Experts from Oxford and Harvard are banding together to implement a high tech approach to protecting ancient relics from ISIS’ destruction.
Their plan? Flood the Middle East with 3D cameras, capturing millions of pictures of ancient palaces, ruins, pottery and coins before ISIS’ reaches them and blows them up.
The goal is to then recreate these areas with 3D printers in the event they are destroyed. They want to collect 20 million photos by 2017, an incredibly ambitious goal.
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Roger Michel the director of Oxford’s Institute for Digital Archaeology, the group overseeing this major operation, said:
“If ISIS is permitted to wipe the slate clean and rewrite the history of a region that defined global aesthetic and political sensibilities, we will collectively suffer a costly and irreversible defeat. But there is hope. By placing the record of our past in the digital realm, it will lie for ever beyond the reach of vandals and terrorists.”
If the treasures they photograph are destroyed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the academics will harness 3D printing technology to reconstruct them in the same style as the original antiquities, The Times reported.
