This is a conundrum I can’t wrap my head around. One (country, usually) can have something of cultural significance, and decide what to do with that. They can make it a museum, make it generally available, forbid access at all, and even destroy it completely (e.g. see Palmyra under ISIS).
If the object in question is not protected by UNESCO (and really, even if it is) no one has a say in that. The only remotely correct argument that can be made is that destroying historical artifacts makes it hard or impossible to study history, but one can argue that we don’t need to study history, it’s not like this is an imperative. Another argument may be that things do not belong to those who have it, but instead to their people as inheritors of people who lived long ago, but I don’t think that also helps.
And so, on one hand, I am for preserving artifacts and not destroying those, on the other hand, I don’t quite see what moral ground is there for it.
There is no moral grounds for stealing cultural artifacts. Even if it means the culture that rightfully possesses it wants to destroy it. That choice is entirely that cultures decision to make. Even if we disagree. It’s one thing to clutch your own pearls but so much worse to do that to someone else’s.
This is reasonable, but what if the culture that created the artifacts already went extinct like Maya? Besides, we’re not only talking about how it shouldn’t have been done in the past, but also about what to do today with that past.
It’s easy to say that everything bad of today is only because of wrongdoings of yesterday, but it is not useful and usually is only used as propaganda for something that has no justification except for the past being bad.
Edit: although, now that I think about it, coming from this viewpoint, that past is past and we should care about present, it’s clear that you’re right. If the culture bearer (or the inheritor, but this is grey zone for me) wants to destroy what is rightfully theirs, so be it. There is a bit of an issue with making those decisions by all eligible people, not a couple of extremists, though. Well, I think I found the contradiction that I had in me
While there can definitely be some legitimate discussion and ambiguity over which culture/country gets to inherit Mayan artifacts, for example, saying that the British, for example, should inherit it is a very weak argument. It’s not like the entirety of an extinct societies people just dropped dead. Some survived and after some time rebuilt new societies. Using Mayan artifacts as an example, Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras have a better claim to them then the British. It’s not propaganda or useless to say that items of cultural heritage should be returned.
So how about this what about-ism, if you live in the United States, the British took cultural artifacts from your lands too and aren’t giving them back right this moment. Where did you think all those native American artifacts in British museums came from? They didn’t make them and it’s not like North America was spared from British plundering. Might be nice to get that stuff back.
Temporary custody for future generations seems like a good moral standpoint.
I can’t see the moral arguments for keeping the items.
Original items should be returned, but maybe exact copies should be made first (at the whose expense I don’t know).
