Hiram Bingham photographed this excavation of a human skeleton in a cave at Machu Picchu during the Yale University and National Geographic Society-funded expedtion of 1912.
PING
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.
Hiram Bingham photographed this excavation of a human skeleton in a cave at Machu Picchu during the Yale University and National Geographic Society-funded expedtion of 1912.
While the Ivys are returning things, can we send Kenya back their president?
Indiana Jones hasn’t been reached for comment.
I have wondered whether, or when, when this would happen.
Political correctness is finally more important to Yale than the guardianship and preservation of these priceless historical artifacts, about which not a damned soul on the southern continent cared for hundreds, or thousands, of years.
Fortunately a few items might survive the next fifty years so they can be melted down to form part of the new and improved Great Seal of the Estados Unidos de America, the one where the Eagle clutches two chimichangas, a U.S. welfare check, three Mexican IDs, and an “affirmative action” Yale acceptance letter.
Written in spanish.
Oh to Yell With Yale!
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.
Does this mean we can get back the best collection of Mesa Verde artfacts from Sweden?
Brilliant.
This stuff will wind up for sale in a street bazaar.
This is just another example of the Western disease-Political Correctionitis. The return of artifacts is but one more symptom of the ultimately fatal disease.
I disagree that all antiquities should be returned to their countries of origin. It’s just more PC clap trap. The fellows who collected these object were often the first people to explore and discover these sites after they had lain in ruin for hundreds or thousands of years.
What’s next? Should we return all of North America to the Indian tribes?
Our culture values antiquities far beyond what most others do. Look at the recent riots in Egypt where priceless antiquities were destroyed. It is very likely that if every artifact in every major American and European museum were returned to what ever pathetic third world country it came from that in 1,000 years the vast majority of them would be lost to the world.
Man up and believe in the West and our manifest destiny a bit more, eh. It is not for the PC guardians of treasures secured by better men than them to give them away based on their pathetic bleeding heart liberal politics.
I’m shocked that a so-called Conservative would support such nonsense.
Re-think and re-write.
During the war between the Greeks and the Turks, the Greeks stored ammunition in the Parthenon. It was blown up by Turkish artillery shells. It’s unlikely that the Parthenon frieze would have survived if it had not been removed to the British Museum.
My sympathies are certainly with the Greeks in that war for freedom. But they were still foolish enough to store their ammunition in the country’s single most important surviving monument, the Parthenon.
Of course, they were not alone in that. The Second World War destroyed many irreplaceable treasures, including many in London. And it was only with difficulty that Eisenhower restrained the British from bombing the Vatican and St. Peter’s.
London? Athens? What difference does it make? Given the current birth, death, and immigration rates, soon the only question will be where Europe’s Moslem overlords want the artifacts to be. A museum in Teheran or Cairo? A lime kiln? A shooting range?
Was this decided in a court of law? If so, who is the authority over two sovereign nations?
I hear crickets chirping at Yale...
Nam Vet
You have filled me with an unbearable guilt.
I have a couple of double handfuls of indian arrowheads and pottery shards that I picked up when I was a lad over the span of several years from various freshly plowed fields and road side ditches all over the state.
Who is it that I should “give them back” to?
Perhaps I should I just toss them into the woods somewhere?
Can you offer me any advice to ease my conscience?