Islamic State's wholesale madness includes, famously, the culture-killing side tactic of blowing up or just flat-out sledgehammering archaeological and architectural treasures within its military grasp—the Baal Shamin temple in Palmyra last week, Iraq's ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in May, the rare Assyrian statuary in the Mosul museum, or in fact their beheading of the beloved, and heroic, Syrian antiquities director Dr. Khalid al-Asaad. The latest atrocity, the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, from 32 B.C., and arguably one of the most important ruins in the Middle East, was blown up in the last few days, according to UN satellite imagery. Recently, a most welcome academic, high-tech form of resistance to the destruction has been staged by England's Institute of Digital Archaelogy, based in Oxford. 
 
 The researchers of the Institute, funded by Harvard University and the Classical Conclaves–including Oxford University–have been working on a plan to flood the artifact-laden zones of Iraq and Syria now nominally under Isis control with 5000-to-10,000 digital mapping cameras. The notion is to map the endangered temple architecture, monuments, and any surviving statuary before Isis reduces it to rubble. 
 
 ''If we can't protect these things on the ground,'' Insitute director Roger Michel told the BBC, ''we can at least preserve a highly detailed record of what's there." 
 
 Lots of good can come of that–massive 3-D print-rcconstructions of destroyed iconic sculpture and architecture spring to mind, for which MIT has partnered with the Institute to do. But right now, or in a couple of months as the cameras are hardened for the battlefield and the actual work of the data-gathering gets underway, Dr. Michel and his colleagues will run a fraught race. Because, in the unforgiving vocabulary of war, the noble world-heritage preservation project requires people on the ground. 
 
 Dr. Michel's race against time matters to everybody on the planet, and, the glad news is that it isn't just restricted to Syria and Iraq–it's region-wide, encompassing Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, and Yemen, most of which have their own arenas of conflict and thus pose their own dangers. As for Syria and Iraq, sending people out to record endangered cultural assets in Isis' hotly-contested patchwork of micro-regions will be tough in several ways. The Institute's citizen-filmmakers will be a certainly brave but very loose confederation of people from local museums, NGOs, and government organizations, and possibly even some former colleagues of the deeply-mourned and globally admired Dr. Asaad. 
 
 But we all know how war works. The Insitute of Digital Archaeology is going directly after one of Isis' main propaganda prizes, the treasure that Isis wants to be seen destroyingin the secular world's eyes, that the masters of Isis want most to be seen destroying, namely, the recorded narrative of humankind as etched in Assyrian stone. Isis has told us how much the temple statuary and museum artifacts matter to them by taking time out from the shooting war to destroy them. ||||| Experts from Oxford and Harvard plan to take 3D photographs of every artefact under threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in an attempt to prevent thousands of years of history being lost. 
 
 The initiative, which has been compared to the work of the “Monuments Men” in the Second World War, comes against a backdrop of widespread destruction by Jihadists. 
 
 Some artefacts from the looting have turned up on the black market and experts have also developed sophisticated computer programs to hunt them down. 
 
 The latest plan will see archaeologists flooding the area taking 3D images of every artefact under threat. 
 
 Should the artefacts be destroyed, the 3D imagery will be used to make exact replicas. 
 
 The latest piece of wanton destruction saw ISIL obliterate the 2,000-year-old temple of Baal Shamin in Palmyra in Syria. 
 
 Saving the antiquities – or at least reconstructing them – will cost around £2 million. 
 
 The Times reported that the Oxford-based Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) will see thousands of cheap 3D cameras being sent to the areas most under threat. 
 
 According to the Institute, which is working with UNESCO, as many as 20 million images could be compiled by 2017. 
 
 There has been growing alarm at the mass destruction of ancient antiquities by jihadists and fundamentalists, dating back to 2001 when the Taliban destroyed two Buddha statues which had been carved into the hills at Bamiyam. 
 
 “If Isil is permitted to wipe the slate clean and rewrite the history of a region that defined global aesthetic and political sensibilities, we will collectively suffer a costly and irreversible defeat,” said Roger Michel, the institute’s director. ||||| In recent months, the extremist group Islamic State has destroyed some of the most significant historical and archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria. 
 
 Some of the ravaged antiquities and cultural monuments date back thousands of years. They include UNESCO World Heritage Sites such as castles and temples. 
 
 The stakes were raised in May when Islamic State captured Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, known for its Roman colonnades and burial site and considered to be one of the world's most precious architectural treasures. 
 
 Last month, the militants used explosives to blow up Palmyra's Baalshamin Temple, believed to date to the 1st century. And on Monday, analysts with the United Nations' UNOSAT satellite program confirmed the main building of Palmyra's 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel had been demolished. 
 
