Am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. Okay, let's vango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. My name is Lindsay, and for some reason, I chose to pursue my PhD in art history, which means that the only thing I am qualified for at the moment is this. Telling strangers on the internet stuff about things. I am literally unqualified to do anything else. How lucky for you. How utterly terrifying for me. Thank you for tuning in to episode seven of the podcast. For today's episode, we will be venturing to a place that many of us have heard of, but few of us know basically anything about, at least not in terms of art. And that place is Afghanistan. Specifically the Bamion Valley of northern Afghanistan, which was once home to two colossal statues of the Buddha, which were known as the Great Buddhas of Bamyan, or more simply, the Bamyon Buddhas. Now I say that this valley was once home to these colossal statues because unfortunately, the Buddhas no longer exist. Though you'll have to listen a little bit longer to find out why not. But I will give you a hint. Spoilers! It involves terrorism and a crap ton of dynamite. I first learned about the Bamiyan Buddhas when I was a junior in college, which, can ya believe it, was almost eight years ago. Like, come on, I'm so old I'm practically decrepit. As a young, sweet, relatively innocent junior, I was enrolled in an art history course on the arts and architecture of Southeast Asia. And one day in class, my professor decided to put on a movie, which was very exciting. And that movie was a documentary about the Bamyan Buddhas. And I found this documentary so enthralling that I wasn't even a little bit tempted to take a nap. To put that in perspective, this was a 4 p.m. class on a Thursday, and one of my favorite things to do is nap. So it should go to show how good that documentary was. Also, afterwards I was so fired up that I decided to go get a tattoo. Not of the Bamyon Buddhas, not even not even close to the Bamyon Buddhas, but I will forever link the day that I watched that documentary to the day that I was stupid and brave enough to go out and forever mark my body with ink. But that's just a little something about me. The Bamyyan Buddhas were too massive, and I am talking me sculptures of the Buddha that were carved into the cliffside of the Bamyon Valley of Afghanistan. Before getting into the Buddhas themselves, let's situate ourselves geographically, because a surprisingly few number of people can identify Afghanistan on a map, myself included, until about three years ago. And that's really freaking strange because most people have been hearing about Afghanistan a lot since the late 1990s, and especially since 2001, which is a year that I will be referencing quite a bit in the next 30 minutes. And yet, could you identify Afghanistan on a map? If so, you are allowed to feel superior and smug for about 30 seconds. If not, do not fear, for I shall tell you where Afghanistan is. Obviously, Afghanistan is in the Middle East. I think most of us know that. Specifically, Afghanistan is located between Pakistan and Iran. To find it on a map, you first have to find India. Most of us know where India is and what it looks like, but if for some reason you can't find India, then I can't help you. Sorry. But if you can find India, you'll see that there is a country that borders India to the northwest. That's Pakistan. And above Pakistan is Afghanistan. It, like many other countries, has a general, shall we say, splooshy shape. And within that general splooshy shape, the Bamyon Valley is located in northern Afghanistan in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which is not to be confused with the other kind of Hindu Kush, which um will also get you high, but not topologically speaking. Now I've personally never been to the Bamion Valley. I've never gone east past Budapest, which happens to be both the truth and the opportunity for a very bad pun. Get it, Budapest? But photographs of the valley show green plots of land bordered by a cliff face leading back into a mountain range. And along that cliff face, you can clearly see two massive gouges on the rock face, which mark the place where the Buddhas used to stand. These days, the Bamyan Valley is considered a remote region of the world. Like most of Afghanistan, it doesn't get many visitors. But life in Bamion was once very different from what it is now. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, the Bamion Valley was an important stop on the Silk Road. Now the Silk Road, contrary to what the name might suggest, was neither a single road nor made of silk, but rather a series of trade routes that connected Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East over the course of hundreds of years. Within the routes of the Silk Road, Bamyon was the connector point between China and the Middle East, making it a popular hub for travelers, traders, pilgrims, and anyone else passing through the area. Around the 5th, 6th, and 7th century, many of those travelers, as well as the local population, were Buddhist. And it's from this Buddhist context that the Bamyan Buddhas came into being. Before the Buddhas were carved into the rock face, there was a monastery constructed in the area. But