Okay, I admit it. This is an uber nerdy post. But uber nerdy can be uber good and even uber fun sometimes!

For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in history. Unfortunately, my university program doesn’t really allow for me to take all the history courses my little heart desires, but I can get away with sneaking in a couple Anthropology courses disguised as science credits (mwa haha). For those of you who aren’t familiar, Anthropology is essentially a study of humans’ interactions with the environment, specifically ancient humans. Anthropology oftentimes spills over into the field of archaeology, and that is where my book pick (and my recent archaeological interest) fits in.

The subheading of Loot, by Sharon Waxman, is “The battle over the stolen treasures of the ancient world,” which gives you a pretty good idea of the content. For any of you who have visited big museums such as the Met in New York or The British Museum, you know that the majority of their historical artifacts don’t come from their homeland, but rather, fascinating and exotic places like Greece, Egypt and Italy. Before laws were exercised in the field of archaeology, the rule of finders’ keepers was enforced. They became a sign of wealth and priceless artifacts are now often part of wealthy individual’s estate, even though those pieces belong in a museum where they can be properly cared for.

Now that the countries that have been plundered for centuries are starting to see the cultural and monetary value in these pieces, they are requesting for them to be returned. Because the laws involving goods that have been removed from their homeland for centuries are blurry or even non-existent, a war is raging in the anthropological and archaeological world. And that war is precisely what Waxman focuses on in Loot.

Loot is specifically about 4 museums: the Louvre, the Met, the British Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum, all being fought by Greece, Turkey, Italy and Egypt for goods and artifacts they consider to be rightfully theirs. Big points of contention are the Elgin Marbles from Greece and the Rosetta Stone (along with another bazillion artifacts) from Egypt. Each country stakes its historical and cultural claim on the pieces, as do the museums.

If, the museums argue, these priceless pieces were not locked securely in their hands, they may have been destroyed in their homelands. Not only that, but most people will never see these artifacts if they are kept in their homeland because they are not ideal travel situations, especially when war breaks out. The museums also claim that in a war, these artifacts may be destroyed either by accident or for the invading country to make a point. They say that for the sake of the artifact, the more established and respected museums should care for them.

But again, museums generate money from having these items; if the Mona Lisa was in Italy and not the Louvre, how many people do you think would visit the Louvre?

But in defense of the museums,  if they decide that one item (the Mona Lisa, for instance) would be more appropriate in its homeland, then every other country who has a piece in the museum will be calling, asking for their rightful items. And then where would that leave us?

Waxman poses these questions and more as she exposes all of us to such a deep, slippery slope. One that I never considered or even realized existed before picking up Loot.

While Waxman’s research (or any research that isn’t assigned by a professor) may not interest everyone, I found the book incredibly riveting. And if you have an interest in history, archaeology or, I don’t know, even just visiting museums, you too will find it fascinating to read about what happens behind the scenes.

With a long break coming up and nothing to do, maybe it’s time to drop the textbooks and avoid the beach reads. Pick up Loot and learn a little something for yourself. You may not have ever given much thought to historical artifacts and who has the right to own them, but it is definitely something worth your thoughts.

There’s been an education. Another week of studying Spanish, this time deep in the lake-edge small-town rain-forest drama in San Andrés, El Petén. I’m going to go ahead, generalize, and say that a week of intensive in-country Spanish study is a lifetime.

In San Andrés, everything one person told me contradicted everything the other told me : the school building burned down two years ago because of faulty wiring or arson; it can’t be rebuilt because of lack of resources or lack of municipal permission; finca means farm and rancho means ranch or rancho means farm and finca means ranch. The town is one of those places I can find my way around immediately because the land climbs steeply up from the lake, and it’s hard to forget whether you’ve just hiked upwards or crept down.

In the forests that are so close to town, but not as close as they used to be, we saw columns of zampopos, farmer ants, marching along swept-clean ant-paths with their neat cutouts from leaves proudly held high – they carry the bits of leaves down into their hills and wait until the leaves sprout the type of fungus that the ants eat.

We saw the zampopos first at Motul, then at Tikal, two Mayan ruin sites which are not the same amount of famous. We saw pyramids covered in earth and trees, pyramids excavated and reconstructed, astonishing carvings, stelae, tombstones, plazas, and this remarkable latex-producing fruit called cajones de caballo.

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that's my dad!

