content: Look at the folks who made the sites. Rome was responsible for some of that, but they obliterated a lot of places (Corinth comes to mind). The first Christians of Egypt did a lot to efface the past, but now Islamic fundamentalists have no love of Coptic culture. We romanticize empires because of things like the Parthenon or the bulls of Nimrud, but those men were quick to destroy their enemies and predecessors. Even those damned Bamiyan buddhas the Taliban destroyed were statements of empire. (Why we romanticize empires is beyond me -- they seem to be successful based on who has the largest bulk of ignorant population. Empires are based on dumb and fucking. They are dumb fucks.) Perhaps the real problem is that these guys aren't creating at nearly the rate they destroy. The ambitious empires -- like Rome and Alexander -- destroy other people's crap. The worst empires -- China and Isis -- destroy the elements of their own past -- other elements of which make them imagine they are superior to other people.