this wasn't your average brick and mortar monastery. Instead, the Buddhist monastery of Bamyan was constructed within the cave system that runs throughout the cliffside. At one point, hundreds of Buddhist monks lived and worshipped within those caves, which were extensively decorated with paintings. In fact, some of those paintings are still visible within the cave system, despite being 1600 years old. I mean, those paintings are almost as old as I feel. In the early 6th century, someone or some ones decided to zhuzh up the monastery and ordered a massive Buddha to be carved into the cliffside. Now, poisonly, I would start with switching around the furniture, but colossal sculpture happens to be my second favorite way to accent a space. The first Buddha carved into the cliff was a statement and a beacon of faith to those passing through the area. The first of the colossal Buddhas is also the smaller one. And when I say smaller, I mean that it was 120 feet tall, which is the equivalent of an 11-story building. And let me reiterate this: that's the small one. The big statue, which was carved a few decades later, was 175 feet tall, the equivalent of a 16-story building. For reference, the Statue of Liberty is 150 feet tall, including her stretched-out torch-bearing arm. So if you took the Statue of Liberty off of her plinth and you stuck her into a cliffside, she would be the equivalent to the smaller of the two Buddhas. These two massive Buddhas stood 4,000 feet apart along the cliffside of the Hindu Kush mountain range. The ultimate effect was one of two giants nestled into the cliffside, as if they were just about to emerge from a conveniently Buddha-shaped tunnel and walk into the valley. You can still see the recessed areas into which the sculptures were carved, which is almost spookier than seeing giant Buddhas walking out from the cliffside. Now you might think, Lindsay, how do you have any idea what these colossal Buddhas looked like if they don't exist anymore? Good question. Which leads me to another spoiler. The Buddhas were still in existence as of early 2001, so we do have photographs of them, and of course, there are also photographs of the current cliffside with the empty recesses. You can go take a look at said pictures, which I will post on the podcast's website. Stuff about things podcast.com, along with a bunch of other things that I'll post for both your education and delectation. But for now, back to the Buddhas. I think that most of you can imagine some version of a Buddha. You've seen one somewhere. I mean, they now sell statues of the Buddha as decorative accents at places like Pier 1 and Bed Bath and Beyond. You might have even purchased one with that expired 20% off Bed Bath and Beyond coupon that you found crumpled at the bottom of your purse. Like maybe you're into religious appropriation as part of your decorative scheme. Maybe you think of yourself as culturally fluid. I don't know you, but I do know that you probably know what a Buddha looks like. And before anyone gets on me, I definitely own some kind of Buddhist statue somewhere in my apartment. I am not immune to my own judgment. Think about this stereotypical image of the Buddha that you probably know, which tends to be a fat, jolly bald man who has somehow maneuvered his chubby limbs into a meditative pose. And throw that idea out the window. Because that ain't what the Bamyan Buddhas looked like. Instead, the Bamyan Buddhas were standing figures who had relatively lean bodies dressed from neck to ankle in monks' robes. Unfortunately, at the advent of photography, both Buddhas had already lost both their hands and their faces, so we really only have a surefire idea of what their bodies looked like. And even then, these statues were over 1400 years old when they were blown up, so it's likely that even the bodies of the Buddhas looked totally different from when they were first created in the 6th century. For one, the statues were originally painted, though scholars can only make an educated guess as to the original color scheme. But try to imagine the sight of two painted figures, both the size of small skyscrapers, emerging from the cliff face of the valley. It must have been an awe-inspiring sight for Buddhists who traveled through the area. As for everyone else, there was probably a mixture of awe and terror depending on what you were expecting when you entered the valley. Like imagine stumbling upon Mount Rushmore without knowing anything about it. That'd be freaky, and those are just faces. The statues also had hands at some point, and with sculptures of the Buddha, the hands are an important component of the image, because the gestures that are made by the hands often signal what version of the Buddha is depicted, since there are several different versions of the Buddha, all of which embody a particular aspect of his being. Based on visual evidence and a bit of hypothesizing, scholars have made an educated guess about the specific identity of the Bamiyan Buddhas. The larger of the two Buddhas was likely the Buddha Vairochina, or the cosmic Buddha, basically an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise version of the Buddha. Whereas the other Buddha, the smaller one, was likely the Buddha Shakamuni, who is