kB). Metals Economics Group, Halifax, Nova Scotia 2009, p. 17).
- ^ A b Andrew Lawler: Chinese mining threatens cultural sites , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 14, 2012
- ↑ The dream of Aynak in Der Spiegel 52/2009, pages 120 to 122
- ↑ New excavations in Afghanistan: Mes Aynak ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.1 MB), National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul 2011, p. 6
- ↑ New excavations in Afghanistan: Mes Aynak ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.1 MB), National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul 2011, p. 10
- ↑ New excavations in Afghanistan: Mes Aynak ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.1 MB), National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul 2011, p. 4
- ↑ New excavations in Afghanistan: Mes Aynak ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.1 MB), National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul 2011, p. 23
- ↑ The World Copper Factbook 2012 . International Copper Study Group, Lisbon 2012, p. 30
- ↑ Andrew Lawler: The Buddha and the copper , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 6, 2010
- ↑ Raw materials report (PDF; 1.8 MB), 4th volume, issue 23, November 26, 2007
- ↑ Website of the French Embassy in Afghanistan ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (French)
- ↑ Freddie McConnell: Afghanistan's heritage is at stake , in: Independent, March 17, 2013
- ↑ Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi: Afghanistan. Mining deal with China about to collapse , Deutsche Welle, July 31, 2013
