Most recently I remember it happening really really badly within Syria. Very intentional destruction. But yes, it happens all the time--Iraq included. With the technology we have now, we can preserve a lot of it (digitally at least).

I hate how it's so damn hard to find these things and yet so easy to destroy it.

A lot was destroyed but a lot of it was looted and and sold to sleazy collectors. Remember when the guy who owns Hobby Lobby got caught buying looted artifacts?

Still horrible, obviously, but at least there’s some hope looted items will be recovered.

Yea ISIS and other extremist groups like to destroy evidence of their ancestor’s greatness for some reason.

Lesser sons of lesser sons

Oh man.

It's only recently that the idea of "archaeology" has been a thing. Before then there were only "antiquarians" which were just looters.

Often they had royal backers. There's a podcast series called "stuff the British stole"

There's pretty well documented instances in the 1800s in Egypt, and pompeii.

Honestly the amount of amazing stuff that has just been "collected" is just eye watering.