Posted on 10/27/2018 4:54:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
It does not matter if Pompeii is damaged by visiting tourists, Professor Mary Beard has said, as she argues it would be "ghastly" to keep the public away from ancient ruins.
Prof Beard, a Cambridge classicist and leading authority on Roman history, said she was "culpably laid back" about the crumbling of houses and walls, insisting they must not be restricted to academics.
Arguing it is more important the ancient world engages the imagination of tourists, keeping them interested in history, she said: "The world isnt going to stop if Pompeii loses a house."
"It's had a good innings," she said. "And it wasn't very well-built in the first place."
Pompeii has been plagued with difficulties in recent years, with environmental issues and huge numbers of visitors impacting on its preservation.
But Prof Beard, who won the 2008 Wolfson History Prize for her book Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, said tourists could and should not be blamed for disrupting the 2000-year-old site...
"On cultural tourism, I'm terribly and perhaps culpably laid back. "Pompeii's job, actually, is to interest us in the ancient world. That's what it's there for.
"And the very idea that somehow it should be so carefully preserved that only a load of academics, rich people and television cameras are allowed actually there, while 10km down the road we build a little mock-up for the plebs, is ghastly.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Among the various pranks I’d play had I a time machine one would involve cave paintings. In the back of some cave I’d paint a picture of Giorgio Tsoukalos.
I wholeheartedly agree. I loved that vignette where she traced a particular Roman from his birthplace in N Africa to some places in Italy, all using the inscriptions he'd left.
The Romans had it goin' on.
The mehtod of preservation would probably be much like the efforts in the past -- except the preservationists would be using electric saws to cut whole walls out of the site and move them to a museum somewhere.
I too toured the Spruce Goose back thenit was in Long Beach, not L.A., the only place it ever flew. I may (not likely) may have actually seen it fly because where I lived looked out over Long Beach Harbor, but I was only 1 at the time so I can’t say for sure that I did. Howard Hughes kept it in a closed hanger after its one flight. After he died, the lease ran out on the hanger and the Goose saw the light of day again. It’s a shame that idiots would deface such a thing.
In vino veritas.
You both score excellent points. My synthesis:
1. Scientists first.
2. Documentarians second. (i.e., anything the scientists haven’t recorded or shown)
3. Preservationists third. Includes those who make a video or virtual reality tour of the site.
4. The public last. I just want the public included, not excluded.
No, its like the Elgin Marbles. These things would either have been lost to decay and time, looted by art dealers or destroyed by Muslims if they hadnt been either taken out or opened up to public visiting. Use can be controlled, but they need to be open.
I so love ancient coins.
Have a few.
Not very many.
It is so meaningful, to me, to touch and turn over in your hand something that existed in the Roman Empire, B.C.
For people who can’t go there, a YouTube channel called ProWalks has very good walking tours of Pompeii and other sites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaJPcKLyXLQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXkpFnF7ovY
I so love ancient coins.
Many years later I got involved with a group called Ancient Coins in Education which provided my Jr High students with ancient coins at a cost of $3 or $4 per coin. They then researched who the emperor/empress on the coin was. I hoped that touching something well over 1000 years old would gobsmack them as it gobsmacked me. For some it did.
Dang, wrong thread. “Ruined” it.
So you can ruin a ruin. Can you ruin a rune?
Rene Descartes walks into a bar, really thirsty and hankering for a cool beer. The bartender, seeing a person of such celebrated status walk in, thinks “I’ve got to set this guy up with something really nice!” So he says to Descartes, “Mr. Descartes, would you like a nice snifter of cognac or perhaps some whisky from Scotland? On the house?”
Descartes replies, “Oh, I think not”...and promptly disappears!
All things in this world are temporary. Pompeii is at the foot of an active volcano and will be buried again. Dig it up, document everything, then let the tourist come and see it while preserving the site as best as they can.
In just a few hours, it would seem.
COITO ERGO SUM
Seriously?!?
LMAO!
You’re not going to hear anyone say this about the Roman Coliseums and attached ruins.
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