Modern help for ancient Pyu

Last Sunday Myanmar welcomed the designation of the Pyu Ancient Cities as a Unesco World Heritage site, marking its first entry on the UN cultural agency’s list of protected places.

The World Heritage Committee, at a meeting in Doha, Qatar, chaired by Sheikha Al Mayassa Bint Hamad Bin Khalifa al Thani, gave the nod to both the Pyu settlements and Iran’s “Burnt City” – Shahr-i Sokhta. 

Located at the junction of Bronze Age trade routes, the mud-brick city represents the first complex societies in eastern Iran. It emerged around 3200 BC and survived to 1800 BC, when changes in watercourses and the climate forced its abandonment. The structures unearthed are well preserved thanks to the dry air and thus a rich source of information.

The Iranian and Burmese sites bring the number of World Heritage sites to 994.

“Pyu Ancient Cities” refers to the remains of three brick, walled and moated cities – Halin, Beikthano and Sri Ksetra – in the dry zone of the Irrawaddy River basin. The Pyu Kingdom flourished from 200 BC to 900 AD, and palace citadels, burial grounds and early industrial production sites can still be seen today, along with monumental brick Buddhist stupas. Some of the water-management features of antiquity are still in use, abetting the area’s intensive agriculture.

“We are happy,” Daw Me Me Khaing of Myanmar’s culture ministry said on Sunday of the World Heritage Committee’s decision. “We all worked hard for a long time to make this happen.”

Inclusion on the list has significant economic implications. World Heritage sites are eligible for financial assistance toward preservation, while the status is a powerful draw for tourists.

The remains of the Pyu citadels, stupas and burial grounds currently draw around 60,000 visitors every year, both local and foreign, says Khaing, and he hopes the elevated status will bring many more. “We’ll have a better situation for our heritage sites as we gain experience from this,” she says.

Officials are now campaigning to have Myanmar’s better-known ancient city of Bagan the Unesco list. It’s home to a sprawling complex of Buddhist temples, some of them 1,000 years old. Bagan is one of the country’s most treasured religious sites and a top attraction for foreign tourists flocking to Myanmar as it emerges from decades of military rule.

But experts have previously warned that haphazard renovation work on some of the temples has irreversibly damaged the landscape, which could threaten Bagan’s chances of winning World Heritage status.

But the Pyu cities had little problem earning Unesco’s approval. “These ancient cities built along the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) Valley belong to the Pyu, a people speaking a language closely related to Myanmar and now extinct,” it said in a statement.