A world-renowned archaeologist has compared the destruction of 2 46,000- year-old Aboriginal cultural sites in the Pilbara to the Islamic State’s damage of Palmyra.
Key points:
- Rio Tinto expressed deep regret over the blast to Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt in a personal telephone call
- Mr Wyatt states a legal representative for standard owners called his office recently to request the Federal government to intervene
- Permission to blast the site was signed off in 2013
2 sites in the Juukan Gorge were ruined last weekend by mining business Rio Tinto, after being approved for damage in 2013, regardless of considerable historical discoveries that were made in 2014.
The blasting of the sites was one of the worst destructions of a historical site in current memory according to Peter Stone, the UNESCO chair in Cultural Property Protection and Peace at Newcastle University in the UK.
” It’s a black day for us all,” he said.