Also kind of interesting and sad for a nation to have a higher standard of living at one point and then revert to a more primitive state.
Even the archaeology community was hit hard when the Taliban blew up this giant Buddha statue, now the Egyptian government wants to do the same with the pyramids.
For me, personally, one of the most upsetting things about the wars in the middle east and the uprisings in North Africa is the destruction and theft of so many relics and ruins.
It's been a massive loss to the study of antiquity.
There's so much from those civilisations yet discovered. So much of it has been lost to the sands and cultures over the last 6000 years, and what has happened to survive it now gets destroyed by missiles, rebel armies and thieves.
I was disgusted during the Egyptian uprising when Egyptian citizens in Cairo ransacked their own National History museum and stole and destroyed countless Egyptian artefacts.
And the British Museums had only just started to return them to Egypt, as good will favours and to return some of their culture.