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Comment by iamshs | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely side with Chinese here. I once saw the world’s longest water buffalo horns in a British museum with the accompanying caption as something on the lines of “purchased by a Britisher from an Indian farmer”. I thought either the poor guy got murdered or he was given a single quid for formality purposes to get his thumb imprint on forms to complete the paper trail. He wouldn’t even be able to read English on those forms. Exploitation and plunder is how I see these museums. I think these items should be property of originating country and taken on loan to display it to the public.

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/indian-water-buffalo-hor...

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OK I'll bite. So basically you're guessing that an ignorant Indian got suckered into giving up this prized possession to a murderous/exploiting white man?

Had it ever occurred to you that what actually happened was an incredulous Indian farmer was more than happy to take the white man's coin for a pair of buffalo horns that were lying around his farm? I mean, they're not exactly rare, you get a free pair every time a buffalo croaks.

Now, if you're talking about the Parthenon or the Old Summer Palace then fair enough. They were valuable to the original owners (OK not the Elgin marbles but still) and the Brits didn't exactly ask nicely.

But assuming all Indians/Chinese/Egyptians/Greeks/whatever were just credulous bumpkins is a completely unwarranted slight.

It is rather a curious thing that something so simple and not valuable in the past to one person could be seen as so unique and valuable to everyone in the future due to simply surviving the passage of time. See much of archaeology.

I'm inclined to agree with you, however you also have to consider all the history destroyed civil strife: ISIS destroying ancient statues in Iraq, rebels in Timbuktu, the Chinese government destroying Lhasa, etc. There's an argument that we need to geographically distribute history to ensure its survival.

Who did induce the Syria Civil war?

Even more reason for them to safekeep foreign history, since they won't incite conflict in their own country.

Actually, this is a good point!

I think most people would agree with your reasoning here, but there is a difference between a country voluntarily gifting their artifacts / artwork to other countries as opposed to other countries obtaining them through morally questionable means and then claiming it's better to keep things that way.

The British too away a lot of jewels from India, they give some bullshit about how it was gifted to them by the princely states etc, it was straight up highway robbery. There has been a decades-long row between the British and Indian government regarding this.

I'm inclined to agree too. Though having the possible damaging and destruction of the artifacts of collective heritage rest on the actions and decisions of a few exclusive individuals isn't really cool.

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