Destroying Ancient Artifacts for Profit Is Nothing New
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 พ.ค. 2022
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In the last couple weeks, a tiktok account went viral for (allegedly) breaking a 3000 year old bowl for profit. Tragically, the destruction and looting of ancient artifacts is nothing new. Come learn with me about mummies, explosive archaeology, bone stealing, corpse medicine, and a criminal craft store.
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Sources:
Hoarding History: A Survey of Antiquity Looting and Black Market Trade by Alia Szopa
Time Crime: The Transnational Organization of Art and Antiquities Theft by David C. Lane, David G. Bromley, Robert D. Hicks, and John S. Mahoney
The antiquity art market: between legality and illegality by Laurence Massy
The Economics of Antiquities Looting and a Proposed Legal Alternative by Lisa J. Borodkin
The Museum as Sensescape: Western Sensibilities and Indigenous Artifacts by Constance Classen and David Howes
Looting and ‘Salvaging’: How the Wall, illegal digging and the antiquities trade are ravaging Palestinian cultural heritage by Adel H. Yahya
Billionaire's looted art still on display at Israel Museum by Ilan Ben Zion abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...
United States Files Civil Action To Forfeit Thousands Of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported By Hobby Lobby, US Department of Justice www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/...
Dispelling the Myths Around the Hobby Lobby Antiquities Case by Michael Press hyperallergic.com/390355/disp...
Hobby Lobby Purchased Thousands of Ancient Artifacts Smuggled Out of Iraq by Emma Green www.theatlantic.com/politics/...
Heinrich Schliemann Debunked by Spencer McDaniel talesoftimesforgotten.com/201...
Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern Literature and Culture by Richard Sugg
Touching the Deep Past: The Lure of Ancient Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Museums and Culture by Constance Classen
Archaeologists Are Just Beginning to Unearth the Mummies and Secrets of Saqqara by Jo Marchant www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
The theft of Saharan rock-art by Jeremy Keenan
Story time: my Prof hauled her students all the way through Madrid to a certain museum to show us a real Maya or Aztec calendar. And when we stood under the thing - which had the diameter of my living room - she said: "Beautiful, isn't it? But it's completely useless here because it got robbed by the Spanish ages ago and has no context anymore, we don't even know how it was oriented. All we know is that it's a calendar, but not how long is measured time or how or what kind of time." Stuck with me forever.
You could ask the surviving Maya, there are millions of them. Some still know this stuff. They might even have a clue if its Aztec. Their are also surviving Aztec but I don't know much about them.
No real loss. Aztecs were a shithole nation.
@@toxotorana I think "they" experts probably know if it's Mayan or Aztec... it's just op that doesn't remember.
which is fair.
@@SoulDevoured Not what I meant, ask the locals, they are a living culture. The experts dont treat these people like they are still connected to their past and so ignore them. I sincerely doubt Mayan Elders and appropriate cultural people would not know about an artifacts use and purpose.
@@toxotorana yeah I know what you meant.
But I also don't think that the experts wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Mayan and Aztec calendar.
So I believe the line of "it was either Mayan or Aztec" was OPs lapse in memory and not a general loss of knowledge.
As for how the calendars work... Wouldn't surprise me if that is something that's been lost.
Anything that destroys history drives me up a wall. Reading about libraries that were lost recently in Ukraine really gets to me. Hell, Kim Kardashian messing around with a Marilyn Monroe dress angered me more then I expected. So this cruelty towards Egyptian history is a real low.
Same I LOVE history a lot. I can't believe how little ppl care about the stories and lessons of the past and preserving them for the future. It makes me sad when I think abt it. There is Tons of amazing architecture in Ukraine especially from the Art Nouveau period that are absolutely breath taking. Not only is or planet dying or cultures and history is too, I dont understand how ppl cld care more about iPhones and money than their past and future. The USA is more willing to defend Taiwan than Ukraine because of money even tho both are non-Nato.
@@SaintShion I remember going through church parish records in England for a project. Lot of years were missing. Mostly due to the 1666 Great Fire of London. Lot of police records also got lost during the London Blitz. Nothing you can do about it beyond accept there will be gaps and that just sucks.
@@LadyTylerBioRodriguez There are no extant copies of Chinese histories prior to a certain date because very few books made it through a purge of Confucian scholars by one particular emperor. The gap problem is real.
Yeah, back in the 80's a US scenic railroad bought an American built steam locomotive that was in perfect operating condition from Cuba, they put it on display for a few years and then completely changed the appearance to that of the US version, despite the fact it was more interesting in it's original appearance, in fact a certain model train company based a large scale model of the locomotive in it's original appearance.
Don't get me started on the historical train station in Hamburg, where they are demolishing parts of the historical building despite the fact they could be in trouble for altering the appearance of the building's architecture drastically.
Or of course the great artifact purge (ancient weapons) that happened in japan after WWII
When I heard that she broke the zipper and how Marilyn didn't want anyone else to wear her dress it made me so angry!!!
I actually have a story similar to yours about the Goodwill painting, Kaz.
My brother used to be a potter so I got really into pottery and one day, I found one at an estate sale that I recognized the style of. I asked the sellers where it came from and they had no idea, saying their grandpa had had a big collection of what he called "lost pretty things" and he'd probably gotten it at an antique store. Thinking it was worthless trash, they sold this beautiful teacup with a five-strand braid handle and base to me for $10. The original price was $5 for other items like it, but they definitely doubled it because they saw I really liked it. I didn't care, it was priceless to me personally because I recognized it as a piece from an artist in a place very dear to my heart (I won't share details because they don't sell art anymore and like their privacy).
After getting home, I went to their old website and shot them an email, asking if I'd really found some of their (rare) work, and I sent them pictures including their artist mark on the bottom. They answered back a few days later saying it was actually part of a set of cups they'd made for their grandma almost thirty years ago, and when she died, everything she owned had been sold by her daughter (the artist's aunt) without allowing the family to come take precious items. The aunt moved to CA with all the money, and went bankrupt a few years later, losing whatever items were left. They said they were happy to see a cup survived and someone who could appreciate it now had it. They didn't ask for it back, but I offered it immediately in my next email, asking if I could bring it to them the next time I was in the area (I went to college a few hours away, which is not very far in Michigan). They offered money but I never took it, and instead they insisted on treating me to a nice dinner in my college town. I got to hand the cup back in person and they and their sister who'd also come absolutely burst into tears, pointing out a tiny chip in the handle. I apologized, thinking it was my fault, but they laughed and said it was their grandma's doing. Apparently she'd dropped this delicate little cup in her sink while washing it once, and it miraculously didn't shatter. It just lost a little piece that she glued back on, but had come off again in the ensuing thirty years and been lost.
It was no ancient artifact, but it was precious to someone. Just like historical items are precious to whole cultures. They can be shared and studied, but I believe artifacts should be handled by or with the permission of the people whose history they belong to.
Absolutely beautiful story, thank you so much for sharing! It's incredibly important that people understand the value of artifacts/items of value; they're not just some arbitrary "cool and important and valuable 💰💰💰" thing, they're an item that meant something to someone. It was with someone, perhaps for a moment, perhaps for decades, and it served a particular purpose to them. Recognizing this and understanding what something meant to someone is such a magical experience of human connection that deserves the utmost respect
Thank you for this
What a lovely story!!!
I went to a smash room where you get a crate of glass and ceramic stuff and just shatter it into pieces, and it was fun, but one striped jug in my crate seemed oddly special for some reason, so I kept it. After I took it home I did some research and it was an original piece of Pottery from an old Irish factory, and was almost 100 years old. I don't know if I could somehow feel it, travelled and time-heavy, but I'm glad I didn't smash that one.
Im glad you caught that, great find !!but that does make me somwhat worried as too how many extremely old and important may just be bought and sold off to places such as the one you went to too most likely for pennies just be smashed and destroyed without anyone even knowing thier value
Wow! I wonder if you can report this to someone who’d look into it?
All I could think of was if they accidentally use some Uranium glazed fiestaware.
Messing with antiques/artifacts aside - storing anything in clear acrylic/resin is a poor idea overall. They go yellow or otherwise discolor overtime.
It's one thing taking a flower from your own garden and preserving it in resin to make a pendant and another thing to store something of historical value in a casing that will degrade and make it hard to remove. There are correct ways to put something cool in resin. This just isn't it.
Thought the samething, like what is this? The archeological version of fast fashion?
@@nerdyrevelries422 EXACTLY! I have extremely limited experience with conservation (I’m an archaeology minor and I helped refit a ceramic plate once) so I’m certainly not an expert but I know that anything you do to an artifact is supposed to be reversible. When we refit a ceramic vessel (find sherds that came from the same vessel and rearticulate them to reconstruct the vessel), the glue we use can be dissolved without damaging the artifact. Even the catalog numbers you see written on artifacts are written over a layer of that glue and covered with another coat of it so that it can be removed without permanently altering the artifact.
