July 1, 2000

11:51 PM

Botswana warrior returns home: An African warrior who was stuffed, preserved and put on show in a Spanish museum for more than 100 years is going home after a lengthy diplomatic dispute. . . . The figure was one of the town's chief tourist attractions. One local man commented that it was bit like sending all the mummies back to Egypt.
posted by palegirl (6 comments total)

Send all the mummies back to Egypt... hey! Not a bad idea! =)
posted by ZachsMind at 6:03 AM on July 2, 2000

Well, hey, Greek wants all its marbles back ... :)

Really, this is very similar to an issue in Illinois, where a prehistoric Indian cemetery became part of an archaeological museum about a century ago, including at least one whole body dug up and displayed.
posted by dhartung at 8:27 AM on July 2, 2000

Why stop with bodies? Every object that was stolen to be entombed in a museum should be returned to the people who created it.
posted by muta at 12:31 PM on July 2, 2000

Those people are dead.
posted by EngineBeak at 1:04 PM on July 2, 2000

That's why I'm gonna get cremated and have my ashes scattered. I wouldn't want my body to become some commodity hundreds of thousands of years from now after an archeological dig. All the graveyards we have now? Do you honestly think our descendants are going to leave all that valuable property alone? =)
posted by ZachsMind at 1:21 PM on July 2, 2000

See. That's precisely the reason I don't show go showing off all the stuffed corpses I have in my apartment.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 8:13 AM on July 3, 2000