Honestly, “country of origin” will have straight lines drawn on a map that are so far removed from where the people who lived there originally considered their borders even that’s probably not pinning it down well enough.
They’re too poor to have museums so by default yoink
Gonna play a game of comment roulette. How far do I have to scroll before I see someone say something like, “That can’t be in their museum because they can’t be trusted with it”.
Spinning the chamber now.
Edit: turns out I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. Now I sad.
on the other hand how often things go missing in the British museum?
Eurotrash gonna eurotrash.
There are occasions when it’s useful.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_heritage_by_the_Islamic_State
I’m not saying it always is but there are a lot of very unstable places run by people who just don’t care about this stuff. And at the time it was stolen it was either the British museum, someone’s private collection, or the Vatican.
But who made them unstable?
i need someone to convince me why it is wrong to steal from the British museum gift shop
Will you display for free all your stolen giftshop loot for everyone to see, and promise never to damage it, sell it or dispose of it in any way.
I’ll showcase it to people I allow on my house, and say I take care of it, but what if I put then in ebay? who is going to stop me
Finders keepers, them’s the rules. Don’t blame me.
It should belong to the country of origin, but it could also be shared and tour around museums across the globe so an even greater number of people can check it out. They do this with art pieces. Why not cultural artifacts, too? Is not everyone entitled to learning about anything, including someone else’s culture?
I would assume there would be arguments around transporting them increasing the chances of it breaking. It would really only make sense to move these back to their country of origin and have them remain there to minimize potential points of failure. The rarer the artifact itself (another rusted out sword or plain clay cup versus a one of a kind manuscript whose pages have become incredibly delicate) the less their respective owners are going to want it to be moved.
Instead, we should be allowing more people the ability to travel and take time to go explore other cultures in their country of origin instead of trying to transport priceless artifacts across the globe.
better a museum than on a shelf in someone’s living room (no I won’t be donating it)
They are my human skulls I found them fair and square
This is why I always donate my finished books to my local library. I don’t need them and, if I want to read them again, I can always just go check it out from the library.
-Why there are pyramids in Egypt?
-Because Brits couldn’t moved them to British Museum.
To be fair. Most of the pyramids were raided far before the British took an interest and whatever they held has now been lost to time.
Eh, I meant the whole pyramids but fair enough.
Imagine doing a Gate of Ishtar maneuver but with the pyramids
It’s not quite the same thing (particularly because of the motivation), but, uhh…I suggest you read about Abu Simbel, if you haven’t already.
The museum could pay rent per item to the country the artifacts originate from? Bad idea?
Marion, this is a movie made in the 1980s and set in the 1930s, what the hell are you even talking about?
That attitude gets retconed in the great circle.
where he explicitly says that it belongs in a museum and helps locals get their relics to keep safe in their museums. ie, it belongs in their museums.
good game overall
“I liked you better when you were a child I was grooming!”
Marion, you knew when you met me that I came from the mind of George Lucas. It’s not my fault I’m a little fucked up!
What’s the opinion on certain high risk countries where there’s a high likelihood of the artifacts simply being destroyed? If I remember correctly ISIS and other similar organizations have burned or bombed several historical sites before.
The only opinion that should matter is that of the people the artifacts belong to.
“It’s safer with us” is an excuse that’s been abused by colonizers and raiders for too long.
The only opinion that should matter is that of the people the artifacts belong to.
Which people? The government? So in Afghanistan it’s up to the Taliban? If you don’t trust that the government of a country represents the will of the people, then how do you determine what the people want?
And, again, which people? Is a totem pole in a museum in Canada the property of the Canadian people? Or is it something that belongs to the Haida people, and it doesn’t matter what other Canadians want? If it is up to the Haida, it is up to the Council of the Haida Nation, or is it up to the band the original artist belonged to?
What about a Tatar artifact found in Donetsk? Who gets control over that? Is it the Russians since they occupy Donetsk? The Ukrainians because they used to occupy it? Do you have to study the blood of various Ukrainian people to figure out who has the most surviving Tatar DNA?
If you don’t trust that the government of a country represents the will of the people, then how do you determine what the people want?
You mean most governments?
In many cases there is no owner, they’re from a completely separate culture that happened to occupy the same region in the past.
Many cases
Source: my ass
What if some of the locals want it taken away for protection, but the government wants it destroyed?
There’s no clear ‘owner’ in many cases. I think it places where it’s uncertain, then we should prioritize saving the artifacts over the ones that seek to destroy them.
You will never be able to get everyone to agree on anything and you can’t hold a referendum for every artifact.
So as far as responsibility goes, barring edge cases, it should be left upto the government to decide, as they represent the people.
