Wednesday, September 12, 2018

My thoughts on the Brazil museum fire




For those of you who haven't heard the outrageous news, the National Museum of Brazil suffered a tragic loss of thousands of artifacts recently in a devastating fire. This was because the museum hadn't been renovated for many years, as Brazil's government would rather spend money on building museums. It was the largest collection of historical artifacts in South America, and even housed the bones of Luzia (a skeleton that is suspected to to be Pre-Clovis, although they haven't been able to carbon date her properly). Indigenous people especially lamented the loss, as it was a huge destruction of their history, almost as if they were witnessing the European invasion happening all over again. The entire linguistic section of the museum was also lost, meaning that many of Brazil's threatened indigenous languages which had been preserved in recordings may never be heard again. I wish more people would care. It's a shame that Brazil doesn't have enough wealth and technology to at least back up everything on the museum in a digital archive. I've been to the British Museum, the most glorious museum in the world thanks to the fact that the British looted art from all over their colonies. Even though it was really sad for me to see artifacts that had been stolen from India put on display there, I still think it's better to not return them to India just yet, because as sad as it is, developed countries in the first world are just better equipped to preserve the artifacts and take care of them than third world countries are. I hope what happened in Brazil never happens again anywhere. 


No comments:

Post a Comment

Leave a comment