Well, if you know anything from watching cartoons where some kids stumble upon and explore a forgotten realm, this obvious effort to obscure the text on the walls indicates some kind of ancient political struggle that will implausibly become relevant in a little bit. But if you know anything from history class, it's probably part of a protest that the drone caste of your city put on to support the choice of employment movement.
The place where you think there should have been a purple pedestal is a little more puzzling. It looks like someone took the banner and chiselled the pedestal out of the floor, which would have been a huge amount of work. If they'd just wanted to destroy it, there are easier ways!
Man, you wish you had a camera or something. Despite whoever's efforts, there's still quite a bit of text visible and you'd love to know how it's related to the text in the other structures. You pull a stylus and tablet out of your sylladex and write a message for Yuwen, just in case e's managed to connect and is watching.