Incan artefacts at Yale to be returned to Peru (Yale returns stolen artifacts)

Financial Times ^ | Feb 11, 2011 | Naomi Mapstone

[eleni121]

One hundred years after American explorer Hiram Bingham took tens of thousands of artefacts from the Incan city of Machu Picchu back to his alma mater, Yale University is sending them home.

[kabumpo]

I just posted a similar statement, but you said it better.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Does this mean we can get back the best collection of Mesa Verde artfacts from Sweden?

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“The Parthenon Frieze would be rubble and sand were it not for Lord Elgin. The Incan artifacts would be in private hoards if it were not for for Hiram Bingham.”

Absolutely correct.

Should they be returned? Sure, if the current owners want them to be returned.

[humblegunner]

Brilliant.
This stuff will wind up for sale in a street bazaar.

[eleni121]

Thanks for helping disseminate logic, not silly pompous paternalistic bombast.

Your point about how those the “museums” have literally massacred these artifacts is valid as well.

But the main issue is ownership. Everyone should support the fundamental moral principle of ownership. There should never be a reward for taking another property based on a flimsy paternalistic notion that the owner is not fit to hold his property.

[SeeSharp]

You mean if some foreign power, like say Iran, where somehow able to steal the Declaration of Independence, or the Liberty Bell, or some other thing, then they should be entitled to keep it?

Yes.

[La Lydia]

The Greeks did nothing to preserve the Elgin marbles, and did not acknowledge their value until after the British rescued them. When pieces of the marble fell off, the Greeks were burning them for lime. So much for logic and morality.

Note that I didn't say they shouldn't be returned, I merely pointed out who saved them. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder that makes you nasty.

Bottom line is, those artifacts would not still exist if it weren't for the British and the Americans. I just have to assume you are unfamiliar with the fate of 99 percent of the pre-Colombian artifacts in Peru.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Fortunately a few items might survive the next fifty years so they can be melted down.****

ABout 40 years ago, I read were some amateur explorers uncovered a large ammount of Mayan gold artfacts in Guatamala.

The Guatamalan government seized the items, and melted them down into bullion.

[Flag_This]

"They weren’t looted. Lord Elgin purchased them and saved them from destruction from the Turks. And they could never be restored to the actual Parthenon; the pollution in Athens is so heavy that the friezes would be damaged."

The Turks, btw, had already demonstrated their high-regard and reverence for ancient Greece by using the Parthenon as a freakin' powder magazine! The marble on the ground was getting tossed into lime kilns to make lime; but if Praxiteles asks for his sculptures, Elgin should probably give them back.

[SeeSharp]

That argument is full of holes...literally. You ought to know that. The “museums” have made tons of cash showing, marketing, and quite often mischaraterizing the cultural and historical creations of other peoples.

There is no such thing as "of other people". Produce an owner or you have no claim.

[eleni121]

Your conclusion is morally right of course. But your support of an assumption that it would have been rubble is far from the mark as you are probably aware.

In actuality in the case of the Parthenon Frieze - the British Museum and its agent Elgin did unspeakable damage to the Frieze—from chopping it up in the first place - to shipping it and then more recently to the acid “cleaning” of it.

Even at the base level of holding stolen property the Brits have done a horrendous job of acquiring and holding and maintaining looted property.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

*** the pollution in Athens is so heavy that the friezes would be damaged.***

Years go I saw photos of some of he statues on the Parthenon before and after Athens’ pollution. the beautiful statues were being disolved at a very highrate and plans were being made to replace the statues with new ones.

[golux]

If, in 700 years, researchers from the University of Iran were the first to recognize the importance of a number of decaying artifacts picked over by looters in a place they determined to once have been called “Philadelphia,” which they themselves proved was a place of critical historical importance, and proved as much to the world through study and toil over decades of research and publication, and their university took it upon itself, at its own expense, to curate and display these artifacts, to loan them, to exhibit, say, an old “Liberty Bell” and teach others about “America” for a hundred years or so...

Yes, I’d say it would be a perfectly nice gesture were they to choose to give some of THEIR artifacts “back” to some resurgent “America-like” peoples at some point. Perfectly nice, but unnecessary.

[eleni121]

Actually the acid used in cleaning them in the London Museum has done more damage in a day than all the 30 some years of pollution in Athens.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“But the main issue is ownership. Everyone should support the fundamental moral principle of ownership.”

Please define “moral ownership”.
Please give us a link to your United Nations source for this.

Best,
Dave

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“But your support of an assumption that it would have been rubble is far from the mark as you are probably aware.”

I disagree with your statement.

[golux]

Ahh, yes. I had almost forgotten about the “Great Massacre of Artifacts by So-Called Museums”. I think there’s a course on that at Berkeley. Too bad they don’t have a decent museum!

[aruanan]

You mean if some foreign power, like say Iran, where somehow able to steal the Declaration of Independence, or the Liberty Bell, or some other thing, then they should be entitled to keep it?

Geez, at least try to make valid analogies. In the case of the Declaration of Independence or the Liberty Bell, a valid analogy would be: Imagine that two to four thousand years from now what used to be the United States lies in ruin, inhabited by nomads, with no government of any kind except for local warlords. Explorers from across the sea discover ancient cities buried and within one of those cities they discover a cracked bell and in another a closed vault containing a document and strange small sheets covered with what appear to be miniature reproductions of pages containing a now almost undecipherable script. They return from this dark continent to their own countries and attempt to put these discoveries into some sort of historical context. Meanwhile another century and a half passes and part of the ancient wrecked land is colonized by another group of people having no hereditary or linguistic connection to the former, now-defunct, civilization.

Over a short period of time historical/archeological scholarship across the sea demonstrates that one of the cities was the capital of an ancient civilization that stretched from one sea to another and it becomes apparent, once the language has been deciphered and enough mathematical and scientific knowledge rediscovered, that the hundreds of millions of little sheets contain a vast scientific knowledge that would immediately, in a historical sense, transform any society that possessed them. Whereupon the relatively new inhabitants of the soil from which the ancient artifacts were recovered begin to claim that these artifacts, as well as anything deriving their design from them, are their patrimony and symbols of their great and noble heritage robbed from them by treasure hunters who weren't trying to protect anything and that any and all artifacts should be returned immediately to them, folks who wouldn't know a Declaration of Independence from toilet paper.

[Batrachian]

That's a nice theory, but that's not how it happened. Those people where treasure hunters, and they basically bulldozed all those sites looking for pretty things for their private collections. Most of it only ended up in museums after they died.

What are you defending here?

[eleni121]

“America-like” peoples

---

Let’s premise my remarks first on the fact that Persian civilization has been around for several thousand years - with all its ups and downs.

Now as for the US-— going on how long is it?
American - like peoples? Interesting choice of words...you sure you want that? You mean the people whose elites loot other people’s creations? You mean people who have killed off millions of their unborn children and who see the merit in using tax revenues in helping to do that? You mean those people some of hose ancestors just about about destroyed the native populations of NA? You mean those Americans who can’t bring themselves to rebuilding a church destroyed in 9-11 but who prefer to erect a mosque?

the list will get really long really fast... tell us which American-like Americans you refer to?

Bottom line: it’s stolen - give it back.