also known as the historical Buddha. No matter which Buddhas these statues depicted, one thing is Faux sho. These Buddhas became a part of the monastery and aided the Buddhist monks as they followed the teachings of the historical Buddha and attempted to reach enlightenment themselves. If that made absolutely no friggin' sense to you, do not fear. I shall explain. This here will be your crash course on Buddhism. If you already know all about Buddhism, feel free to jump ahead about three minutes. But here goes. Buddhism has its origins around the 6th century BCE, before Common Era, also referred to by some people as before Christ. In the name of religious neutrality, I will be going by before Common Era. Buddhism is a religion, but it isn't as structured as other religions that you might be familiar with. Instead, Buddhism focuses on the individual and their personal journey to understanding the meaning of life and existence. Once you understand the meaning of life and existence, you are said to have reached a state called enlightenment. According to Buddhism, we are all destined to be reborn over and over and over again until we achieve this enlightened state in one of our lives. At which point we leave this cycle of rebirth and become something akin to a transcendental being free from suffering, also known as nirvana, but not the rock band featuring Kurt Cobain. Different kind of nirvana. Although I will say that if anyone knew about suffering, I think it was Kurt Cobain. As I said, Buddhism has its origins around the 6th century before Common Era, when there was a prince named Siddhartha Gautama. Siddhartha lived a life of total luxury inside his dad's palace, and his dad made sure to keep Siddhartha away from anything and everything that was remotely sad, dirty, or smelly, which is something that I, Lindsay, would personally very much enjoy. Alas, one day our home fry Siddhartha was like, screw you, Dad, and he jailbreaked from the palace to go and see what life in the streets was actually like. In the streets, Siddhartha was confronted by a veritable crap ton of human suffering. Long story short, he quit being a prince to go and become a hermit, who basically existed off of air and water and did a ton of yoga and meditation. All in the name of trying to understand the point of existence. In the end, however, Siddhartha decided that the way to enlightenment rested somewhere between total indulgence and extreme air-eating, constant meditation extremism. Eventually, Siddhartha finally reaches enlightenment following a crazy six-week meditation under a Bodhi tree in which he fights off demons with his mind and somehow discovers the truth of his inner self. At that point, Siddhartha becomes a Buddha, an enlightened being, and he starts to go by the name of Shakamuni. Shakamuni spends the rest of his life being a guide for others who are attempting to achieve enlightenment, and he eventually dies at the ripe old age of 80. Upon his death, Shakamuni leaves behind his human existence to become a transcendental being free from suffering who is one with the universe. And that, my friends, is your wildly simplified crash course on Buddhism, written by someone, me, who is familiar with but by no means, and when I say no means, I mean no means an expert on the concepts of Buddhism. You should just take my word for it for now, but then later go read some more about it. Buddhism is fascinating, and you should know about it. I know that I dropped some big names and concepts on you earlier, but now that you've had a crash course in Buddhism, let me repeat what I said before. Scholars believe that the Bamiyan Buddhas represent two versions of the Buddha: the historical Buddha Shakamuni and the cosmic Buddha Vairochina. In other words, the smaller of the two Buddhas represents the Buddha while he was still alive walking the earth, helping others to achieve enlightenment before he died. And the Big Buddha, the Big Big Buddha, represents a version of the Buddha who has left his worldly existence and is one with the universe. A figure who is all-knowing, no longer bound by silly things like space or time. And seriously, how would you even begin to represent something like that? A transcendental being who is all-powerful and exists outside the constructs of time and space? You do what every culture seems to have done to convey these seemingly unthinkable concepts. You make a really, really, really, really, really, that's five really a really big statue. And that is precisely what whoever made these Bamyan Buddhas did. Are you still confused? Well, this is all you need to know. The Bamyan Valley in Afghanistan became an important hub of Buddhism starting around the 5th century common era, about a thousand years after the advent of Buddhism itself. The Bamyan Caves soon turned into a Buddhist monastery, where the monks decorated the walls with paintings and eventually had the Bamyan Buddhas carved into the cliff face. Got it? Awesome. Gold Star. Around the 7th century, the Bamyyan Valley was invaded by Arab Muslims, which means that Islam is in and Buddhism is out. This posed some serious issues for our colossal friends, the Bamyon Buddhas. Seeing as how I've already dropped a lot of specific knowledge on you this episode, I am