Idk anything about resin but what I do know is that the materials archaeologists use in conservation have been tested and chosen specifically for the safety and integrity of the artifact. And we certainly don’t encase artifacts in resin. I can’t imagine it not damaging the artifacts.
@@SaintShion fast archeology 😭😭😭
Could it not just be sanded down again or does it discolour all the way though
If TikTok existed in the Victorian era I can totally picture an "Eat the Mummy Challenge".
"Jumping in a pool of mummies challenge"
All I need to do is bring up the words "Logan Paul Scandal" and I think the modern parallel immediately comes to mind
Please don't give them ideas
@@AamuAurora as king solomon said "there isnt anything new under the sun"
@@mack.n.chees3Logan Paul is embalmed
As a comic book nerd, I've been aware of the controversy over "slabbing" in the last decade or so--taking rare vintage comics and encasing them in acrylic slabs so they are (in theory) preserved forever, then grading them and basically trading them like baseball cards. (It's also done with new comics, but people are less upset about that.) The first time someone explained slabbing to me, my first response was, "But...then how do you read them?" The guy explaining it just stared at me, as if he couldn't comprehend why anyone would want to READ an old comic. As someone who had dug through bargain bins to find discontinued black-and-white magazines featuring eight-page stories about an obscure favorite character from before I was born, I just stared back.
Incidentally, the last comic convention I went to had decade-old slabs for sale, and they looked like hot garbage. Historical preservation, my ass.
I can only imagine how much worse it would be to do that with cultural objects that are hundreds or thousands of years old. I just walked past the slabs at the con with a disgusted look on my face; some of what you described in this video made me want to do violence. 👿
Im not even into comics- though i want to be- but that sounds literally terrible? How are you preserving something by making most of it unreadable? Maybe I just have a misunderstanding of what slabbing actually is, the first time im ever hearing of it is in this comment- but that sounds so horrible??? People really will go at any length to “preserve” something just for the aesthetics of it. Thats terrible, genuinely???
He has a point though.
People don't even read modern American comic books anymore, would you really have cared for the contents of that particular comic book if it wasn't encased in a piece of plastic to prop up an artificially inflated collector's market?
@@Jimpiedepimpie I mean, yeah. I’m now actually getting into comics and I think they’re pretty rad. Now the concept only upsets me more. Someone poured time and effort into this with the intention to be read and enjoyed. I’m an artist myself and I can’t say I’d be too thrilled if something I made was “preserved” in a way that made most of it completely unreadable. Besides, there are ways to preserve them without ultimately ruining them like what slabs do. Its just really gross to me.
As a baseball card collector, I hate slabs too. Part of the amazing part of owning a card that’s 75 or 100 years old etc is feeling the stock, smelling the age, interacting with history. With a slab it’s like I’m looking at something in a museum, it’s really nice to look at but not much more. Unfortunately so many assholes make fake cards/trim the edges/alter them that I have to use a slabbed card to “ensure” it’s authentic. But I can’t image the frustration when it comes to a comic book. It must be 100% worse
could they not gently disassemble it, laminate each page separately, then reassemble it???? then it's more protected, and still readable??????
(sorry if I sound completely uninformed, I just don't understand the point of turning a perfectly legible and irreplaceable into an unreadable book)
OMG I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that Indus valley pottery get deliberately dropped like that. I studied Harrapan culture as part of my Anthropology and Archelogy classes and even from a small paper for it. I use to handle Yayoi pottery and Kofun pottery and you better believe we handle it with cotton gloves and gingerly because once they are destroyed they are gone forever. It's not like anyone making more of it...it's finite. It's all of mankind heritage and it's gone.
I've been to the Rietberg museum in Zurich years ago but I'll never forget the awe I felt when I looked at the Chinese ceramics and porcelain collection, the oldest pieces were thousands of years old, it's incredible to look at something an actual person made with their own hands that lived in a past so far removed we barely know anything about it. I mean, the Chinese have found pottery that's 20,000 years old, isn't that insane.
It's always way more interesting when actual modern egyptians work on excavating ancient egyptian tombs. They get to often learn that many of the things they do today were done very similarly by their ancestors thousands of years ago and is a point of cultural pride for them.
I get really excited when I start a documentary and the scientists/ researchers are from the same culture they are researching ♥️
@@sarahsarahsarah9093 exactly! They're so much more excited and emotional about it, there was a doc on Netflix about Egyptian archeologists excavating a temple and they spoke about the family in the tomb in such a personal way, like they were excavating an old friend rather than people from thousands of years ago. It brings history to life in a really special way.
And I always feel a bit icky when I see the people native to that area only doing the heavy manual labor.
@@sarahsarahsarah9093 I mean that depends, a lot of them will feel cultural pride as well. With the doc I mentioned, one of the laborers was interviewed and he talked about how the way he farms is almost the same as the way ancient egyptians did it and how he felt a connection because of that.
reminds me of when egyptian workers dug up a wooden statue who looked just like the supervisor of their city (forgot his actual role) and they made a joke about it
its so sweet
There was also that monster Giuseppe Ferlini, who dynamited the ancient pyramids of Ethiopia just to check if there was anything of value inside!!!!
Oh God, that asshole. Found out about him in a rabbit hole about pyramids. Just reading the Wikipedia article about what he did boiled my blood.
Oh god don't even get people started on Giuseppe. He is the archetypical raider.
He's like an Italian Schliemann
Me and all my homies hate Giuseppe
That shit pisses me off so much like was he not thinking????
As a former mold maker/prepper: Replicas are a great way to tell stories. I got a really cool museum grade replica (meaning that with just visual inspection you won't be able to tell the difference, even for experts) of a small egyptian pendant or luck charm as a goodbye gift because the company I worked at was non-profit and the government basically pulled support which meant we had to close down. I got to handle a couple of really cool things (mostly contemporary art) and the molds in storage there would be stuff like full size t-rex and triceratops skulls.
Before watching this I was like, you know, there's very little that someone could do with my corpse after my death that would upset me during my life, considering that then I'd be dead and would hardly mind, but 'after being painstakingly and carefully preserved by skilled people so that I could last for millennia and then being eaten by a rich person' has definitely made the list.
I'm very late to the comment, but being turned into paint is also up there.
@@lorefist3795 personally being turned into paint sounds great to me as an artist but I still do despise the thought of being used to create art I'd disagree with or the concept of being eaten by some rich asshole
@@lovelydemon7452 my biggest fear about being turned into to paint is the idea of just sitting there. Unused. Because it came out the wrong shade of red or something.
@lorefist3795 terrible😅
We need a WHOLE SERIES in your 'little guys' interactions 😊😊😊
My first thought was that the bowl was fake. I never imagined anyone would think it was real.
But you bring up a good point. If they’re selling fragment to multiply profits, who’s to say they aren’t destroying actual artifacts?
I can't imagine they WOULDN'T do that to maximize profits. After all they are not selling a couple things on a Sunday fair, they are selling in industrial quantities.
An issue there is that an intact artifact costs a whole hell of a lot more than a collection of pottery sherds. If their objective is to make money it just doesn't seem like it would be cost effective to destroy a valuable, rare intact artifact as opposed to using broken sherds which you can literally pick up off the ground in some places.
@@moseyburns1614 "Rare" doesn't always mean there's only, like, two of something; it's my understanding that some styles of artifact, like representative examples of certain ancient pottery, number in the tens of thousands. The theory may be, "There are five thousand pre-Common Era bowls like this gathering dust in some warehouse the Smithsonian rents in Illinois. Who's gonna miss this one?" That's not really the point, but to an opportunist, any reason they give for smashing an artifact is just an excuse anyway.
If they were unscrupulous enough to destroy rare and valuable (ie expensive) artifacts they're probably unscrupulous enough to just break cheaper modern pots and just lie about it.
.... because an intact bowl of pottery from 3000 years ago is SO rare. Most archaeological digs do NOT find intact pottery like that. They find little tiny bits of pottery, and consider themselves lucky. It would be FAR more lucrative to sell the entire pot than to shatter it and sell the bits. It's not an 8 ball of cocaine, where you can get more money by selling it in pieces.
I see an account on Instagram all the time of someone taking antique frames, spray painting them neon and selling them at extreme prices. If anyone criticises them ruining rare antique frames they say people are stumping their “creativity”. They complain constantly at the price of the antique frames that they buy to “upcycle” when they could use modern frames that have antique styles. Much less extreme than the instances in the video but it just makes me annoyed.
