A LOT to unpack with the Smithsonian gobbling up archeological finds (or for sites, making them inaccessible) that never see the light again because they alter the history of human civilization.
There's some serious muscle there too. A few years back, a bill was passed that required any federal institution that had possession of American Indian artifacts to hand them back to the tribes if the tribe requested them.
The ONE AND ONLY federal institution that got an exception to this law?
I'm positive you can guess what that institution is :)
Wife and I visited El Salvador over the summer. Went to some ruins (Tazumal). Neat pyramid and some smaller structures.
Interesting thing is the guide told us that the entire area is sitting on top of a buried Mayan city. Every time the locals dig a well they have to literally blast through some ancient buried structure. Now it's true that ES was in a civil war for a long time and it's a poor country, but it's hard to imagine a site like that is just sitting unexcavated like that. Nobody really knows what might be buried there. Just the potential tourist dollars would seem to make it worth it. I think it's registered under Unesco but it's still a mystery waiting to be uncovered.
It's a rather fascinating subject, isn't it KKIJ?
A LOT to unpack with the Smithsonian gobbling up archeological finds (or for sites, making them inaccessible) that never see the light again because they alter the history of human civilization.
There's some serious muscle there too. A few years back, a bill was passed that required any federal institution that had possession of American Indian artifacts to hand them back to the tribes if the tribe requested them.
The ONE AND ONLY federal institution that got an exception to this law?
I'm positive you can guess what that institution is :)
Might find this interesting...
Wife and I visited El Salvador over the summer. Went to some ruins (Tazumal). Neat pyramid and some smaller structures.
Interesting thing is the guide told us that the entire area is sitting on top of a buried Mayan city. Every time the locals dig a well they have to literally blast through some ancient buried structure. Now it's true that ES was in a civil war for a long time and it's a poor country, but it's hard to imagine a site like that is just sitting unexcavated like that. Nobody really knows what might be buried there. Just the potential tourist dollars would seem to make it worth it. I think it's registered under Unesco but it's still a mystery waiting to be uncovered.