not going to give you a crash course on Islam as a religion here and now, but that too will come in a later episode, fear not. I do want to emphasize, however, that the Islamic religion, by and large, tends to refrain from figural depictions of humans and animals within their artworks, especially their religious artwork, though of course there are exceptions to every rule. That is because Islam believes that God alone is the supreme image maker, and anyone who depicts living beings is attempting to compete with God, which is a very bad thing indeed. Therefore, Islamic art usually focuses more on geometry, calligraphy, and floral motifs, rather than depictions of people. Interestingly enough, there is actually nothing in the Islamic holy text, which is called the Quran, that prohibits figural depictions, though the Quran very specifically prohibits idolatry or the practice of worshiping images. In other words, when people start to worship an object rather than what the object represents, that's considered idolatry. The fear of idolatry is not, of course, exclusive to Islam, not even close. Christianity also prohibits idolatry and has a history of what is called iconoclasm, which literally translates into destruction of icons or destruction of images. Iconoclasm has been practiced by many world religions and cultures throughout time, from ancient Egypt to the modern day. It's these concepts of idolatry and iconoclasm that will play a huge role in the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. As I said earlier, as of 2001, the Bamiyan Buddhas did not have faces. In fact, it appeared as if the faces had been cleanly sliced off. One explanation for this is that Islamic pilgrims or travelers destroyed the Buddha's faces for representing what Muslims considered to be false gods or prophets, aka the Buddha. After all, there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that the sculptures and the paintings within the cave monastery were damaged over the centuries by Islamic iconoclasts, those Islamic individuals who would go and destroy these works of art for being idols. When it comes to the faces of the Buddhas, though, there's also another explanation that I personally find more convincing, which is that the faces were once made out of clay or another material that was mounted onto the cliff face like a mask, and over the course of time those masks were either destroyed or fell off or something else, which would explain the clean cut that you see in old photographs of the Buddhas. After all, usually iconoclasts just get a bunch of chisels and they go to town without any care for clean lines. One way or another, the fact of the matter is that the Buddhas ain't got no faces. And it might be this lack of face that actually saved the Buddhas from being destroyed long before 2001, since the face of an idol is usually seen as its most powerful asset. After all, faces are what we as humans tend to relate to when it comes to both other human beings as well as religious figures. One could even argue that a religious idol without a face is just a statue. And it might be that line of thinking that saved our Buddhas from destruction. At least for the thousand and some years that they more or less survived under Islamic occupation of the land. That's not to say that the Buddhas were completely unscathed by Islamic rule. Over the course of their creation in the 6th century to their destruction in 2001, the statues experienced both just general wear and tear of being, you know, 1400 years old, as well as suffered smaller acts of iconoclasm. By the time that they were destroyed, there was virtually no paint or clay left on the statues, and neither of them had their faces or hands, though again we don't exactly know how those were destroyed. Some of the paintings within the monasteries, however, were destroyed with chisels, which is a classic case of iconoclasm, of image destruction. But the Buddhas nonetheless were still a sight to behold. This brings us to the year 2001, when a group called the Taliban ruled over the majority of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, many of us have heard of the Taliban, but probably not within the context of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Instead, we know the Taliban as an extremist group that subscribes to a very strict interpretation of Islam, an interpretation that is not shared by the majority of Muslims. While the Taliban is still very much in existence today, the average media consumer probably hears more about other terrorist organizations such as ISIS. But those of us who had half of a developed brain as of 2001 definitely remember the Taliban. I was just 11 years old in 2001, and I most certainly remember hearing about them, and hearing about them a lot. As of 1996, the Taliban came into control of Afghanistan under the leadership of a man named Mullah Mohammed Omar. At this point in history, Afghanistan had recently experienced over two decades of warfare, including a 10-year war with the Soviet Union, as well as a four-year civil war. And that's after hundreds of years of changing regimes and empires and a few more wars. The Taliban believe in a very strict and specific interpretation of Islamic law. And unfortunately, the Bamiyan