
The Empire the World Forgot - Thevet
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160309-the-empire-the-world-forgot
======
Boothroid
I'm a little late, but anyway - I spent a couple of weeks in 2009 travelling
around Eastern Turkey with a mate and visited Ani. Now I've seen a fair amount
of impressive ruins in my time - Tunisia, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Israel
- but I have to say Ani was one of the most haunting and evocative places I've
ever been. We wandered around the site - which is not small - for a couple of
hours, and the only other people we saw in that time were three other tourists
and a bored teenage boy steering around a few hungry looking cows. There were
stone blocks strewn around with ornate carvings, which in the UK would be in a
museum, but instead the cows tramped amongst them chewing the grass. Across
the border in Armenia - visible from the site - a bulldozer cleared an area
for Russian gun emplacements, to add to those already installed. At one point
we wandered into a half ruined church and as we did so a crow somewhere up in
the roof started calling out.. It echoed around the ruin and the hairs on my
neck stood on end.

Later on the wind picked up and storm clouds started to appear, and somehow
that seemed a fitting end to my visit to this once great place, now reduced to
desolation.

And I had to take a picture of the famous church of course!
[http://imgur.com/DPSiDLW](http://imgur.com/DPSiDLW)

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dTal
Charming. "We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is
part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is
run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the
profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new
BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital
activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."

I missed the part which explains why I'm not allowed to read it? I don't see
what a TV license fee (which I don't pay anyway as I don't watch TV) has to do
with a website.

The bizzare thing is someone made this exact complaint about BBC Future, whose
situation is legally identical to BBC Travel, and in response they simply made
it accessible (it now carries a banner).

[http://halfblog.net/2013/01/16/why-is-this-bbc-website-
not-a...](http://halfblog.net/2013/01/16/why-is-this-bbc-website-not-
available-in-the-uk/) [http://www.bbc.com/future](http://www.bbc.com/future)

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myth_drannon
Just an interesting fact, General Pyotr Bagration (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Bagration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Bagration)
) was one of the heroes of Napoleonic Wars.

He was also from Bagratid dynasty that ruled the city of Ani.

~~~
psoy
Yup, Bagratunis were among the longest reigning dynasties in the region (in
all of Europe & Middle East, AFAIK). The last name still pops up even today,
in various dialectal forms. Like this Lebanese-Armenian politician:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karim_Pakradouni](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karim_Pakradouni)

Oh, and this dude: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/prince-ioane-bagrationi-
mukhrane...](https://www.linkedin.com/in/prince-ioane-bagrationi-mukhraneli-
prince-of-georgia-9b384422)

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daxfohl
Yup, I'm pretty well-traveled, and this is arguably the most beautiful place
I've been, especially by bicycle, and certainly among the least touristed of
anyone's short list.

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stcredzero
Behind any fallen empire are systemic failures.

Having lived through the systemic failures, were countless bit players who
looked around then basically said, "Apres moi, le deluge!"

Behind every mass atrocity and war are resource scarcity situations brought
about by systemic failure and/or natural disaster.

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shiven
Wow! Eerie photographs. Reminded me of the game Zork, circa late '90s.

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geoah
Well that sucks...

> We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our
> international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run
> commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the
> profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new
> BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital
> activities at www.bbcworldwide.com.

~~~
return0
I don't get it. What prevents bbc worldwide to make money from UK viewers?

~~~
lovemenot
I don't get it either. But I guess they are are concerned about Mr. Disgusted,
Cheltenham complaining: "I don't see why I have to pay my license fee AND
suffer these interminable commercials".

Come to think of it, it may be in the BBC's Charter that their content be free
from commercials (to license payers). If so, they are contractually bound to
hide the commercials or, keeping it simple, just not provide content with
commercials to license-payers.

Of course, most of the BBC's internet accessible content has always been geo-
restricted in the opposite direction. So they have form there.

~~~
DanBC
BBC.com shows ads to people geolocated outside the UK. Most of that content is
not blocked to the UK.

Here we see something a bit different - the article is blocked to people in
the UK.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/faq/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/faq/)

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personjerry
The title is misleading... Empires by definition are encompassing and large,
not local and regional. The article does touch on the empires and kingdoms
that have affected the location, though.

~~~
psoy
Armenia was an empire at some point, just not at the time of Ani. The title
could be referring to Armenia in general, since it's most definitely an empire
the world forgot about :)

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pizza
Those recommending a VPN: what should I get? Preferable something within an
order of magnitude $1/mo, obviously featuring end-to-end encryption, perhaps
even something I could torrent through? ;)

~~~
ekianjo
There is a huge list of vpn services compared a couple of days ago on Hn.

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13of40
"The church also housed a fragment of the True Cross, upon which Jesus was
crucified."

What is this, grammatically? It's hard to believe the person who wrote it
believed it was literally true, so is it a metaphor?

~~~
RadioactiveMan
> The True Cross is the name for physical remnants which, by a Christian
> tradition, are believed to be from the cross upon which Jesus was
> crucified.[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross)

~~~
13of40
I know what it is, but seeing it in this context is like reading an article
about the archaeology of Mount Ararat and finding the casual statement that
Noah landed the Ark there.

Edit: Jesus, how could someone downvote that?

~~~
bgilroy26
If you google "Mount Ararat Archaeology", all of the top results are about
Noah and his famous Ark

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Htsthbjig
If it is regional, it is not an empire...

China was an empire, and was forgotten. Today I could go to the book store and
buy "Historic Atlas of the world" that completely ignore China.

I have lived in China and of course the Chinese propaganda does the opposite:
They consider Confucius the best philosopher of the world(because is the only
one they have with Universal status), and what Europe only did was copying
China innovations, and so on.

I used to like the bbc in the past.

~~~
hospes
>> If it is regional, it is not an empire...

Armenia was an Empire long before Ani. List of Largest Empires in Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires)
If you look at "Ancient Empires" section, there are only 6 empires and both
Armenia and China are in the list.

>> China was an empire, and was forgotten.

I do not think that is the case. I have never seen any respectable historical
atlas that does not have China. Also there are Hollywood movies depicting
China in times when it was (or was becoming) an Empire, so you can hardly call
it forgotten.

The main reason that Chinese Empire is not forgotten and won't be anytime
soon, is that China is still a major power with 1.357 billion population.