 Experts in antiquities, archaeology and technology at the Institute for Digital Archaeology, a joint venture of Oxford and Harvard universities, feel they have to do something. So they have launched an ambitious endeavor to preserve cultural and archaeological heritage sites, objects and artifacts — at least digitally. 
 
 The plan: A 3-D database of ancient treasures 
 
 The idea, according the institute's executive director, Roger Michel, is to compile an archive of millions of 3-D images of vulnerable heritage sites and other ancient treasures. As many as 5,000 high-tech, user-friendly cameras will be distributed to volunteers across Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan and Yemen by the end of the year, Michel said. 
 
 "The sites represent links between East and West," said Michel, who conceived the project. "ISIS understands this and that's why they want to blot it out. Without the visual cues, the sites can be forgotten." 
 
 Under the plan, each of the cameras, which have Wi-Fi connectivity and can automatically upload images to a database, will be used to take about 1,000 photos. Creating the final 3-D image will be done at the digital institute, Michel said. The goal is to eventually capture 5 million to 10 million images. The database will be housed on servers at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. 
 
 The researchers hope the archive will also serve as a database that art dealers and collectors can consult to avoid trafficking looted artifacts. The metadata for each image will contain the location of the antiquity and the date the photo was taken. 
 
 Who will take the pictures? 
 
 To be successful, the project needs an army of volunteers who are willing to risk taking photos of antiquities that Islamic State and other radical groups condemn as representing idolatry. 
 
 Working to preserve such sites can be dangerous. Last month, Islamic State militants beheaded Syrian antiquities scholar Khaled Asaad, who for decades was the curator of the ancient ruins of Palmyra. 
 
 Michel said international organizations such as UNESCO have partnered with the Institute for Digital Archaeology to help distribute the cameras to volunteers with government and nongovernmental organizations, local museums and antiquities societies, as well as to archaeologists and people who want to help protect their cultural heritage. 
 
 "There is a risk," Michel said. "We're trying to use local partners to do the distribution work. They understand better than anyone where you can and cannot go safely. This is the biggest challenge." 
 
 Ben Altshuler, the Institute for Digital Archaeology's director of field operations, said that ensuring volunteers' safety was paramount and that the project would be targeting only sites not yet under the control of Islamic State. The exact locations to be photographed are not being publicized for security reasons. 
 
 Where possible, the cameras would be mailed to potential photographers. Many would be carried by hand into a country. Altshuler said that a couple of hundred cameras have already reached some locations and that he will head to the Middle East this month to deliver more. 
 
 "With every site there will be an individual story of how that camera got there," Michel said. "There will not be a cookie-cutter approach." 
 
 Time is of the essence 
 
 The digital preservation project was conceived late last year and got off the ground about six weeks ago. Its price tag is about $2 million. 
 
 Support has been strong, the researchers said, and they expressed confidence that it could work. 
 
 "We've had so many people step forward and offer to help," Michel said, but he cautioned that time may be short. "We want to do something to document this legacy before it disappears." 
 
 ALSO: 
 
 Islamic State doesn't destroy all antiquities; it saves some to sell on the black market 
 
 New images of Islamic State destruction at Palmyra show extent of 'atrocity-class event' 
 
 Islamic State executes renowned Syrian antiquities scholar in Palmyra 
 
 Twitter: @AMSimmons1
– Archaeologists and thousands of volunteers are in a race against time to digitally map some of the world's oldest and most important statues, temples, and cities before they can be destroyed by the Islamic State, the Los Angeles Times reports. If ISIS "is permitted to wipe the slate clean and rewrite the history of a region that defined global aesthetic and political sensibilities, we will collectively suffer a costly and irreversible defeat," Roger Michel, director of the Institute for Digital Archaeology, tells the Telegraph. In recent months, the terrorist group has blown up a pair of 2,000-year-old temples in Syria and destroyed Iraq's ancient city of Nimrud. ISIS considers these antiquities idolatry, and destroying them is a major facet of its propaganda, notes Forbes. To combat the loss of history, the institute—a venture between Harvard and Oxford—is spending $2 million to send at least 5,000 high-tech cameras to volunteers in the region to take millions of photos, the Telegraph reports. The institute will use the photos to create 3-D images, which could be used to make replicas of destroyed sites, something Forbes states MIT has offered to do. Taking photos at these sites will be dangerous work, and volunteers will only go to sites not yet controlled by ISIS, the Times reports. Though the project started only six weeks ago, time is of the essence. "We want to do something to document this legacy before it disappears," Michel tells the Times. (The group also beheaded an archaeological pioneer in the region.)