That’s pretty fucked up
That is definitely still pretty dang bad
i’m honestly curious if they even make a profit when they sell a piece. unless the artist themselves is already well known, idk how much value bright colored paint can really add to an antique…
Wow thats crazy! That lessens their value sooo much! When Im not painting my own pieces my husband and I like to paint quotes, stylized words or graffiti art over screen printed canvases (commercial ones) to recycle. I go to thrift shops or i go rich ppl areas cuz in my state they put their unwanted stuff on the curb for ppl to pick up and Ive gotten super nice stuff that way (i even got a brand new roomba once)! Sometimes I find real paintings made by local ppl and I always keep them as is. I respect the time they took to make the piece. I either clean them to re-sell or keep them.
@@not.samcooke You'd be surprised what ppl will buy. I sale my art pieces and the easiest to sale are just stylized wording or quotes over commercial screen printed canvases (like the ones from Ikea but I get them at thrift shops) live laugh love moms buy those up. I've also seen many different artist on Instagram sell the same painting over and over just in different colors (like a skull w Louis Vuitton branding) for thousands of dollars each.
The kind of person who would say, "Who cares? It's just stuff!" Is often the same kind of person who would gun someone down for stealing their TV.
As an Egyptian, every day I lament the fact that our stuff gets stolen, got stolen, appropriated, destroyed. All of that. Thank you for talking about this and - especially since even the British colonization of Egypt ended only fairly recently. Hearing about Algeria also made me sick. SWANA people get no break when it comes to looting, truly.
Your people sell it!! Can’t put all the blame on a group of people, The egyptian people do not help the issue, They actively helped the looting and selling,
"Our stuff". Who's stuff? Like you said. Egypt was only created in the last century
@@MagicBrianTricks What the hell are you saying lol?? Egypt has been a civilization since B.C so I have no idea what you're on?
@@pastelara4242 There has been civilizations in what we call Egypt for thousands of years yes. The Egyptian country we know today is fairly new. I'm all for stopping illegal activities that remove artifacts from Egypt now, but that can't be compared to the legal removal of artifacts in now long extinct states
@Morgan 1081 Bro, just because it wasn't "a country" yet, doesn't make it an less of that person's culture or that people's history. Like, Native American history is still part of American history, even though most of our tribes existed and lived long before the founding of America
Almost the exact same thing happens with natural specimens too! Museums and people collect rare animals from underdeveloped places until there are none left. But instead of no longer having an artifact to study, the species is just driven extinct.
Great video!
awesome to see you here @Atlas Pro ! big fan of both of you, cool to see the ‘crossover’ hahah😁
living and nonliving. I recall a 1800s paleontologist paying poor people in the middle east for "each dinosaur fossil they find" and discovered that they were breaking the fossils into smaller pieces for higher profits. To this day people severely overestimate how many fossils we've actually found and almost none are complete skeletons. And few could even begin to guess at how many have been found and lost.
The history of history is as profoundly infuriating as it is fascinating.
I grew up with blue macaws hanging out in my backyard, i was a blue macaw in a school play once, i gave a blue macaw wood keychain to my first love overall but nowadays due to illegal hunting, trafficking and overall environment destruction blue macaws are under the risk of extinction. While i do love myself few things are as surreally Wrong as knowing that i will outlive an entire species...
@@annacarollina7703 that's why I love the movie Rio it brings light to Blue Macaws and tropical birds in general and how poaching has affected their wildlife and the rainforest ecosystem. It sheds light on the conservationists who are trying to protect them and repopulate the rainforests 💕
There's a reason I have only insects I found already dead in my personal collection, and I spread uncommon or even endangered native plant seeds to nearby suitable areas when I find dried seed pods. I will collect bones, only when they've clearly been there for a long time and aren't human (because that's important to study to see if it's someone missing or archaeologically significant). There's a specific way that things should be collected if you're going to do so.
This is also an issue in paleontology too. It always makes me annoyed or upset when I hear about some rich person buying a complete dinosaur skull fossil or smth similar. Like how selfish do you have to be to think its ok to put it up in a corner of your house for guests to gawk at, when actual scientists who devote their lives to understanding them for everyone could actually do something meaningful with them. Any rich person who has artifacts or the like on display privately rather than donating them to a museum or repatriating them makes me angry. They have enough wealth to know better; so much they think they actually deserve it.
Its crazy cause theyre so rich they could get an artist to make a replica, or a 3d print of it, but their egos are so big it has to be the "real" one
this stuff in Archeology is very sad of course and anger inducing, but something about fossils makes me even more mad. Its not human made. its made by a very specific amount of events and earthly materials having a reaction over a ridiculous amount of time. it is quite literally a natural lottery, becaude the animal had to die a very specific way for it to happen. Who knows how many gone species there are because they were never fossilized due to living in a spot where the sediment and weather over time just causes them to decompose normally. Its insane what actually has to happen for the fossil itself to form, so when some rich dude just thinks he can buy it and put it in his house like a pretty rock, it makes me so mad.. cultural artifacts of anykind of course too but fossils specifically are just so bewildering to me
@@ghoulishtoad Exactly 💯
And the saddest part is a lot of poor people find, partiality destroy and sell those fossils to rich tourists in their countries to survive. It's a really complex problem that steams out taking advantage of people in poor areas, sometimes areas that are in constant war, to scavenge those fossils to rich people to buy like it's nothing. Truly sickening.
@@lordarthur2165 Yeah. Unfortunately most pf the shitty things rich people do have a LOT of negative ripple effects. Especially on lower classes that often don't have the luxury to choose another option 😔
This reminded me of the foreigners in Mexico climbing Chichén Itzá even though everyone is warned not to do that because it is fragile and just out of respect. It's considered a sacred place.
Many tourists have no respect for any sacred land tradition or culture they just want a good meme or selfie. I know some do but its rare. I wouldnt dare even consider climbing a sacred sight.
Something very precious to me is an old peanut butter jar, with rusted lid and barely there label, filled with my grandmother's seashell collection. I added a few of my own and have it displayed behind a glass dome and gold base. Valued artifacts don't have to be from far away. Sometimes just having a simple memento means so much.
thats beautiful... thank you for sharing
If someone ever tries to say "Who cares about history and artifacts?" to me then I'd probably say something like "Oh, so you wouldn't mind if somebody dynamited the Statue of Liberty then?"
Only really applies if they're American, and even then I doubt it'd work on all Americans.
That’s for Americans to decide, and I would only be outraged by it if a colonial foreign power did it.
I wouldn't really mind if someone dynamited the statue of liberty but the theft of ancient artifacts still upsets me...I just don't like my country very much lmao
Man in the high castle has entered the chat
Maybe instead ask how they would feel if someone unearthed and ate their grandma's body. Much more personal.
Theres a story I find really interesting about the Pre-Raphaelites. A few of them had met for tea (I think at Byrne-Jones' house) and someone pointed out the mummy brown and mentioned its origin. He was horrified having not realised and made the party stop to hold a funeral for the paint tube.
I love that.
Artists will be artists.
That's so considerate 🥰
Hey, better late than never!
@@marieroberts5458 to be fair, they already had a funeral a couple thousand years ago :D
The painting at goodwill part really hit home for me. My dad told me of a decorative family sword he had that’s been with our family for a really long time. It’s engraved with the family name and gold and silver and with a few semi precious stones along the hilt. He told me when we was in his 20s he was so poor that he sold it so he could pay rent - and he got a bunch of money for it. But my dad never told my grandpa he did that, even before he died, he was too ashamed to. I wonder where that thing is sometimes, if it’s in someone’s house that has no idea where it came from and how much it meant to the family, probably not even knowing the country it came from. I used to tell my dad that I’d get it back for him someday, when I was a really little kid lol. When I tell people about it it’s kinda odd - people get really sad about my families long lost Viking sword but don’t get upset about anything taken from poc cultures. I mean the reason is obvious but - thats the double standard in the flesh!
A viking sword wouldn't have precious stones in it.
@@andrewfornes5320 hey man don't stomp on some kids fantasy lol.
@@andrewfornes5320 I mean, they would have acces to it, since the vikings had a trade route to Constantinopel and Constantinopel had rich trade flowing with the arab and asian communities.
@@andrewfornes5320 Well they wouldn’t be rubies or sapphires, but vikings definetly used precious stones like carnelian
The main difference is that he sold it. The MAJORITY of the items from POC is that it was taken away/ stolen/ looted, whatever you want to call it.
If their descendants would want to claim it back, I guarantee that will cause dome riot and most likely will not be returned.
However, you my dear, I would encourage to see if you can find the sword and try to find an imagery of said sword, in photo's, drawings or better paintings which would connect it to your family. Am highly curious of said sword
I still think the archeological destruction that hurt me the most when I learned about it was the loss of the (so-far) only known intact macchuitl.
The macchuitl was an aztec weapon you've probably seen before, it's quite iconic. It's made of wood in the shape of a long rectangle with small blades of obsidian on the sides. Supposedly these things were so sharp and deadly that they could decapitated a horse if the warrior was strong enough.
