KUCHING: The Colosseum in Rome, the Taj Mahal in India, and Angkor Wat in Cambodia have one thing in common – they are almost constantly inundated with throngs of smartphonewielding tourists eager to get their one-in-a-lifetime selfies with these iconic historical sites.
The tourism industry is driven by people, but ironically this is one of the most significant threats that cultural heritage or historical sites face – the visitors themselves.
In his book ‘House of the Tiger King: The Quest for a Lost City,’ Tahir Shah described tourists as ‘corrosive,’ adding, “It’s not that I feel above them in any way but that the very places they patronise are destroyed by their affection.”
This is unfortunately distinctly observed in various worldrenowned sites – be it purposeful or inadvertent human actions.
For instance, the Beijing Times in 2015 reported that an estimated 30 percent of the China’s Ming-era Great Wall had disappeared over time.
The erosion to this United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Heritage site was in part caused by reckless human activities, including pilfering bricks to build houses.
Another example, a case of unintentional human influence, is ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb which deteriorated due to moisture from the breath of visitors over the decades.
While visitors have an effect on all tourist sites and not just heritage ones, it is fair to say that historic sites are more delicate and vulnerable.
Furthermore, if care is not taken to prevent irreversible damage to these heritage sites, a piece of history would be lost forever.
As Associate Professor Dr Darren Curnoe of University of New South Wales told New Sarawak Tribune, “There is a very fine line where we have to balance having tourists visit these places and understanding the heritage there, but also conserving the sites and ensuring they do not damage them in the process.”
Sarawak with its rich heritage and numerous sites should take heed of such events in order to prevent unwanted incidents from occurring here as well.
Overcrowding and human nature
In the words of Thailand-based senior specialist in archaeology Dr Noel Hidalgo Tan, “The best way to protect a site is to not open it to tourists at all.”
He highlighted that crowd control could be a significant issue at historical sites when tourists flocked in droves and they were not managed well.
Most historical sites being dated do not have the infrastructural integrity to support an influx of curious tourists, leading to damage and deterioration.
At the same time, the presence of a jostling horde can also entirely ruin the experience of visiting a heritage site.
According to Tan, overloading a site could endanger the visitors themselves as well.
In addition to overcrowding, the antics of visitors can also deteriorate a site.
He shared that looting was a big concern to archaeologists at historical sites, using the example of Tam Ting Caves in Lao People’s Democratic Republic, a Buddhist shrine containing thousands of Buddha statues within limestone caves.
“As of December 1997, there were 5,834 moveable statues of Buddha in the upper and lower caves at Tam Ting. In 2011, an inventory indicated that some 666 pieces were missing including all of the complex composite large sculptures,” he said.
He emphasised that the drop in the number of sculptures was attributed to the site being opened up to cultural heritage tourism.
“Then, of course, there are tourists who behave badly,” Tan remarked, giving an example of a spate of tourists taking pictures in the nude at a variety of religious sites in Southeast Asia.
In 2015, four foreign tourists posed naked on Mount Kinabalu, Sabah and they were subsequently fined and sentenced to serve time.
While such acts may be entertaining to foreigners, inappropriate actions may be deemed disrespectful and offensive to locals, particularly at places of worship or sacred sites.
Angelina Jong, president of the Heritage Society of Rajah Charles Brooke Memorial Hospital, commented that some tourists exhibited ‘short-term thinking’ and did not consider the consequences of their actions in the long run.
So why open sites to visitors at all?
Curnoe presented a very good point to this argument – that allowing people to visit the actual site would bring them out of the standard museum experience and provide them with an entirely different one.
During the International Conference on Archaeology 2019 in Miri, delegates were permitted to explore and gain a first-hand experience of Curnoe’s archaeological research site at the Niah Caves.
“Museum experiences are often one-dimensional,” he said, adding that cultural heritage tourism including archaeotourism brought visitors directly into the landscape of the actual site.
“By visiting the actual site, you can get a real sense of it – its scale and the challenges involved during excavation.
“You also gain a better appreciation of the importance of the site, so that you can place that archaeological site into the broader landscape to really understand the past,” he explained.
Curnoe remarked that it was all about striking a balance between protecting the sites in the long term while still providing visitors with a real and rich experience.
Carrying capacity and crowd control
Using the analogy of toothpaste, Tan said, “Toothpaste is good for you, but you do not squeeze all your toothpaste onto your toothbrush at any one time. Your toothbrush has only so much space.”
He emphasised that managers of heritage tourism sites had to establish their carrying capacities
– how many people the site was capable of holding.
“There is no point in trying to attract thousands of tourists to your site if you can only effectively manage 20,” he stated.
For example, Tan pointed out that Angkor Wat – a site which receives approximately 6,000 foreign visitors per day – had a crowd management system at the highest level of its tower.
“They have figured out that the carrying capacity of the chamber at the top is 100 people, so when visitors want to get to the highest level, they have to wait for one person to come down before they can head up,” he said.
He added that even if this meant tourists had to queue for an hour or two, it was a necessary measure in order to mitigate damage to the historical monument.
Meanwhile, anthropologist and archaeologist Professor Paul S. C. Tacon of Griffith University explained that every site had its own carrying capacity and thus, these had to be assessed individually.
“Some larger sites may be able to hold larger groups, but it is always best to have someone guiding them to make sure that visitors do not wander off and vandalise or damage the site,” he said.
Strict enforcement of rules and regulations
Although signs with a list of ‘do’s’ and ‘do not’s’ are a common sight at almost every tourist attraction, not everyone follows this set of rules.
Tan pointed out Southeast Asia tended to be very forgiving of tourists, often just giving them a slap on the wrist and ejecting them from a site if they committed a wrongdoing.
“Enforcement matters – not just the threat of enforcement, but actually following through with it,” he stressed.
He shared the incident of a tourist in Bagan, Myanmar who refused to take off her shoes when visiting the temple, which led to jail-time for the tourist who had blatantly ignored the rules.
Tan emphasised that following through with penalties could ensure that fewer visitors would misbehave at heritage sites.
Jong agreed that wrongdoers should indeed be made to face the consequences, stressing, however, that penalties must be realistic in order to have any real effect.
“Fines cannot be too exorbitant. If you impose something unrealistic, people are not going to bother.
“Do not place a fine of say RM20,000, make it something like RM500 or so – an amount that can be practically imposed on the spot,” she said, adding that people would fear that more and refrain from breaking the rules.
In the third and final part of this series, the effect of climate change on heritage sites will be discussed.
