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melling

Plymouth Rock is half its original size. Tourists used to take a piece.

https://www.frommers.com/destinations/plymouth-ma/attraction....

The tourist who carved his name into the Colosseum didn’t realize how old it was?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/05/english-touris...

Then we have someone knocking over this rock:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna56596

It only takes a few people to ruin it.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so forgiving.

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A useful rule that I came across a while ago is "ask yourself before doing something (such as picking a flower in the wild), what would happen if a 100 other people did the same thing?". The answer should usually be "don't do that thing"

A friend, college educated responsible adult, went to the petrified forest in Arizona. Park ranger gave the whole talk about how rare and special these rocks are, and how they're disappearing because people are stealing them. The ranger indicated there might not be a park in the future, because so much is going missing. She had an immediate impulse to steal a rock. She claims she didn't act on it, and I believe her.

I think there's some inherit psychology that's tough to get around, some "I better grab one while I still can" deep down part of our reptile brain. People are still animals. Out on vacation they may not be fully engaging their critical thinking skills.

I think, far and away, the most effective preservation is Pele's curse - https://www.hawaii-guide.com/why-you-should-never-take-lava-...

Total fabrication by the parks service. They show you the rocks people have sent back, to lift the curse.

If you're fully engaged and thinking critically, it's harmless. If you're not, it encourages good behavior.

I'm not a big fan of marketing, but the way you tell the story really does have a huge impact on guest behavior.

> She had an immediate impulse to steal a rock

FWIW, Jim Gray's Petrified Wood Company has a vast supply of this stuff you can buy and take home. It's right down the road in Holbrook. Very interesting store even if you're not planning to buy anything. (No working website that I could find. Google it. I have no connection with them.)

I have a lot of flowers that grow out front of my house. If you pick my tulips, daffodils, roses, or lillies then I'll be mad because they're pretty, short-lived, and for pollinators. I go to great lengths to have blooming flowers almost year round and a great deal of planning goes into that. One flower dying prematurely or going missing isn't a big deal, but if everyone picked a flower then the great deal of pollinators my property attracts would be impacted in some small way each time, and the pollinators play a key role in the micro-ecosystem of my yard. I do my best not to disturb them. If you rip up the bulbs for your own I'll be doubly mad because you're just selfish at that point. Go buy your own bulbs like I did, or better yet foster a yard where bulbs multiply.

On the other hand, nature isn't so delicate. My ground cover has smaller blooms most the year and provide the pollinators with much more abundance and resiliency to what people or animal might do to my "prettier" flowers. It's difference between O(n) impact to O(log n) impact.

> what would happen if a 100 other people did the same thing? The answer should usually be "don't do that thing"

Or "do it now and get the money before they do"

Kant's categorical imperative

Sorry to be pedantic, but the categorical imperative is not about reasoning from the consequences of an action if everyone did it. It's about testing whether it's even possible for you to will the maxim of your action as a universal law without contradiction, or to what extent your action respects the rational agency of other humans. You could make the Kant-inspired argument that taking a limited resource for your private enjoyment does deprive others of their agency, but it's not Kantian to say "it's wrong to take the fossils because then there will be no more fossils."

See, I know you're lying because a pedant is never sorry.

I guess it would've been more honest to say "sorry to seem pedantic," because for me the comment was not mere pedantry (which I think of as hairsplitting for the sake of hairsplitting) but rather a matter of a fundamental distinction in moral philosophy (consequentialist vs. deontological ethics).

I mean, philosophy has a reputation for just that kind of hairsplitting but this seems to bear pretty directly on the basic ethical question of "What should I do?", one of the most important questions for humans to ask imo

I try to remind my kid of that every so often, when the opportunity comes up.

Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.

> Perhaps we shouldn’t be so forgiving.

A better time to teach respect might be before the incident.