Since they were made of wood they obviously disintegrated quickly and nowadays only fragments of macchuitls can be found.
The only known (as of now) FULLY INTACT macchuitl was (of course) in a spanish museum and the only evidence of it actually existing was a photograph taken of it displayed with samurai armour and a sheild from africa (can't remember which region). The museum was burned down in the 1860s and numerous artifacts were destroyed along with the mostly wooden macchuitl.
So the only intact pre-colombian macchuitl was destroyed in a fire in a Spanish museum and nowadays archaeologists can only find fragments of ancient macchuitls.
Fuck, that's goddamn awful
Those bronze horses Napoleon took from Venice had already been looted from Constantinople by the Venetians during the fourth crusade. That's how they ended up with the large collars on their necks as they didn't fit in the Venetian ships intact and had to be decapitated for travel then reassembled in Venice, when the soldering left unsightly seams the collars were added to cover them. Those horses have quite the history of looting.
That light suit combo is absolutely delightful!
I would honestly love it if Kaz made a lookbook video lol. always rocking great outfits
My mouth genuinely DROPPED when the smashed the pottery in the intro. That's HEARTBREAKING.
My high school had a mummy. someone bought it in the early 20th century and it was found decades later in the basement 😳
im colombian and here we have a museum that shows different types of precolombian gold sculptures, ornaments and such, when i was young i figured that since they came from my own country, i t was logical to asume every country had a museum that was just about their culture. When i grew up a bit more i noticed a lot of virtual tours and brochures of different european museums and galleries had african and south american artifacts, i was shocked and my mom had to explain that colonialism wasnt only about slaving and taking resourses, but also stealing our culture. That made my 7yo self shake with anger lmao
Your assuming that getting stuff from foreign countries was done by some evil colonialist.
Before the era of BBC documentaries and Netflix the only way to find out about foreign countries and civilisations was by buying exhibits of clothing, art and artifacts and showing them off. Thats also why they would pay people to come over and set up 'exhibit' villages to display lifestyle and artifacts in their natural setting.
Everybody gets upset about the idea of human zoos these days, mostly because it turned into a chance for the local lowlives to gawp at foreigners and throw stuff but back in the day it was a valuable educational resource.
Theres also great stories of how much the exhibits knew how to play the game and get some travel stories to exotic places of their own, Buffalo Bills wild west show was famous for the various Lakota doing their day job in the village and arena shows then putting on a suit and going off to the pub or parties in the evening.
Museums tended to be set up by people who these days would be though of as philanthropist and multi-cultural its just that the context of whats acceptable has changed.
I don't think this is a especially European thing to do. Victors always took stuff from defeated enemies.
@@Mumbamumba europeans were stealing, destroying, and gawking at the history and artifacts of people who could not fight back. its like an adult kicking a kid and stealing their house key, its not two people on a level playing field. theres just a huge rift between your example and pillaging bc the megarich want something no one else can have.
As an American, I’m now trying to think of any museums in my country that focus on our own history and culture, and it’s honestly difficult to come up with anything. Just about all the Natural History museums I’ve been to has antiquity from far off ‘exotic’ cultures. The only more local museums that I can think of are focused on the history of subjects like hunting, farming, Abraham Lincoln, some family from the 19th century, or windmills - which is still interesting in its own right, but not quite as fascinating as Ancient African pottery or a whole T-Rex skeleton.
@@iridescentaurora268 I think natural history can have a pass since (I'd hope at least) it focuses on mostly the study of animals and nature in general.
I have kind of a similar story about people returning items long-lost, though different.
I write for a newspaper so my name is out in the paper quite a bit. Last fall, a reader in the area sent me a message asking if I knew a Robert or Bobby who shared my same last name. He had a photo print of a young boy called Bobby C. taken by a well-known photographer back in the 1950s in the area where most of my family lived. He'd bought it in a bundle of prints sold at the photographer's estate sale years ago and just forgot about it. He recognized the last name in the paper and wondered if I wanted it. I'd never heard the name, but found out from my father that was his cousin who died in Vietnam at 17 years old. That's why the family doesn't talk about him much, because he was so young and it was so long ago. But his sister is still alive and hadn't seen this photo of her brother before. She was so thrilled to find something of him surviving to this day.
So yeah, a person's kindness and willingness to let go of something they'd collected years ago helped my father's cousin find its way to someone who truly loved it.
That's really nice.
Imagine being rich in ancient Egypt, enough so that you could be mummified. Now Imagine if they were told, "we're gonna turn you into a mummy, and in 3000 years, rich people are gonna dig you up and eat you!"
Eat the rich ❤
They weren’t all rich necessarily. Actually because of the salt and dryness of the desert you can mummify a body by burying it out in the desert deep enough to where scavenger animals won’t get to it (so a lot of Poot made it to be mummies because they were buried in a very poor way). You can also preserve bodies in bogs and I believe some particularly cold places
@@neverendinglute3125Bla Bla Bla bogs, Permafrost. OP meant wealthy rulers not some poor bog person that fell off his horse.
@@BobbsVegine-eg3xz one bog mummy they recovered was royalty. Happened in like Scotland I think, it seems they tortured the guy to death as a sacrifice to have a good harvest or something
@@neverendinglute3125 lol. Right right. Seen many of those documentary. Many modern hoax to prove something. Similar to all the Neanderthal findings. All fake Bs
When my wife and I were in Egypt, we went into one of the small villages outside of The Valley of Kings where the local villagers carve alabaster and basalt replicas of tomb artifacts. They were trying to hard sell us on a bunch of stuff, and finally they said “come to the back room, to see the pieces carved by my grandfather” which I think is probably code for “actual stolen tomb relics.” He had this truly gorgeous limestone rams head which we very nearly bought, ngl. When we left Egypt we had to show special paperwork for the basalt statue of Horus and small Coptic jars we did buy, certifying that they were in fact made by a village shop. The certification, hilariously, comes from the same exact guys who invited us into the back room. Like many things in Egypt, it’s a system designed with a little wink wink built in to grease the wheels of the black market
the destruction of troy's archeological sites, the hobby lobby crimes, the freaking bone witches... all of these fill me with such a weird mixed sense of anger and dread, like ????? wtf is even all of this. the one major anxiety that I have about death is what will happen to my body after I die, and I think you hit it on the head with this vid. super informative and definitely gonna become one of my fave things to rewatch.
There's laws that control people's dead bodies and funeral preferences. I was pretty angry I couldn't give my dad the cremation pyre and flaming arrows he deserved. There's only one state that allows funeral pyres and it's a waiting list, they only do 7 a year? Why? They claim it's the fumes which is ridiculous, the enbalming fluid pumped into people's bodies to biodegrade in the earth is worse.
Corpses aren't being pumped with embalming fluid when buried, you got a good meth hookup! they are left to decompose in the coffin.
source: buried my sister
@@MisstressMourtisha in reality it's not about fumes its just another result of white supremacy, I fucking hate the US funeral rites laws. A lot of the restrictions are just because it's not a common part of our culture anymore.
Oh look TH-cam shadow banned all the comments so I only see mine 🙄
@@MisstressMourtisha Yeah, it says "4 comments", but I only see your two? What did the other two comments say that YT decided they should be banned?
"Calvert published a huge callout article exposing Schliemann to try and get everyone to cancel him." I love the way this is phrased like a piece of tumblr drama. People never change.
NIGHT IN DRACULA'S CASTLE CHALLENGE - GONE WRONG GONE SEXUAL!?!
"Canceling" is definitely as old as socializing is, definitely older than our entire species is. How can large, complex social groups of individuals coexist *without* conflicts and wanting to shut down what someone else is doing sometimes? It's not something only liberals or conservatives invented recently!
@@aste4949 Caveman, 30,000 BC: "No hunting with us today. You are SO canceled, brah."
@@squamish4244 Yup, social expectations, customs, social pressure, positive and negative reinforcement, consequences, positive and negative punishments, and exiling are all well-documented amongst many if not mody social mammalian species. Expecially amongst our primate relatives and of course human cultures as well. Hunter-gatherers would usually not _need_ unbearable Asshole McJerkface, Prissy Gossipbitch, or Idiot Nearly-Killed-Us-All-AGAIN to survive, and since hunter-gatherer societies aren't tied to a single plot of land you didn't have to deal with such people having farmland or a market stall you had to walk past to go to church every Sunday or to get balcksmith tools from or whatever.
Plus most hunter-gatherer societies' foods come from gathering, not hunting. And the "men hunt women gather" is overly simplified on top of that- many people would pitch in on a bit of both, and there have always been more genders than just men and women. The idea that women were permanently strapped to babies and little kids and thus couldn't _possibly_ ever do _any_ hunting (or fishing) has always been BS. Alloparenting by the whole tribe, the elders who were too old to hunt and gather much, the men not currently away hunting larger game, plus sharing nursing of infants, was all completely normal for hundreds of thousands of years up until _very_ recently. Women could fish, and hunt and trap small and mid-sized game, men would help gather non-meat food as well as prized things like honey. "We found burials with weapons and hunting gear in it this OBVIOUSLY couldn't POSSIBLY have been a woman-wait DNA testing said what?" is increasingly comon.
