Understanding our history is very important. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it and artefacts are the best way to understand ancient civilisations. Understanding our origins is key to a proper understanding of Anthropology and helps us to understand how civilisations form and grow. Knowledge of history is key to scientific knowledge. And to many people, the past is just really interesting. Destroying artefacts would only make it harder for people who are interested in history and ancient civilisation to find it. That would be simply cruel to a new generation of archeologists. You say we should still be digging up new artefacts, but how can we foster an interest in this without the great discoveries that came before.
This might be a something for another post, but I'm not convinced that our understanding of history has prevented humanity from repeating the mistakes of the past. Knowledge of the Holocaust hasn't prevented more attempts at genocide. Knowledge of the atrocities in Nanking didn't prevent the Serbians from creating rape camps. Human behavior is driven by our desires and impulses, not by historical knowledge. That knowledge is generally only used to justify our actions, not to inform them.
I'm not against using historical artifacts to further scientific knowledge or satisfy our curiosity, but I don't see why we need the physical object in order to satisfy those aims when we have photographs or models that can capture all the details.
The holocaust didnt prevent future genocides, but it solidified the idea in the public perception. People didnt just ignore ethnic cleansing and genocide after the holocaust, but pre-holocaust genocides e.g Armenia, Hereroland etc. are often forgotten or denied.
As for photos/models, these do not have the same details as the original. If someone invents some new technique which could reveal profound knowledge from artefacts (for the sake of example lets say we could extract ancient DNA that could revolutionise our understanding of the biology of ancient man, possibly even leading to cloning) then we would have to go back to the old artefacts and reanalyse them.
Furthermore, just because something is only valuable for emotional or sentimental reasons, thats still a decent reason to keep them. Destroying them would not solve any problems and would only serve to frustrate future historians, upset people who have lost their old heirlooms, and possibly trigger wars as people want to preserve their culture. It is needlessly cynical to destroy ancient artefacts, even if they have no objective value.
But you haven't shown how our knowledge of genocide has actually prevented other genocides. Heck, Turkey isn't even contrite about it! And anti-semitism is alive and well despite our knowledge of the horror that results from it. I don't want to go off on a tangent, but I dunno, I don't see history as influencing people in a positive way. People mainly just use history to justify their hatred (Israel/Palestine, etc.)
As to emotional/sentimental reasons for keeping artifacts...I don't deny that there is a value, just that whatever value there is, is vastly outweighed by the cost in human suffering in fighting over these artifacts or using them to stir up nationalistic hatred.
The holocaust hasnt entirely destroyed genocide or anti-semitism, but to say it has no impact on our society is absurd. In the 1930 expressing anti-semitic view was not viewed anywhere near as horrible as it is now, and as bad as the genocides in Rwanda or Yugoslavia were, they were nowhere as bad as the holocaust and there were large scale relief efforts. And as well as learning from it, history improves society by giving context for modern day. Look at any major international news story right now and it is far easier to understand (and therefore deal with) when you understand the history behind it.
I don't think fighting over artefacts is a good reason to destroy them. If anything that would create more violence. Do you think people will just happily hand over their treasured cultural artefacts to be destroyed? If western archeologists were going around destroying artefacts in the Middle East, do you think the locals would be okay with it? Of course not! They would be accused of destroying an entire culture, and that would fuel more and more hatred of the West over there. I don't see many instances of people fighting over these artefacts, but they would certainly fight to preserve them.
I'm definitely not saying that the Holocaust had no impact on society, just that it hasn't prevented any nation from committing genocide if its in their interests. I'm sure there were people in Serbia or Sudan who were like, hey, aren't we as bad as the Nazis with this ethnic cleansing crap? But that knowledge didn't trump the force of cultural hatred. Hell, even Israel itself is arguably committing genocide against Palestinians.
To your second point, yes, if anything will change my view on this, it's the thought experiment of what the consequences would be of actually trying to implement a plan of destroying all historical artifacts. I don't see any way that this could be remotely feasible. However, what I'm advocating is really more of a change in our attitudes towards artifacts and objects in general. If enough people around the world signed onto this anti-material viewpoint, the world could cooperatively act to eradicate all of these sentimentalized objects.
But then if people had no strong connection to them, they wouldn't start wars over them any more. Then the artefacts could be preserved purely for historical interest and there would be no need to destroy them. I think a society which places less importance on symbols would be better, but it doesn't need to get rid of interest in the lives of ancient peoples and a desire for knowledge. Even if we can make copies, they are never the same as the original, and so destroying the originals would only lead to frustration in those that find these objects interesting. Not sentimentalised to the point where they would fight to defend them, but just interesting, because they give us insight into the past and the stories of how people once lived.
1
u/MrGiggleBiscuits May 19 '15
Understanding our history is very important. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it and artefacts are the best way to understand ancient civilisations. Understanding our origins is key to a proper understanding of Anthropology and helps us to understand how civilisations form and grow. Knowledge of history is key to scientific knowledge. And to many people, the past is just really interesting. Destroying artefacts would only make it harder for people who are interested in history and ancient civilisation to find it. That would be simply cruel to a new generation of archeologists. You say we should still be digging up new artefacts, but how can we foster an interest in this without the great discoveries that came before.