Mocking-up Palmyra in London’s Trafalgar Square (Report,20 April) reminds me of that celebrated scene from Spinal Tap involving a mini Stonehenge. The intentions are beneficial, but the outcome is lacking. The digital Triumphal Arch does, or at least,draw attention to the tragic cultural losses that have occurred in Syria and elsewhere during the current conflict. But Roger Michel of the Oxford Institute for Digital Archaeology is inaccurate to think that a scanned copy might act as a plausible substitute.current technology allows us to reproduce the form of an ancient structure more accurately than ever, but it can never recapture the spirit of the original which is the product of exact ageing and change over generations. William Morris, and founder of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings,rightly felt that replication leads to “feeble and lifeless forgery”.
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Source: theguardian.com