@@aste4949 I remember when Roseanne Barr got "canceled", and a friend told me about it in passing. I asked him why someone would shoot Roseanne. He looked really confused, and explained it was a Twitter thing.
My response was, "Oh. Where I come from that word means something really different."
This video was a hard watch but I appreciate you making it. I’m peruvian and grew up there most of my life, my mom always has had a personal passion for anthropology so I was raised knowing a lot about our ancient cultures and civilizations and going to museums. Later in life my mom told me of a friend of hers that worked in textile restoration, and how she had to quit her job at the “Museo de Oro” in Lima because they would receive crudely packaged bundles of of ancient textiles from unknown sources and would simply throw away anything that was significantly damaged or tattered. Many private museums work like this and will only preserve what they think will attract the public.
This is not to mention the hundreds of not thousands of examples of ancient erotic pottery depicting sex and even homosexuality that were destroyed by the Catholic Church.
As a queer man it was hard growing up in a culture that had the closed mindedness of the church imposed on it by colonization, only to later find out that many civilizations including the Incas had record of homosexuality and “third genders” (most notably Qariwarmis).
Exactly this! I am Peruvian Too, “Hola bro”, our country is so full of relics and tectiles and potteries of dozens of kingdoms and empires. No country in the continent match the quantity of artifacts we hold and yet sooooo much is lost forever, the Spanish imperialists, the church, the colonial collectors, the modern huaqueros and treasure hunters, It struck a my heart with grief.
Our more than 5 000 years of precious culture destroyed by greed and ignorance.
Great video! As a New Orleanian, I can’t stress enough that Darling did NOT see a worker destroying graves. Bones coming up in New Orleans cemeteries does occasionally happen but not with the frequency implied in this video. There also isn’t an issue in town with “frat boys breaking into cemeteries”. Frat boys suck, but quoting Darling’s lies on the situation upset me. We aren’t digging up bodies to bury more in our cemeteries.
Anypoo. Love your videos! Thanks for another wonderful one!
As an aspiring archeologist, I think its so important to learn from our problematic and harmful history and to do everything we can to respect people and their cultures, no matter location or time period
Ppippppppppppppppppp
100% same.
I'm graduating Library Science, already work on the field and surely share the same feelings. Everything about information hoarding, manipulation, conservation malpractice, and many other misdeeds that we can easily point out from centuries before, actually still plagues the field to this day. These things call for extremely nuanced understandings from professionals themselves, and I'm glad to see specialists from other fields report the same need for respectful approaches.
You might like Jon Levi (compass icon). I'm fascinated with his work.
It's on TH-cam
Wow I hated hobby lobby already for taking away my bc coverage, now I find out about this?! Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Kaz. All the more reason to never go into one of their stores
there are also homophobic
@@luca_universe yeah, most christian organizations and companies are. I was taking that as already implied, so my apologies for not including it
I refuse to shop there. You can't always make the most ethical choice, but in this case it's a craft store so there's no good reason to buy anything there.
I get most of my art supplies online now. I did go to Michaels, but the one near me is almost completely baron. They got nada.
Never been in there never will
I really apreciate what you did for that artist giving back his art. My great grandfather was an artist but most of his art was lost during the Spanish civil war and all we have is a couple of post cards. We will never know whether his art got destroyed or if it's hanging on a random person's house. I am an artist myself and my grandma always insists on keeping everything I paint even sketches that I would throwaway because she doesn't have any of her father's mementos.
As a member of the “forgotten people” or the boriquen people of Puerto Rico I’d say the extreme loss of history is not only devastating for history as a whole but a complete travesty to the people and deep cultures completely lost to history. My people helping create entire words in Spanish. Ways of dancing, ways of cooking, bathing, fishing, even traveling. And yet for years I had to rage with teachers that we even existed. My great grandmothers very existence was considered “impossible “ as for decades we were told we had literally all died. And with her death much of my familial history, my cultural history that has been almost entirely forgotten, were lost to time. This was furthered with. My grandmothers and great aunts deaths. I have pictures of people I do not know, I have clothes and bags of people who I don’t know existed, my past my culture has been eradicated and I can see the people it’s taken from me.
I will always hate the destruction of culture, or any type it ruins history but it completely destroys cultural pasts, families pasts.
You are Taino Indian? I have videos are the current generation in Puerto Rico.What the Spanish did was indeed inhumane and sick, but that is no surprise.
@cocoaorange1 I am mixed my taino heritage is thus a bit muddy however my grandmother was fully taino she was entirely immersed in her culture and my great grandmother also spoke a very very historic type of spanish that came from the mix of taino and traditional spanish she was also fully taino. So my relation to what little culture is left is very very strong but as elders continue to die we lose more and more fully taino people and we lose massive amounts of culture so it's very difficult.
Blood quanta is a colonial invention that was created to destroy our peoples. You have every right to claim your culture.
This is true of my ex boyfriend! His father grew up in the mountains and his grandparents were Taino. He always spoke to me so vividly of that half of his heritage I was shocked when I visited PR last spring and discovered so much public discourse that they were long gone. My exes father even sung songs in the language to him as a little boy! "Long gone" my butt, but it sure does help reinforce the legitimacy of US colonization.
@@JO-io6ow yeah to me it’s very heart breaking especially because statistically most Puerto Ricans are over half indigenous our blood hasn’t disappeared and despite the effort America hasn’t rid us of our culture yet. But yeah it’s not fun that so many people specifically tour guides and educators in Puerto Rico continue to perpetuate the belief that we no longer exist.
Little advice for Jon and his bones, if you resort to saying "there's no law against it" to protect your interests, you fucked up. If you have to defend your hobby by appealing to the technical legality of it, you're into some weird shit.
is something wrong with weird shit?
@@jestemzerem3030 No. But there's a difference between weird hobbies and "I swear it's not illegal" kind of weird.
@@panqueque445 yes, im talking about "I swear it's not illegal". is there something wrong with it?
@@jestemzerem3030 Yes. If you are stealing human bones, without the relative's permission but it just happens to be a legal loophole that makes it "technically legal" to do, yes. There is a problem. Stop defending garbage like this. I'd like to see how you'd react if this guy makes your grandma's skull into a bong and you can't do shit because it's legal.
@@jestemzerem3030 its not so much that his hobby is weird but that its potentially immoral. collecting animal bones may be weird to a lot of people, but its usually not immoral. collecting human bones is one thing, but being unable to prove that you sourced them ethically and admitting that many of them came from countries who export a lot of grave-robbed human bones is another
I never knew that mummies were used to make paints. As an indigenious american, i know many tribes are trying to get their sacred artifacts back from private collectors and museums. Thanks for the educational video Kaz. It made my work day go by faster.
Is working in casinos tough work?
@@owenlindkvist5355 is looking like a glow in the dark corpse hard work?
@@stripedpolkadots8692 At least you tried at provided a rebuttal of some fashion.
@@owenlindkvist5355 Buddy you copied and pasted this comment from another video you tried to trigger people. I think you have too much free time…
@@geomeopeoleo1740 Incorrect. And if you're going to make a claim like that, I think it more describes you as the person with an abundance of time yet nothing constructive to do with it.
I will never EVER get over the hobby lobby smuggling scandal like- what the actual fuck
The "personal museum" thing reminds me of a project one of my dad's friends (who is also the owner of Stylophone) was working on a few years ago, called "Reliquary" or something, which were acrylic blocks containing fragments of authentic film-props (the only one I remember was a piece of the Xenomorph puppet from the original Alien).
I don't know what the reception of them was, but even when I first heard of it, I thought it was _kinda_ stupid to cut up well-known film props.
my favourite historical “discovery” of the past few years is when linguists “recreated” a mummy’s voice w a 3D printer. please look it up, it will not disappoint
thank you for reminding me of this, truly the best vid in the world
As an Irish person we have many stories here of extremely valuable in ancient artifacts that were found on our land and tell are history being taking away over seas to be put into the hands of people that "could truly understand it" so yes it does hurt seeing your own history being ripped from you and also being told that you were too stupid for it anyway. I hate that people also give me passion for this pain but not to other countries and cultures like me or cry about paintings not being in the right places but then ignore the actual human bodies of people with family and a home they loved being kepted away by people that argued that they weren't even human on top of denying then rest.
Because of my selfish want for all my history to be back home to be studied by us, having the people of the area actually asked what is they know and to also deny the people that don't actually care about us to never lay their hands on it again I also want every other countries and culture to have what is there's back in their arms. You can't tell me anything to make me not see the overwhelmed good it could bring and most of the "reasons" not too is just saying a countries too stupid and poor like we from those countries can't yell at our governments and institutions if we think they aren't doing enough.
