When the ancient world meets a bulldoozer, guess who loses? A recent news story tells about a contractor in Belize that needed fill for a road construction project. So they dug into the 100′ high Mayan pyramid of the Nohmul complex. The 2300 year old structure was a well known ancient ruin and located in an otherwise flat landscape.

Here’s a WikiPhoto of a Mayan pyramid to give a sense of what these bozos dug into.

No doubt it was an easy location for fill, but what were they thinking?

“These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It’s just bloody laziness”, said Jaime Awe, head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology .

“Just to realize that the ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these buildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the stone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump lines,” said Awe. “To think that today we have modern equipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but that this company would completely disregard that and completely destroyed this building. Why can’t these people just go and quarry somewhere that has no cultural significance? It’s mind-boggling.”

So try to get through your week without digging up ancient ruins or making any other bone head mistake. Set your goals high.