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The archaeologist who just wrote a book on the flora of the Motul Reserve gave us a tour there, and we spent another afternoon with a traditional healer who was also the school director’s aunt and learned about medicinal properties of things like almond tree leaves and eggs laid by hens who live in the household instead of out and about.

One of our last nights in town, we were talking near the lake on a porch sheltered by tin roofing, when rain started up for the first time all week… we watched it, and listened, and waited for it to ease up so we could scuttle to bed. When it did, we stepped on to the street, and the street was dry. Only the edge was soaked, where water had flowed off the roof we’d been sitting under. The street dipped down and swelled up, and as we walked we felt rain at the higher parts, but none touched the ground. Fog was rolling in from the lake and collecting on the lakeside slants of roofs to pool and drip to the ground, and each consecutive street of houses on the steep hillside, parallel one above the other, collected and pooled and dripped consecutive slices of fog out of the air.

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Your Neanderthal, here. Photo: Erich Ferdinand

21st Century brutes will crave escargot, eschew dairy

With the whole world gone mad (again) for everything cryptid (the Boston Phoenix attributes this to our pressing need for Great Depression 2.0 distractions), New Scientist has cooked up a list of DNA-sequenced species to be raised from the dead.

Neanderthals, naturally, top the list of humanoid species.

Harvard archaeologists, meanwhile, believe they know what might have killed-off the Neanderthal in the first place: lactose intolerance. The Harvard folks also suggested the Neanderthal enjoyed many different kinds of food, including escargot.

To revive a long-dead species scientists would have to recover enough DNA from a well-preserved specimen and find a suitable surrogate species similar to that of the extinct animal in which to grow the new baby from an embryo.

“It’s hard to say that something will never ever be possible,”said Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who is sequencing the Neanderthal genome.

“But it would require technologies so far removed from what we currently have that I cannot imagine how it would be done.”

via Extinct Animals Could Be Brought Back To Life – ROGUEGOVERNMENT.COM.

The possibilities in Second Life are endless. In it’s own immersive way it can take you to another place or reality… or time. Now, I’ve seen my share of Medieval roleplay regions, ancient Rome, and science fiction futures. But what I haven’t seen until now is an attempt to create a historically accurate (as far as we know) representation of a ancient structure now lost.

In Holy City they have attempted to recreate the Second Temple in Jerusalem as it existed before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. While the construction is not stellar (some good texturing would help) it is huge. As you walk the grounds there are helpful notecards that inform you about what rituals were performed there or for what that area of the temple was used.

My only complaint is that no flying is allowed inside the temple walls, so getting from place to place gets tedious. If you stick with it, you’ll find it interesting, though.

This sort of thing really has potential as a kind of living archaeology. Think of someone doing reconstructions of Jamestown, Pompeii, or the pyrapids. Tourism in time without leaving the comfort of your chair!

Oh, hidden somewhere beneath the temple is the Ark of the Covenant. Yes, I found it! Indiana Jones would be proud.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Holy%20City/15/12/35

Well, when I started this blog, one of the topics I said I may talk about is rocks but up to this point I have refrained from doing so. But while reading some posts from a Rockhounding group this morning, I realized that for the paleontologist, archaeologists and basic Rockhound, there is a topic that’s very polarizing. The collecting of fossils and artifacts. Currently most states have some sort of law protecting fossils, dinosaurs and human artifacts (cultural and remains) from being collected by anyone other than an authorized college, university or museum. This is supposedly to protect it. Does this make sense? Yes, in part. I understand the importance of proper cataloging and protecting the integrity of a site in order to properly excavate all artifacts as well as to be able to more completely understand the historical significance of what was found. This is how we learn about the true past. On the other hand in a lot of these cases the amateur rockhound is completely thrown out of the mix. Not given any credit whatsoever and not allowed to participate in this process. Before Big Brother got in the mix of making these laws, a vast majority of finds were found by just this type of person, a weekend warrior out looking for something nice to display at their house and show their friends and family. Nowadays most rockhounds are very cognizant of the possible importance of what they may find and take great measures to ensure that things don’t get damaged…Also a true rockhound follows common sense guidelines and treats the areas they are at with the proper respect. Personally, I take and extra bag or two to clean up any trash I make or find. Bottom line? I fall in the middle here. I understand that there are many people much better able to “work” an historic site better than me, but if I was to find something of historical importance and then was kicked from the site with no credit given while also not being able to “assist” in the collection of artifacts, fossils and data,  I would be very pissed off. Would it make me think twice about reporting it? Yeah, honestly it would. This is my planet too, this is my history too, it belongs to all people.