If you know where to look, there are many panels of petroglyphs and other rock art located in the canyons and side-canyons of the desert southwest. Many are pristine and untouched but there are, unfortunately, too many that hand of idiots have defaced with their own graffiti or even bullet holes. It's the primary reason those who know where they can be found are reluctant to tell those who don't unless they are close family or friends in whom they have full trust not to mar these 700+ year old relics. It is so discouraging to see an outline of someone's hand from 1100 or the drawing of a animal right next to the "Joanie loves Chachi" some ignorant fool added in 1973.

>knocking over this rock

5 years of time to only few thousand dollars in fines? Infuriating

> Infuriating

Idiots together should make anyone itch.

Giving the Colosseum tourist the benefit of the doubt, maybe they thought that was a relatively "modern day" section they were carving their name on?

> Giving the Colosseum tourist the benefit of the doubt

Why? Carving your name into stuff that you don't own is dumb regardless of how old it is.

I disagree. Carving your name into something is disgusting.

Perhaps, but we study roman graffiti where people from antiquity did the same thing, like, I get that its bad and should not be condoned but tourists have been carving their name into this thing for thousands of years.

Not to derail, but this reminds me of a cave in Southern Arizona. Graffiti is banned and it’s heavily enforced, but there is ‘historic’ graffiti from the 1920-40s that is preserved. I always found this case very interesting.

Thats my point - when does it transform from Graffiti to Artifact - 50 years? 100 years? 500? its still an interesting thought.

I'll put forth that nothing of this sort, from the semiconductor age onwards, can be an artifact as we have far more readily available and detailed records to work from.

Such graffiti is only an artifact when it's purpose, history and other aspects are lost to time due to lack of alternative documentation.

In effectively all cases these days there is simply no additional value obtained from graffiti like this, unlike that of street artists doing murals or painting trains.

I believe it is 50 years in the US. I can't find it on mobile, but I remember reading an article a while back about some simple "john was here" on some anasazi petroglyph that hadn't been removed because it was from the late 1800s or early 1900s and was considered historic.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/how-to-list-a-...

People have been murdering, stealing, etc since people have existed, doesn't mean we should just shrug our shoulders

We also study middens; it doesn't mean it's okay to dump your garbage in the park.

But also one of the most human things to do. What are precivilization cave paintings but graffiti? Leaving a mark on the world is a basic human instinct. That some things are better left intact is something that has to be learned.

Pre agricultural revolution pictographs and petroglyphs are almost certainly not graffiti. Religious function, navigation, resource marking, animal migration records, record keeping... these are some of the more likely functions.

Tbf, sometimes graffiti is a territorial marking and this is also a likely function.

I read in an art history book that cave paintings were used as a form of magic/manifestation and the farther down into the cave the more powerful it became.

A lot of these kinds of things are historians/anthropologists/whatever making things up. If something doesn’t have an obvious purpose then it is labeled as ceremonial or religious. A single artifact gets turned into an elaborate story with very shaky justification. These “just so” stories make good tales, but that’s it. The question ends up being “how could they possibly know this!?” And the answer is, they couldn’t.

Definitely the kind of thing you’d read in an art history book.

Ya, I’m aware of all that. It’s an interesting theorem, nonetheless.

I also have no credence for this forum to not be hypercritical of art history literature, but here I am talking about it.

I have heard artists critical of art history in the same way tech people are critical of tech journalists. Something along the lines of folks who don’t really understand a subject because they don’t/can’t do it writing from a position of authority about it and doing it badly.

I'm noticing more and more restrooms open to public/shared use eschewing placing mirrors because they always get carved up with everyones' names.

Clearly most people find the act memorable, manners be damned.

(I find the act barbaric, personally.)

You learn about Colosseum in primary school

He wasn't a local, he was an eastern european. We love diverse cultures!

He was originally from Bulgaria and there are Roman ruins there too:

https://davidsbeenhere.com/2017/03/01/top-10-ancient-sites-i...

unclear how that matters? it's the culture, not the presence of relics, or the education about them

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