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What is the country of origin? Please point out to me where the Aztec country is. Do you mean Mexico? Are they entitled to all the relics of the past civilizations theirs crushed? And yes, I know the idol in Indiana Jones isn’t really Aztec, but the overall point stands.
With the exception of the very few cases where a country can actually trace its culture and history all the way back to when those artifacts were made, ancient culture and artifacts belong to humanity as a whole, not whatever geopolitical entity happens to control the land they’re on at the time of discovery. It’s not a natural resource, it’s human history.
While we may debate wether the Aztecs descendants are now the Mexicans, they’re clearly not the English. The fact that it’s human history is exactly why it can’t be all stored in mostly one museum in one country
Would it be ok if Spain took it then?
The Aztecs are not from Europe, dingdong. How is this a difficult concept??
What’s the difference between a british archeologist and a grave robber?
The Diploma
“MY MUSEUM”
British Museum: “what’s a country of origin?”
I came here to say this, BM is the worst.
It’s fun to say this, but at least BM is really able to do their main job and preserve the artifacts.
There’s dozens of cases where the original sites have been looted or destroyed by the origin country’s own leaders.
Storing the artifacts outside of the influence of an area’s internal issues is actually really wise. The BM’s real wrongdoing is not paying anything for the artifacts they’ve took. I argue they’ve done enough good to offset that a little. They’re bad but not the worst.
That’s a lot of words to make the exact same excuses used not only to steal the art in the first place, but to colonise the countries it came from too - that us “civilised” people need to take care of their things because they are too “savage” to do it themselves.
Spoken like a true coloniser.
