Rescuing Mes Aynak Afghanistan

  The word Mes Aynak (مس عينک) literally means "little source of copper"; mes (مس) is "copper", while aynak (عينک) is a diminutive form of ayn (عين), which means "source".

                        Rescuing Mes Aynak Afghanistan

In Afghanistan a fortune in copper ore lies buried beneath a trove of ancient Buddhist artifacts.
The play of perspective makes an eight-foot-tall stone shrine at Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, appear much larger than it is. Archaeologists have uncovered only a fraction of the sprawling Buddhist complex, which dates from the third to the eighth centuries A.D.

Mes Aynak (Pashto: مس عينک‎, meaning "little source of copper") is a site 40 km (25 mi) southeast of Kabul, Afghanistan, located in a barren region of Logar Province. The site contains Afghanistan's largest copper deposit, as well as the remains of an ancient settlement with over 400 Buddha statues, stupas and a 40 ha (100 acres) monastery complex. It is also considered a major transit route for insurgents coming from Pakistan. Archaeologists are only beginning to find remnants of an older 5,000-year-old Bronze Age site beneath the Buddhist level, including an ancient copper smelter.

The site of Mes Aynak possesses a vast complex of Buddhist monasteries, homes, and market areas. The site contains artifacts recovered from the Bronze Age, and some of the artifacts recovered have dated back over three thousand years. The sites orientation on the Silk Road has yielded a mixture of elements from Iran, China and India. The wealth of Mes Aynak’s residents has been well represented in the sites far-reaching size and well guarded perimeter. Afghanistan’s eagerness to unearth the copper below the site is leading to the site's destruction rather than its preservation. Archaeologists have photographed the site and the relics excavated.

Between May 2010 and July 2011 archaeologists excavated approximately 400 items; more than what the National Museum of Afghanistan housed before the war. The site covers roughly 400,000 square metres (4,300,000 sq ft), encompassing several separate monasteries and a commercial area. It appears that Buddhists who began settling the area almost two millennia ago were drawn by the availability of copper.[13] More recently, a stone statue, or stele, found in 2010 has been identified as a depiction of Prince Siddhartha before he founded Buddhism and has been taken to support the idea that there was an ancient monastic cult dedicated to Siddhartha's pre-enlightenment life.