This article was originally published in Redshift and is republished here with permission.

This article was originally published in Redshift and is republished here with permission.In 2001, the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan using dynamite, anti-aircraft guns, and artillery. After weeks of incremental destruction, nothing of the statues remained.That sad turn of events was the impetus for the founding of CyArk, a nonprofit that uses technology to ensure sites of rich cultural heritage remain available to future generations. Since 2003, they have used laser scanning, photography, photogrammetry, and 3D capture to record nearly 200 sites around the globe.

A laser scan of Al-Madrasa al-Jaqmaqiyah (currently serving as the Museum of Arabic Epigraphy) in Damascus, Syria. Courtesy DGAM/CyArk. Image via Redshift
?With no real three-dimensional or engineering-type record of those structures in Afghanistan, they are just gone,? says Elizabeth Lee, managing director of CyArk. ?So we started to go out and capture this information for monuments around the world, so that if anything happens to the physical monuments, we have that record available for future reconstruction efforts.?Unfortunately, CyArk cannot just focus on capturing sites before the ravages of time, the environment, or natural events erase them from the landscape. Now groups like ISIS have put sites in Syria at the top of CyArk?s priority list, as they try to digita...