And tbh, this feels like an argument made in bad faith, because this is such a rare case. No government is going to ask for an artifact back and then destroy it. What happened in afganistan and Syria was a tragedy (they didn’t ask for those artifacts back, they were already there) But that only happened because the previous governments had been destabilized by Russian and American influences. (Iraq war - Isis, Afganistan war - alqaeda)
There’s no clear ‘owner’ in many cases.
Just return it to the country where it was taken from. And I don’t think there are many cases where ownership is vague, most are pretty plain and clear.
then we should prioritize saving the artifacts over the ones that seek to destroy them.
That’s not on you, that’s on their original keepers. Otherwise you are propagating colonial era crimes and justifying them by arguing in bad faith.
P.s.
- Museums have a notorious record when it comes to maintaining artifacts (they aren’t shining beacons of humanity), especially the British museum.
- They also do less than what’s needed to discourage artifact smuggling.
- watch: https://youtu.be/eJPLiT1kCSM
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Museums should participate in cultural exchange, if a museum feels under threat then they have channels they can trust to protect their artifacts until they can be returned
if a museum feels under threat
If you run a museum in Afghanistan and are afraid that the Taliban is going to execute you unless you destroy some blasphemous statue, are you going to risk your life to send the artifact to the British Museum, or are you just going to destroy it? Yeah, some heroes will definitely risk their lives, but most won’t.
Better than nothing
If you’re suggesting a daring heist at the Smithsonian, I’m in!
We have to be extremely wary of people who cite that because it’s so easily used as a justification for artifact theft and can have deep roots in racism.
That’s the question. Where is the line between racism and artifact protection?
Presumably somewhere between racism and artifact protection.
Well I’m British so… fuuuck that!
Britannia Jones and the stolen museum artifacts.
Gotta love how the first movie opens with him stealing an idol from an uncontacted Peruvian tribe, and the heroic music swells as he narrowly escapes with spears flying around them.
Granted, this takes place in 1936 and his actions were the norm for the period, but despite coming out in 1981 the movie plays this scene out rather uncritically.
He narrowly escapes with his life after having the idol stolen from him by his rival, Belloq, who works for the Nazis and actually hired that Peruvian tribe to be his little private army. Belloq then orders the Peruvians to attack Jones and he barely escapes on his hired plane.
Where do you get that he hired them?
The opening scene is them discussing that the tribe would kill them just for being in the area, and then Belloq taunts Jones saying he can’t warn them that he’s scamming them because Jones doesn’t speak Hovitos. No where does it say he hired them.
Scamming them is even worse, no?
He didn’t know Belloq was there until after he had robbed them.
So the entire point of my original comment was to give Indiana Jones a bit of vindication from the thinly veiled slander that he was nothing more than a tomb robber working for the colonialist west. How does your correction that Belloq was scamming the Hovitos, not paying them, make any difference to Jones’s character?
It doesn’t. You said Belloq hired them to be his personal army, which paints the Hovitos as complicit in working against their own self-interests. As in, they were the betrayers of their own people and were selling out to Belloq for some cash.
But no, the reality is both Jones and Belloq were out to screw them: Jones by directly robbing them, and Belloq by first scamming them and then robbing them. Both were being imperialist and the Hovitos were the victims.
Yeah, but if the tribe made those traps that still work perfectly after hundreds of years, imagine how advanced they must be by now. Dr Jones was probably within miles of a hidden techno utopia and never had a clue.
Temple of Doom had way more questionable scenes in it with the banquet, the heroic British soldiers at the end and… Short Round. Did they really have to name him that?
Although the cultists were based on a real group and I actually saw something that looked like the heart thing in an Indian movie, so maybe that’s based on something real as well.
I doubt it.
There are 1.4 billion people. I think there’d be a stereotype about them doing black magic if it was an ever prevalent thing.
To be fair to the movie, it isn’t trying to say all Indians worship dark gods. It’s just depicting a cult that happens to be in India.
When I said “something real”, I just meant a preexisting idea in India. The movie was Baahubali. There was a scene where the villain was trying to reach his hand into the hero’s chest in exactly the same was as the cult leader in Temple of Doom.
The heart thing is not unique to India?
It’s a very common thing to take the heart out by villians everywhere.
More that the hand was open and the figures being pressed directly into the skin, as if he was going to grab the heard directly without cutting it open first. It’s not something you see often as there’s the sternum in the way. I don’t know if there’s some Indian myth it’s based off of or maybe some other piece of Indian cinema. It was a very specific scene, but it’s 5 hours to go though, so I’m not going to be able it quickly.