I still remember being in art class watching an Irish documentary talking about golden artifacts that showed great insight to pre christian Ireland and how we gave offerings to our deities that was almost taken away to england because of the extremely weird laws around artifacts at the time and also how the poor woman that found it most likely had to lie from the start about how she found them because is was on the beaches of her bosses private land so it would call into questioning as too what she was doing at work aka if she didn't lie saying she was off her English bosses land not only would it be in England never to be seen again but also she might of been prosecuted for finding her own history of her village. I want anyone bothering to read this to think about that for a second. Not only did Irish lawyers and historians have to make extreme loopholes in the English laws of the time to keep our artifacts in our country here but also the person who we should thank for this amazing insight to a history not written life could of been forever ruined for even being the finder of it whish is why we have no insight on who she is because she was so scared of the rich above her.
Yes day to day I am far more upset and worried over the fact my health care isn't good, that my government is doing little to help queer people in more everyday life, that I can't get a home and just worries of my future but it is salt in an already very salty wound to here of my history that I think is beautiful being lost and disrespected.
Why is is so hard for people to understand you don't want things in the hands of people that don't even respect you as human?????? I could say stronger things about these people and I will keep them too myself because I'm very mad and know those people are annoying as fuck already so I don't want to step more on those pathetic shiny glass toes they have for more of their awful talking
The atrocities that the English did to the Irish are abhorrible. They allowed famine happen to a people they OWNED. They put the Irish beneath them in mass publications and propaganda as ANIMALS (there are MANY quotes of this word). They lived a life imposed on them that barely kept them housed, fed, and warmed with the bare minimum they had, and then THOSE meager means ripped away even further, because the English were too busy hoarding, then selling Ireland's (and other's) resources of food and necessities of life to OTHER outside countries for profit. That is just a SMALL amount of local history (not even including the entirety of the rest of the world's occupation) that has been raped, pillaged, plundered and exploited for centuries of occupation and profiting power. This most basic, active yet nonchalant genocide doesn't even including artifacts stolen and/or (mostly) destroyed; this also involved erasing a long history of richly bountiful archeological and especially historically significant way of life, religion, and exceptional history that is lost FOREVER, and is now used to exemplify how epic the ENGLISH ruled heritage was, and now show the long history of "ENGLISH" past that is to be idolized and revered. The only reason they don't fully embrace it entirely as their own, is because there is STILL a brainwash with the stigma that has been embedded for centuries about paganism and a "savage, heretic" way of life. I'm pretty damn sure there hasn't been an apology, and there DEFINITELY has not been reparations to help a STILL impoverished country... Sorry for ranting, history destroyed pisses me off. This is just one example I'm especially heated about.
That big sigh over eating mummies had very very strong Ask a Mortician vibes. 10/10 exasperation.
I once took part in an archaeological excavation. Part of it was a burial, that took a while to excavate and document (hundreds of individual bones, later a necklace made of many individual beads). So, every evening, we would cover the grave with plastic foil, weigh it down with several rocks, put an upside down bucket over the skull and park the excavator in such a way, that its shovel rested on said bucket. When asking why, I was told that someone had stolen a skull from another one of their excavations before.
I haven't finished watching the video yet but a woman on tiktok who cleans head stones found one of an unnamed egyptian child and she looked into it and found out that a man bought it as a collectible but it was apparently in poor condition so he tossed it in his attic and left it. Another man years later found it and was disturbed by the fact that someone would do that so he had the mummy buried in a cemetery.
Fucked up story but the blissful ignorance of the second man is kinda funny. Obviously burying a mummy artifact instead of returning it home is wrong, but It was kind of a wholesome thought.
@@ivy7417 why is it any more fucked up to bury the child than to describe a once living person as an artefact and transport them to be put on display for people to gawk at?
To anyone who says "they're dead bodies and artifacts, who cares? who cares about what people feel about the disrespect?" I'd have to say isn't reducing harm enough? Also seeing that tiktok of the bowl being destroyed pissed me off as not only an art history enthusiast but also because the only reason that was done for nothing but making money
This episode, particularly the part about human remains, made me badly want a Kaz x Caitlin Doughty collab.
👀
I'm currently studying Anthropology at college so this topic is so important to me.
The early years of cultural anthropology have done irreversible harm to our understanding of the human condition by destroying countless cultural artifacts due to the ethnocentric views of human culture held at the time.
I always get conflicted at museums. On the one hand I find other cultures fascinating, on the other I ache for the peoples who have no say in the commodification of their own culture and history either because they're no longer around or because of oppressive systems that remove them from the discussion all together.
This is extremely common in my country. In Peru, Huaqueros (local tomb raiders) has destroyed so many pre-inca sites, mainly (but not only) in the peruvian northside. Most of them know very well where these sites are, but because of their lack of expertise, they usually break by accident the artifacts they dig up to keep them as trophies or to sell them to foreign smugglers, to local collectors and to "witches' markets". Also, while some do, there's a huge number of Huaqueros who don't have any care for the Wakas (the ancient and sacred native buildings or places), so they end up destroying the archaelogical sites and erasing the context of the taken artifacts. Here, archaeologists have to protect by themselves the sites they're working with, because most of the time there is little funding to hire guards. And Huaqueros are not the only threat to these sites, there are also armed squatters and forgers (like the ones who make the hoax of the alien mummy using a real Paracas/Nazca mummy). In the recent times, local museums try to engage the local people in cultural and economic activities (e.g. selling replicas and artisanal crafts) around these sites in an effort to increase their awareness towards the preservation of their own heritage.
Re: the last third of your video, I knew a "witch" person who had a real human skull in her possession. It'd been cut through and had hinges glued on so you could open and close it, she had it on her mantle and used it to store misc crap, from what I could gather. I don't recall how it came into her possession exactly, but it was originally a cadaver, someone who had passed away and donated their body to the university's medical school. Little bit ghoulish to think that once the med students are done with them, some of their body parts end up on some kinda black market.
I *hate* how witchy people can be so goddamn disrespectful to everything around them. I often share similar beliefs with them, but they're always so full of themselves and convinced they're "chosen by the gods" that they just take and deface and abuse.
@@Evbuscus1 you were able to put words to a specific feeling and opinion I often wind up having of people who belong to pagan belief systems. Nobody needs to take anything's skull or some showy, ultra expensive knife to honor & have faith in an old set of beliefs. The minute I see crap like that I know I am dealing with someone self centered and fake, who is into the "witchy" persona or clothing or whatever they think makes them better or more powerful than others. Yuck.
Well, what is a school to do with a cadaver if they already have so many or too much, if they are unable to store them all? Bury them? Where? They were donated to science. Now science wants to sell them to some girl to keep as a cute little trinket. This is the reality of selling or donating your body to science. If you donate or give your body up to someone, then it becomes their property. If you belong to "science" now, she will do with you as she pleases. And if science can see a profit in selling your skull, you will not be alive to tell them otherwise 🤷🏻♀️ after all, we always hear the saying "who cares what she does with that thing, its her property". Unfortunately, that echo rings true here as well.
@@Evbuscus1 Yeah despite loving a lot paganism as cultural history, and digging it's aesthetics and ideas, I get a little exhausted being around self proclaimed modern pagans. Like if you as an American teen buck-off Christianity because of its obvious magical thinking and deeply damaging patriarchal BS, what makes you think a long dead and mostly forgotten set of likewise magical beliefs will be any more legit? I mean paganism is a lot better overall in my opinion for its environmentally friendly and often feminist themes but I just don't understand not making the step all the way to atheism or at least a skeptical agnosticism.
Just hurts my brain a little bit to see people go "Jesus=fake, but all the Norse gods are totally real" XD
It reminds me of a gigantic scandale in a French university's medical school, that put light on the absolutely disgusting treatment of bodies of people that donated them to science. I won't get into details because some aspects were absolutely awful and legit triggering, but there were employees that sold skulls and bones to the black market (among MANY MANY other things). It was a common practice there for them to gain some money and to get rid of the excess of bodies that arrived all the time, and I'm sure that it's definitely something that is more widely done than we expect.
Not only is it terrible in terms of respect to the dead people that donated, that absolutely don't deserve to be treated this way. But it has also huge consequences, since we do need bodies to be donated so that science and medecine can evolve and become better, and for students to train themselves. This scandale in France made people much more less enthusiastic at the idea of helping science this way - which is perfectly understandable.
The Goodwill thing kind of hit me. I was upset to learn when my Grandfather donated some items to a Goodwill, him thinking it was just some random stuff he could get rid of due to the label. Unfortunately it was a bunch of family items that they wanted to pass down, and he was too late when he went back to try and retrieve the box.
