6 ms·
Just because you don't care about some old book doesn't mean that it has value to noone. One of the books found in the monastery was a thousand-year-old documen
by panglott 9y ago
Just because you don't care about some old book doesn't mean that it has value to noone. One of the books found in the monastery was a thousand-year-old document written in Caucasian Albanian, for which there is no other documentation than short stone inscriptions. The Udi people speak a descendent of this language, but their language community is under severe threat. Something like this would probably be very important to a community trying to save its cultural traditions! Not to mention the historians and humanists who can often glean some amazing insights from the scanty evidence left to us by history. The last printed-out Hitler Pepe meme might be very revealing to a far-future historian trying to understand our times.
Cultural traditions are exactly those things that generation after generation of a community has seen the value of preserving.
- logfromblammo 9y agoThe point is that I can't decide what other people should value culturally. And I certainly shouldn't send in mercenaries to "secure cultural artifacts". It would be acceptable to offer to buy the ones you intend to preserve, or to donate to a museum to preserve the ones they see as important. Archaeology at gunpoint isn't good for the artifacts, isn't good for the people who had them, and isn't good for the people that take them. The best you could do in that vein would be to create a new cultural artifact featuring an adventurer-archaeologist that pilfers the important artifact you would like to preserve as the main plot MacGuffin. And to not make it about stupid crystal-skulled aliens.