When average folk steal stuff, they're "thieves," but when well-to-do folks steal stuff, it's "archeology."
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
168 points (92.4% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
26831 readers
3696 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Not stolen, the gems are just resting in the museums...
They just went on vacation in good ol' brittan
So what you're saying is that I should convince the British I'm an artifact to get a free vacation?
On behalf of all Britons I declare you an artefact.
If you can, you will get a good visit to the british museum at least.
Down with this sort of thing
I want so badly for someone to steal shit from the British Museum only to give it to its country of origin. Like oh yeah we found the Benin Bronzes but they gave them back to Nigeria. What are they gonna do loot them again?
Sly Cooper and the gang in
The Great British Break-In
The vast majority of the recovered items have come from Danish gemstone dealer Dr Ittai Gradel, who first alerted the museum to the thefts in 2021.
Is it me or does it make it sound like they have so much shit they didn't even realize they were gone?
Side note though, those look beautiful.
yeah. They aren't "displaying them for everyone around the world" they're hoarding them in basements and taking them out every once in a while.
Hot take but it's good that the British museum "stole" so much stuff. To quote everyone's favorite archeologist: 'This belongs in a museum.'
It's funny because I came here wanting to make a comment about how that aspect of Indiana Jones didn't really age well because it's emblematic of the West thinking we are custodians of the world.
It’s even more funny because there’s so much stuff that really doesn’t belong in museums if you talk to curators. The average person thinks a Picasso would go for millions and be on display anywhere; there are sketches Picasso did that only have value because Picasso drew them not because they’re good Picassos or moving art. This piece has a good perspective. If we hoarded everything ever we’d get to the point where future generations couldn’t make any new art because there would be no space.
I will never be able to actually touch one of these gems because no museum would let me. At the end of the day there’s not much difference between me flying across the world and standing in line with a bunch of people taking shitty selfies in front of a ton of protective glass to catch a glimpse of one side of this gem and seeing a virtual scan I can move around. Digitize it, send it back where it came from, and look toward new art.
These gems probably weren't even on display in the museum, just hoarded in storage forever.
the museum announced up to 2,000 objects from its storerooms were missing, stolen or damaged
Not only were they in storage, they don't even know what's missing lmao
I think there's a continuum here
Items being left in their context > Items in a museum in the area they originate from > Items in a museum in a foreign area > Items in private possession
I don't know enough about any particular thing to say that being in the british museums is an improvement, but I don't think we should take it for granted that a museum is the ideal place for historical artifacts
> items decaying due to not being cared for > items being actively destroyed because people don't care about them (Elgin Marbles moment, if they hadn't been stolen they would've been pulverised to make building materials and yet now Greece are crying for them back) > items being actively destroyed for political reasons
There are huge amounts of things in Western museums that were looted, stolen, or otherwise illegitimately acquired (Koh I Noor among other things), but equally a lot of stuff was a case of "eh we don't want it so if you're going to pay for it in cash we'll snap your hand off" - if you took something valued by the people then yeah you should give it back, but if you saved something unwanted from getting destroyed then I think the moral high ground is with the museum when they get a request for it to be returned
Not in YOUR museum though, unless it was loaned by the country it belongs to. And to say "oh it's safer here in our nice white museums" is nothing short of the continued patriarchal attitude that the British have towards other countries and races. You think it's safer with you? Too bad, it's not your call to make.
In so many cases that exact sentiment just turned out to be true though. How many ancient artifacts have been destroyed by political/religions extremists? How many more were lost due to neglect or because people tore them apart to use them as building materials? It probably wasn't right to take them at the time but man, am I glad they took them.
British people are also not good at preserving history. Almost every ruined castle was at one point torn down for building materials. It's probably the most common theme I read about on the little information plaques on them
You're just underscoring my argument. If the British were about to tear down Stonehenge for building a shopping mall and out of nowhere the Black Panther's stealth jet materialized to take the entire thing to the Wakanda national museum, I'd be absolutely fine with it.
Ah, you were talking about the British museum specifically, rather than Britain in general. I didn't read your first comment properly :)