One way they put it though, despite being heartbroken, was that maybe someone will find a use for it. However one of the biggest things was that there were also a bunch of handwritten papers, which no one may find to be valuable except to someone in the family.
Either way not really too much on topic, but it's something similar.
Great video though!
This story just came to my mind and i thought i would share it: i live in germany, bremen to be exact. Here we have the old marketplace, where are a lot of very old buildings, for example the Dom. (I think they are from the gothic era, but i am no expert) while under construction, a worker fell into the cellar (at least thats the legend) died, and wasnt found for a fairly long time. When he was found, he wasnt really decomposed. That was due to the high concentration of lead in that cellar. It is known as the "bleikeller"(lead-cellar). A cult formed around this, rich people paid money to become immortalised after their death. Today, you can visit the bleikeller and see their mummiefied remains, still in their clothes and with a text to describe who they were. I think this is truly the closest we get to history and i think it is faszinating. And this also seems to have been their wish. When i was around 5 my grandmother wanted to go in with me, but i was too scared. But now i want to, i havent been yet.
I like the modern solutions of 3d scanning, printing and such. Or hell, having research go into how to remake some artifacts, so the originals may go where they need and museums and enthusiasts can still get something with historical value.
Personally all I own is a piece of the Berlin wall. It actually came broken =P
I actually have a tiny piece of the wall myself and have always enjoyed the fact that the only reason it IS of any historical value is BECAUSE it was broken. That it is from a moment of celebration and liberation, which could only happen because something so vile was destroyed. Idk, I just think it's a fun phenomenon
Yes yes yes yes
I’m all about museum studies, specifically how little a museum needs from their artifacts; like, you want to study the cultural significance? Speak with the last known descendants, record the info and go home. You want to prove the validity of your museum? Make a replica and vacate the premises (art museums are full of almost exclusively replicas). You want to gain genetic information from a rare species? Get you nunc tube full of goo and extricate yourself from the space. Nothing NEEDS to be kept in perpetuity! If you want the public to marvel at your artifacts, or study individual artifacts indefinitely? Take as little as is necessary and begone because 3D modeling/ MRIs of sealed (and thereby respected) tombs does a heck of a lot more than grave-robbing and duplicitous thievery ever will.
I love ancient artifacts and history. I saw these acrylic boxes and was disgusted by them to my core. None of the boxes said anything about where the artifacts were found, and for me, that is one of the coolest parts about these objects. I feel that ancient artifacts are breadcrumbs to how people in the past lived. What's the point of having an object if you can't learn more?
FYI I never intend to buy any myself. I am trying to teach myself how these things were made and then make my own copies the way the originals were just for me to have. Working on stone age pottery at the moment.
That’s very cool! Tbh learning how something was made and recreating it yourself is so much better in terms of preserving history and culture than hoarding the physical objects themselves
@@okayokayfineilldoit yes!!!
I feel so vindicated. I’ve brought this up several times with people I’ve been close to. Basically asking the question, “When are the remains of a person old enough that we can mess with them?” For me the answer is obvious. I’ve been shocked that they claim I’m overthinking the subject. It really makes you think about how much respect humans have for one another. I guess a lot of them only respect the power. Once we’re rendered powerless, we’re fair game. That makes me sad.
There’s this antique store in my hometown that has fossils and artifacts antiques and even whips and chains that Imprisoned slaves and abused them for high prices hundreds to thousands of dollars for anyone to buy and seeing that without any knowledge of how these things can be so wrong to have still gave me the ick
When you got to the Hobby Lobby section I about bit my tongue in shock because I didn't know. What I did know was that during the fall of Iraq, all the linguistic and Mesopotamia museums in Baghdad were looted (as someone that did my undergrad in linguistics a few years after the invasion, when I learned this I was rightly pissed). But I always wondered where the artifacts from those museums went to. Now I know 😢
as someone who really enjoys history and especially Egyptian mythology and culture this honestly makes me so mad. Great video tho
Not even 5 minutes into the video and I already ran to rant about this to my husband! 🤬
My heart skipped a beat when I saw that pottery piece break.
The coolest artifact I ever got to see/hold was a ~4000 year old arrowhead in the grand portage heritage center that was found on a cliff a few miles from the reservation. I was delivering packages there when I worked for FedEx and one of the curators asked if I "wanted to see something cool" as a thank you. It was amazing
Just my thought on Museums repatriating things, I think they should get artisans from the cultures the items are from to make replicas. Give the real item back. Display the replica. That way both the museum and the culture whose artifact was stolen will have something to display, plus it would provide jobs to artisans
yeah i recently learned a friend has this massive slab of ornate carving from a greek temple that he just picked up off the ground when he was 16 and carried around europe for weeks without getting caught and without realizing it was a serious crime. that was 20 years ago and he still has it and just says he was a dumb teenager and didn't realize it was wrong.
Ok but he is no longer a dumb teen anymore so why is he still keeping something he stole
@@hieithefox I'm not the person to ask, you could ask the brittish museum the same question.
@@criss_x not defending the british museum but at least they let people look at it
@@hieithefox maybe he lives in a different country/continent?
Based.
it's not on the same level, but lost history is something i'm familiar with on a personal level.
my dad grew up in the foster system, and knew next to nothing about his extended family.
a relative of his got into contact with him when i was like 13? and that relative sent him a family album, with photos and newspaper articles of his great aunts, uncles and grandparents. it was the first and only real piece of his family history that he had.
when i was 17, an aunt on my mother's side stole that family album. we don't know what happened to it. she argued up and down that it was part of her family and it was owed to her, actively weaponizing the lack of knowledge about my dad's family to argue there was no way it could belong to him. she refused to return it, even when members of his immediate family contacted her about it.
my mother has quite a few family albums, any one of which my aunt could have asked for at any time. my father had nothing. and he died without ever getting that history back.
i had to watch this in parts as i kept crying and thinking about my grandfathers paintings that still arent home
As an archeologist, how the heck are they getting their hands on this?! This stuff is hard to come by and why has a museum not come in yet and said no, you can’t do this. My nerves are going bazerk.
As an archaeologist you should know we don’t get enough funding to actually get rich people to stop what they’re doing lol
capitalism
"There are stupid and gullible people in every era". Amen to that. Great video!
amen brother in christ! amen!
My boss has a fountain from one of the French kings (Don’t remember which exactly, Possibly the Sun King) and SEVERAL extremely old, very large vases from god knows where, As well as other things I probably don’t even know about. They’ve all been damaged one way or another just in the TWO years that I’ve worked for him. I walk by them every single day, and every time I see them, I get incredibly disappointed by the type of behavior I’m associating myself with just because of my career
this is such a beautifully crafted video. i am polish and i research slavic and eastern european history, typically ussr era, but recently i have dived into slavic paganism and the sheer amount of culture and history that was just destroyed for religious conquest genuinely brings tears to my eyes. i love my culture and my history so much; i am literally devoting my life to its study. and the idea of something so profound and integral to us has been lost forever is devastating 🥲 especially because pre-20th cen eastern europe, aside from russia, is not often a topic of research in the west. its even more sad when i think about how much we know about other ancient cultures and how wonderful that knowledge is, yet we lack so much of it for the rest of the world. i simply cannot imagine actively watching something like this happen to your history and being powerless to stop it. for us, our paganism was destroyed a long time ago, but for these people it is being destroyed now :(
When I hear "Egyptomania" my mind always goes to the paint color Mummy Brown, and "mummy unwrapping parties".
My dad used to work on private yachts as a captain. He told me once about how his boss had bought a book from when Christopher Columbus came to the Americas, a bunch of notes from botanists and zoologists. And he took the pages out of the book and frames it along the yacht. Horrendous, taking the entrails of history and smearing them on the walls of a private ship.
I enjoyed your video a lot, it reminded me of the story and I figured you might find it a little interesting if not infuriating
I don't usually write youtube comments, but I wanted to say this video stuck with me immensely. I'm Korean and we as a country also suffered the destruction of cultural artifacts and erasure of culture very purposely, specifically during the Japanese occupation. A majority of our heritage made of wood were completely destroyed, and many methods of how certain objects were made (such as the traditional Korean sword) were lost in time. Even our language would have been destroyed had it not been painstakingly protected by Korean scholars at the time. I don't usually see it mentioned at all, so it meant a lot for it to be. Thank you!
whenever i hear stories like these the only way i can keep from going *entirely* insane is by remembering that technology is getting better and maybe, maybe , someday we can’t still learn something from these unfortunate cases, even if it’s not the same as them being left where they were
And Kaz, I want to thank you for returning the beautiful self portrait that you bought to the artist. What you did...it has limitless value of the spirit. I really admire you for it.