Buddhas and the Bamiyan Valley at large fell under the dominion of that law. Now, this is probably a good time to bring up the fact that the Bamiyan Valley was not only home to the Buddhas, it had also become the home to a religious and ethnic minority within Afghanistan called the Hazara. The Hazara practice Shia Islam rather than Sunni Islam. Sunni Islam being the sect of Islam that the Taliban and the vast majority of Afghanis practice. In addition to being a religious minority, the Hazara are also an ethnic minority, tracing their origins back to the Mongol invasion of Afghanistan in the 13th century. As we all know, unfortunately, and see it in action even today, when there are intolerant and powerful people running a country, ethnic and religious minorities never fare well. And that's precisely what happened with the Hazara people, who experienced both severe oppression as well as massacres under Taliban rule. So now you have the Bamiyan Valley, which is famous for its two sculptures of the Buddha, who the Taliban considered to be a false god and idol, and it's also home to a religious and ethnic minority that the Taliban hate. So, needless to say, the area did not fare well under Taliban rule, because terrorists suck. In February of 2001, Muhammad Omar, who again was the leader of the Taliban, got it in his head to destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas. And literally no one knows why he made that decision. Yes, Islam tends to be iconoclastic, and the Taliban did not want idols of another religion on their national property. However, Buddhism had been absent from this area for over a thousand years, and the Bamiyan Buddhas were no longer being worshipped, and therefore they were not icons. What's even weirder is that as of September of 2000, the Taliban released a statement that said, and I quote, the Taliban states that Bamiyan shall not be destroyed but protected. End quote. As of six months before the destruction took place, Mohammed Omar saw the Buddhas as a potential tourist attraction that could help renew Afghanistan that had been torn up by war over the course of decades. Six months later, however, that was all moot point. Not only did the Taliban announce that the Buddhas would be destroyed, they announced that all statues and non-Islamic shrines within the country would also be destroyed. This effort included the Taliban entering the National Museum in the country's capital of Kabul, where they smashed the sh out of everything. Excuse my language, the destruction of museums and religious objects gets me very riled. Then came March of 2001. The Taliban had ordered the destruction of the Buddhas, and that process took several weeks to complete. Part of that was because the Taliban didn't have enough dynamite to blow up a structure that large, so they had to call for reinforcements. There is even a rumor that the Taliban was unsuccessful in their first attempt to blow up the statues and had to call in engineers to help them. Which, duh, these things are 11 and 16 stories tall. Of course it requires experts. As my dad would say, they're being a bunch of dopes. The cherry on top of this terrorist cake, if you will, is that the Taliban got the local men, the Hazara men, and forced them to lay the dynamite charges throughout the statues. So these locals, who are working under threat of death, were sticking dynamite into virtually any crevice within the statue that they could find. Now I cannot imagine what this must have been like for those men. Of course, the Hazara people are Islamic, so it's not like the Bamiyan Buddhas were their religious idols. But imagine being forced to aid in the destruction of something like the Bamiyan Buddhas, two silent figures that acted as the backdrop of not just their entire life, but the entire life of their people, who had been living in the Bamiyan Valley for hundreds of years. Some of those Hazara men were later interviewed by journalists about their forced participation in the destruction of the Buddhas. I will link to one of those articles on the podcast's website so that you can get a first hand account of what that experience was like for some of the locals. Needless to say, it is well worth the read. Once the world found out that the Taliban was planning to blow up the statues, many countries attempted to get them to not blow up the statues. One of the strongest dissenters was Japan, which was a predominantly Buddhist country that had provided a ton of foreign aid to war-torn Afghanistan. But the Taliban, surprise, surprise, would not listen. If anything, they seemed to take pleasure from the fact that powerful countries were getting so up in arms about the destruction of these statues, which the Taliban referred to as quote, just stone. The Taliban also took great joy in pointing out the total hypocrisy of countries that wanted to save the statues, since many of those countries didn't even know the Buddhas existed until the Taliban announced their impending destruction. But remember, these statues are in a remote area of the Middle East that not many people travel to. The Taliban also pointed out that the objecting countries seemed to be working so hard to save statues when they weren't doing anything to help the millions of Afghanis who