Art History as an Academic Field and The Construction of Megalithic Architecture and Dome

Art History
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Part A
Art history refers to studying art objects considered within their period. It is the analysis and interpretation of individual artwork outside time and play, and the art's historical investigation due to its broad cultural context. The textbook's content asserts that art historians analyze the meaning of arts considering when they were created and the contemporary meaning, which might have changed from the initial meaning due to cultural dynamism. For instance, a 17-century sculpture may have consisted of flowers and jewels in its composition and structure. The sculpture might have been fiction, but the flowers and jewels indicate that they existed and might have had significant values. The values are absolute and shared between the time of creation and contemporary, despite the sculpture being fiction.
Artwork faces natural threats like earthquakes, floods, and mudslides, and human threats like war and rebuilding the worn-out arts. Art is often preserved and stored for a long time, meaning it faces natural disasters' negative impacts. Earthquakes shake the earth's crust and the effects felt by the objects on its surface. For example, on 27 September 1997, an earthquake shook Assisi, an Italian town shaking and harming the wall paintings in the 13th-century Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi (Stokstad et al., 2003). The earthquake disintegrated the Frescos from the vaults that tumbled down to the floor. However, experts have restored the collapsed walls, and tourists visiting the Basilica can hardly notice that an earthquake once brought down the structure. Floods, hurricanes, and mudslides have the same effects on art earthquakes. Hurricanes originate from the ocean and sweep across the coast, destroying anything on its way, including artwork.
Human threats are another challenge that faces art in the contemporary world. War is one of the human activities affecting art. Arab countries like Iraq, Iran, and Syria are among countries adversely affected by war. In 2015 the Islamic State (IS) attacked Nimrud city and ancient Syrian city located in Northern Iraq. The IS destroyed all the iconography and ancient religious idols in the region, believing them to be sacrilegious and contain Shirk's sin. Shirk is the practice of polytheism and idolatry (Stokstad et al., 2003). War has also led to the destruction of other sculptures, thus threatening arts.
Similarly, people can opt to rebuild an art intending to maintain it and make it last longer. This may seem less of a threat because...