Wonderful video as always! I'd like to point out that the Colosseum being "used as a quarry" is pretty misleading - the missing parts collapsed due to earthquakes, it couldn't be fixed so the detached pieces of stone were given a new use in the Vatican. It was p much standard practice in places like Italy and Greece, after all a whole bunch of rubble isn't really something that's interesting to keep around. Imo this view of the "uncaring Italians mining their very history" is a good sneaky example of what was touched on throughout the video about certain groups being seen as not being able to take proper care of their artifacts, there's a huge problem in academia of dismissal of how Mediterranean professionals treat our own historical remains (which opens the door to "rightful" theft, dismissal of research, weird beliefs, foreigners thinking they can do better but just causing problems and destruction, etc)
That's pretty relevant information, thank you for this addition!
Considering just how much shit still manages to get taken or vandalised by tourists each year, it honestly seems like the better idea to reuse parts within Italy rather than let the pieces be taken.
I also think these sort of hindsight reminisces are interesting and very frequent around the world. We even have tales in my own city (which dates back as a city from the 1000s), where some medieval streets were in such disrepair and ruin that the city could do little but tear it down and rebuild anew. People now are angry that they were torn down in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but I can also understand at the time how difficult it must be to have literal collapsing buildings and entire streets that the government cannot afford to rebuild or care for. It's a huge shame some of that history was lost, but I can at least understand the other side of it.
I remember being at school and someone reading to our class something about Benjamin Franklin and it mentioned him going to a meuseum and cutting off a bit of a mummy’s finger and eating it. I was like 6 at the time and no one explained that at all to us because you can’t justify a founding father eating a corpse that’s also the museum’s like now I think it’s horrible to display them like that but as a kid the whole‘I know that’s not yours why did you fuck with it’ train of thought was strongly running
I always knew about the expensive tinctures containing mummies and how messed up Benjamin Franklin was but what the fuck. How was he even allowed to take out a knife and eat a desiccated human in a museum without question. His audacity is always astounding.
thank you for speaking on this, particularly at the part with the painting. my cousin had an estate sale last year and sold off a number of photographs of great-grandparents, great-great grandparents and great-aunts and uncles that we'll never get back now, because he didn't want to wait for the rest of the family to sift through and select what we wanted. we were lucky to snatch up a few pieces thanks to a friend, but the rest is gone. it's not something i think many people think about.
You can get pretty good replicas of a lot of artifacts these days. I have had my eye on a few replicas of Venus figurines.
I think they dont sell worldwide, but Im about to buy a candleholder of The Pantheon that is the most beautiful thing ever.
I bought a resin replica of my favorite ancient artifact, a little bronze lion from Lakonia, from the gift shop of the museum where it resides (nowhere near Greece, alas, because rich dead guys are gonna rich dead guy). The replica is beautiful and makes me smile every time I look at it. And I never have to worry about damaging a priceless piece of history if I walk past its little shelf and see that my niece has stuck a Thor action figure on its back because "the god of thunder requires a steed". It's perfect.
Yes- it's much more likely to be a replica in that video than a real ancient pot. Pot sherds are common, but intact ancient pottery is very rare and valuable. It'd be worth so much more intact than smashed up, so even if they didn't care at all about the history or art, it'd make zero financial sense to smash it just to sell the bits.
As a Classical archaeologist, I am here for the Schliemann cancellation party. He is the bane of my existence 😖.
Thank you for this video. This topic isn’t discussed enough. Also #returntheparthenonmarbles
I’m so thankful for this video! You are raising really complicated and important issues. For those interested in an Indigenous exploration of the taking of Indigenous artifacts with a sci-fi edge, Rebecca Roanhorse has a great short story “The Takeback Tango” in A Universe of Wishes where an Indigenous girl tries to undo this colonized destruction of her people’s history. It’s powerful!
This is like the people hoarding lost Doctor Who episodes and refusing to return them to the BBC so they can be preserved and released. They want the exclusivity of being the only one in the world with a copy
I love that you call him "Schleimann" and not "Schliemann" (his actual name) :D It brings out the slimieness of this person perfectly. I study archaeology of ancient greece and rome in Germany and whenever we come across him (or his other german colleagues of the 19th century) our profs start moaning about how they destroyed so much of what we could now use.
I can't recommend the book Chasing Aphrodite enough if you love history and are worried about the current state of museums and looting. It's a fascinating look at how The Getty had knowingly taken several looted artifacts including the famed " Getty Bronze" and the aforementioned Aphrodite statute.
22:13 oh, the psychic damage i took when seeing that book cover... i owned this exact same book as a child (or rather, an edition translated into my native language) and there was a truly mortifying period in my life where i thought it was a reprint of a real diary and was VERY spooked by the "empty pages with what looked like coffee stains" that were OBVIOUSLY blood and omg they were killed by the curse in the tomb!!!! what a time >>;
you know just, a few years go a mining company blew up a sacred aboriginal site in Australia. The companies owners were non aboriginal yet they not only went on the site but destroyed it. The site had cave paintings and a ancient aboriginal camp site. over a thousands years of history gone.
Museum studies student specializing in collections.👋🏾 From the title I knew this was going to be a difficult video for me to watch but holy christ the first tiktok made me want to throw a chair across a room!!!!
Thank you so much for this video! All of your work is so well and meticulously researched but this video hit home a bit more on a personal level because it's exactly what I'm studying. I will be sharing this with my class in when we meet together again in the fall
I hate seeing home movies, family photographs etc. for sale for private collectors to buy. They should still be with the family or in an archive! I love what the museum of lost memories is doing on Instagram, picking up things and trying to reunite them with the people they depict. I still have a tote bin of home movies I bought in an auction that I'm trying to figure out where to home. At the same time though, as an experimental filmmaker, using found footage does make for interesting art, and the temptation to keep and re-use home movies is definitely there. But at what cost to the original creators? It's a tough one for sure. I found your story about returning the self portrait to the artist really touching; not everything is abandoned on purpose, some things were given away by someone who didn't have the privilege to give it away in the first place; other things get lost in moves or stolen. If it looks like something personal that probably shouldn't have ended up in a thrift store, then someone is probably holding out hope that they can get it back.
i've been having trouble sleeping the past few weeks (fear of being alone with my thoughts and all that) and i am honestly so thankful for your videos, they are perfect to fall asleep to. I promise i actually watch them when conscious too and they are by no means boring, but you and your videos are just so comforting and warm, like falling asleep by a library fireplace. but the books are educating me as i sleep. yeah. youre also just a huge inspo for what videos i plan on creating. thanks for being you!
“Why are the pyramids in Egypt?”
“Because they were WAY too heavy for the Europeans to carry off-“
“what’s the worth of coveting history that was never meant to leave home in the first place?” whew, that brought a tear to me lil eye 🧿great video, Kaz!
I have only just begun recognising the toll colonialism took/still takes on the psyche of people in my country let alone the entire continent of Africa. 90% of Africa's cultural heritage is housed outside of it and though part of it was sold or exchanged in trade, a large chunk of it was looted and stolen in brutal ways. For instance, in my country Kenya, over 32,000 of our cultural artifacts are in museums and galleries in the West.
The robbing of entire civilisations of their history enabled colonialists to convince us that our value as people was pretty much non-existent before they came. This is still seen today as we look down on the remnants of our culture as outdated and uncivilised while not knowing or valuing who we really are.
I really enjoyed hearing your take on the issue. I appreciate the work you put into it.
a lot of people have an instinct to collect things- i collect pokémon cards, and i work hard to keep them safe from damage. there’s a big difference between keeping a pieces of card stock in a sleeve, a toploader, and a protective box, and having a wall of spines like the bombastic mr. bones of tiktok face does
I have a keychain with human femur inside of it. Here’s the thing- it’s MY femur! The pieces were removed during my 5th reconstructive surgery, which replaced about 50% of the remaining bone. Most of that was dust but I got a few fragments along with my old hardware.
As soon as I heard Schliemann my blood started boiling lol
Great video! I have recently started recreating some of my favourite clay figurines i saw at a museum myself and honestly it's way better than trying to get something from those artifact selling sites. Not only you will value it more, you can also feel similiar in a way, to how the person who made the original felt when they created it. :D
I heartily support this approach. You WANT a Venus of Willendorf, you MAKE a Venus of Willendorf! You're just as human and just as capable of creating art as the creator of the original, plus now we have Dremel tools.
Heinrich Schliemann looks absolutely diabolical.
Welp, this gives me even more justification in stealing pencils and pens from hobby lobby.
I would like to give a European example in regards to the pain of losing that history for good. I have Scottish ancestry, and feel an ache every time I think about the fact that I will likely never learn the Pictish language, because no written record of it exists. That's to say nothing about the many, many other descendants of tribes and nations who have no choice but to guess based on what amounts to trash heaps due to the sacred sites having been torn apart for every bit of gold and every jewel.
As if it wasn't already difficult enough piecing together the past.