were starving. While on its face, this explanation might be convincing, ultimately it doesn't hold water. Because if the Taliban was at all concerned with allocating their limited resources to their starving population, they probably wouldn't have thrown a crap ton of resources and money at blowing the statues up. The best explanation, and the one the Taliban formally gave as its reason for blowing up the statues, is the Islamic belief against idol worship. However, some of the most prominent voices dissenting the statue's destruction were Muslims. This goes to show that the acts of a radical minority do not necessarily, and I would even say rarely, reflect the intentions and ideals of the majority. This is all to say that there are a number of hypotheses that scholars have come up with to explain the destruction of the Buddhas. But none of those theories ever seem to sufficiently explain Muhammad Omar's decision to blow them up, especially when just six months before he was talking about protecting them. Even Taliban officials who served under Muhammad Omar could not explain his reasoning. One anonymous Taliban source even told a reporter that he thought Muhammad Omar's sudden decision to blow up the Buddhas was, quote, an act of madness. The most convincing theory that I have read is that Muhammad Omar fell under the influence of another terrorist organization, that of Al-Qaeda, the militant Sunni Islamic group both founded and run by Osama bin Laden, the man who would later take credit for the September 11th attacks on US soil. According to this theory, bin Laden not only got Muhammad Omar to change his mind about blowing up the Buddhas, but that bin Laden also helped to orchestrate a media campaign around the Buddha's destruction, which ensured that Al-Qaeda and their associated groups, like the Taliban, got put on TV screens. This explanation makes sense, especially since Muhammad Omar did bring 20 journalists into the Bamiyan Valley after the destruction of the Buddhas in order to show them the empty niches in the cliffside, which the scholar Finbar Barry Flood referred to as, quote, a performance designed for the age of the internet. If this theory is correct, then the destruction of the Buddhas was ultimately not concerned with iconoclasm or starving Afghanis or pissing off the West, but rather it was a provocative action intended to get attention and act as a recruitment tool to get other young Islamic men and women to join these radical groups through the use of mass media. The fact of the matter is that art that falls under the national dominion of a terrorist organization is easy to target, easy to destroy, more or less, and generates an insane amount of media coverage. What's more, the timing of the destruction of the Buddhas also occurred in tandem with the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, a religious journey within the Islamic faith that's tied to the prophet Abraham, who was celebrated for destroying idols according to the tenets of his faith. It seems likely to me that the Taliban was capitalizing both on media coverage and timing to ensure their power play had an enormous impact, literally and metaphorically, on the world. After the Taliban's fall from power, several former Taliban officials claimed that it was indeed Al-Qaeda's and specifically bin Laden's influence over Muhammad Omar that drove him to destroy the Buddhas. The Taliban blew up the bombing on Buddhas in March of 2001, using dynamite, anti-aircraft guns, and artillery. And when all of that didn't work, they brought in more dynamite. There was so much dynamite used in the destruction of the statues that a mine cleaner crew had to go in after the destruction to diffuse any undetonated charges. Now there is actually video footage of the main act of destruction that was captured by a journalist named Taisir Aluni that is still available online. I've seen it many times and I know that it was aired on the BBC. But as it is a video made with the purpose of Taliban propaganda, I will not be posting it on the podcast's website. You can, however, find it easily should you choose to watch it. And it is quite um something, shall I say. Many of us know what happens next. On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda coordinated a series of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. This attack resulted in the deployment of troops to the Middle East, in the so-called war on terror. The Taliban fell from power in 2001, after which a man named Hamid Karzai was named interim leader of the country and would eventually go on to serve 10 years as Afghanistan's president. In April of 2002, Karzai called the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas a national tragedy, and he went so far as to call for the statues to be entirely reconstructed. As of 2003, UNESCO, which is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, declared the Bamyon Valley a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the Bamiyan Buddhas retroactively included in that declaration despite them being reduced to rubble. According to UNESCO, such a status marks the Bamian Valley as a site of quote, outstanding value to humanity, and the Bamiyan Valley remains only one of two such sites within Afghanistan. After