Science:
Studies of the ruins of the giant
Buddhas
of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the
Taliban a decade ago, reveal new details about how they were
made and what they originally looked like. The
statues—originally 38 and 55 meters high—were
carved into the sandstone cliffs of the Bamiyan Valley some
1500 years ago. Employing mass spectrometry analysis, a team
led by Erwin Emmerling of the Technical University of Munich in
Germany used organic material in the clay layers in the rubble
to determine more precisely when the statues were created and
found that, at one time, one was red and the other white. "The
Buddhas once had an intensely colorful appearance," Emmerling
said in a statement, and they were painted over several
times.