declaring Bamyan as a World Heritage Site, UNESCO and the Afghan government both committed to rebuilding the Bamyon Buddhas, which would be done utilizing original materials, including any and all remnants recovered from the explosion. As far as I know, the reconstruction has yet to begin in earnest, but I think that we can all appreciate that they have a big job on their hands. One might even say it's colossal. To end on a positive note, the destruction of the Buddhas has resulted in an effort to conserve and protect what remains of the monastery complex that dates back to the 5th century, from cave paintings to the fragments of the statues left behind after the explosion. Archaeologists have also made discoveries in the area that are extremely promising, including the alleged unearthing of fragments of a third statue that measures at 19 meters or about 62 feet long. What archaeologists want to find, however, is a 1,000-foot reclining statue of the Buddha, documented in the writings of a Chinese monk who traveled through Bamyan in the 7th century. This monk recorded not two but three statues of the Buddha, including a reclining Buddha that he estimated to be over 1,000 feet long, almost six times larger than either of the Buddhas the Taliban destroyed in 2001. I'm not exactly sure how something that big can stay hidden for so long, but I sincerely hope that archaeologists can uncover it, even if they can't resurrect the other two Buddhas. The Bamyyan Buddhas were not the first or the last casualties of cultural terrorism. Obviously, human lives always outweigh art, but we shouldn't take the destruction of cultural property and history lightly. In fact, we should take it very seriously. What I will say is that the number of people trying to destroy cultural property pales in comparison to the number of people and nations who want to preserve their and other countries' cultural heritage, regardless of religious differences, which is the silver lining here. Ultimately, the Bamian Buddhas stood tall for over 1400 years as silent giants in the Bamian Valley, and that's no small thing. That is where I will leave the Buddhas for today, though I urge you to go to the podcast's website to check out pictures of the Buddhas, including some really cool old shots, as well as to see a reading list of sources that I used to write today's episode. I want to give a special shout out to the book by Lewin Morgan called The Buddhas of Bamion, as well as the 2005 documentary called The Giant Buddhas by Christian Frey, which is the documentary that I mentioned earlier that so inspired me to go out and get inked. There is also an entertaining documentary called The Lost Buddhas of Bamion that was filmed as part of a TV series by photojournalist David Adams, who professes to specialize in, quote, traveling to the ends of the earth, which means that I specialize in not leaving my apartment. What what? I would describe Adams as 75% Rick Steves and 25% Indiana Jones, which coincidentally also gives you a pretty good breakdown of what to expect from the episode. It was filmed in the late 1990s, which means the film quality is not great, but you can find the whole thing on YouTube. And it gives an interesting insight into the lengths to which Adams and his film crew had to go to get access to the Bamiyan Buddhas. So I'd say give it a go if you're bored and want to know more about the Bamiyan Buddhas and Afghanistan. There's also a wonderful essay on the Buddhas by the Khan Academy, which is one of my favorite sites to direct people to for easy to digest and informative information about art history at large. So I would definitely recommend them for information about the Buddhas as well as a ton of other stuff within art history. I also have a slew of other sources posted on the website, so please go check those out at stuffabout things podcast.com. As for Gus news this week, Gus is happily spending the summer months frolicking, napping, eating watermelons, swimming, and running errands with mom and dad. I should be seeing him in a few weeks, and I could not be more excited. This week Gus invaded three more famous works of art. The Wave by Hokesai, a portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elizabeth Vigilebront, and Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea and Fog. So head over to StuffAboutThings Podcast.com to check out those, which will be under the episode's main page, linked off of the home page. As always, a big shout out to freemusicarchive.org and hooksounds.com for providing the tunes that bring us into and lead us out of the show. The first song you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, followed by the song called Success Dreams. With that, I will sign off for this week. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode on the Balmyon Buddhas. If you feel like it and have something nice to say, let me know by leaving me a review on iTunes or dropping me a message through the podcast's website under the Contact Me page. I appreciate any and all feedback. I will talk to you again in about two weeks for episode eight of the podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you take the time to look at something beautiful today. A la prosima, Michi, the big big Buddha. Bye-bye.