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Looting of Iraq’s Past
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A Sumerian free-standing statue.
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All one can tell from a simple viewing is that the doll-sized, white stone statuette depicts a bald man with wide black eyes, wearing a long, pleated skirt, his hands clasped in greeting.
But when University of Chicago archeologists examine the notebook detailing the figure’s 1933 excavation in Iraq, they learn it was one of three similar statues found near an ancient temple’s altar: The clasped hands are actually a gesture of prayer.
Also in the log book are numbers directing the archeologists to seven photos of the 4,500-year-old figure and its excavation, including one of a local Iraqi kneeling by the pit soon after the statuette was located, Xinhua reported.
That’s the kind of priceless context being lost as looters target a number of archeological sites in Iraq in the chaos that has resulted from the Iraq War, said Geoff Emberling, director of the university’s Oriental Institute Museum.
A new show at the museum, “Catastrophe! The Destruction and Looting of Iraq’s Past,“ opened on Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad during the United States-led invasion.
The exhibition uses examples from the institute’s own collection--including the statuette and notebook--to demonstrate the kinds of treasures and information being lost. (The museum had hoped to include several stolen objects seized by US Customs, but could not get permission.)
It also features aerial photos of the damaged, pockmarked landscape at archeological sites, and presents a primer on how the Oriental Institute believes the international trade in antiquities promotes such looting.
Finally, visitors will leave with a packet of information about what they can do to help, including mailing letters to senators urging them to ratify an international treaty that would “clarify the US military’s obligations regarding cultural heritage preservation.“
The Oriental Institute is one of the most important centers for the study of the ancient Near East in the US, and most of the 28,000 objects in its Mesopotamian collection were excavated in the first half of the 20th century, when University of Chicago archeologists conducted large-scale expeditions in Iraq.
Under a system known as “partage,“ Iraqi officials chose what objects they wanted to keep for their national museum. The foreign archeologists were allowed to take home the rest, in exchange for conducting the excavations.
In connection with the exhibit, the Oriental Institute held a symposium on Sunday called “Looting the Cradle of Civilization: The Loss of History in Iraq.“
An estimated 15,000 objects were stolen from the museum. The exhibit estimates about 6,000 are back in the museum’s possession or have been recovered.
Gibson, an archeologist who specializes in Mesopotamia, said the last time he was able to conduct a dig in Iraq was 1990.
Gibson said Americans should care about the loss of Iraq’s cultural heritage.
“We’re the ones who took over this country. We’re the ones who occupied it, and under our occupation, this great thievery has happened,“ Gibson said. “We owe a debt to human history and culture.“
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Laos Reveals “Hidden City“
For more than 30 years, Laos’ “hidden city“, home of its top communist guerrilla fighters, remained exactly that: hidden.
Now Laos is opening the secret limestone caves to visitors, taking advantage of a tourism boom in one of the world’s few remaining one-party Communist states.
Tour guides and backpackers have replaced the guerrilla fighters who lived in the caves underneath and around the limestone mountains of Vieng Xay province in the 1960s, where they planned attacks against the Americans, Reuters said.
After the war ended, Laos kept these caves off limits.
Communist party chief Kaysone Phomvihanh, who later became president, established a base in the caves in 1964 and moved the politburo and central committee office there.
The complex even included an airtight emergency shelter with an oxygen pump in case of American gas attacks.
“It’s just amazing that people could really live here and have their meetings, make their plans and create a government in the cave,“ said Pamela Sweeney, an American tourist.
With only a rudimentary road system and 80 percent of its population living off subsistence farming, landlocked Laos is one of the region’s poorest countries.
But a boom in tourism is opening new sources of income and foreign exchange, with more than 1.6 million people visiting Laos in 2007.
Places like Luang Prabang, the ancient capital city of the Lan Xang Kingdom and a UNESCO heritage site, lure foreign tourists with ancient temples and panoramic views.
But even among locals, the caves, known as the “hidden city“, remain something of a mystery.
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Disorders Among Children
More than a million children have disorders ranging from depression and anxiety to anorexia in the UK.
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Yahoo to Turn Junk Into Treasure
Yahoo has unveiled an Earth Day initiative to divert mountains of landfill trash, using the Internet to match people unloading “junk“ with those that want the stuff.
Yahoo is hoping to convince its 500 million users worldwide to join Freecycle.org, a nonprofit devoted to finding new homes for just about anything people are getting rid of.
“Our mission is keeping things out of landfills,“ said Deron Beal, who started Freecycle in 2003 and is its lone staff member, AFP reported.
“Junk only becomes junk after it no longer has any use. It is amazing what things people find uses for.“
The new alliance is a natural given that Freecycle members communicate via Yahoo Groups, private Internet forums that include community emails.
People post or email about what they are seeking to get or give in their Freecycle groups, which are broken down by geography so members are basically communicating with neighbors. There are Freecycle groups in 85 countries managed by volunteers using their own computers.
Climate Change March in Spain
Thousands marched through Madrid on Sunday to demand that the Spanish government adopt concrete measures to fight climate change, organizers said.
“We demand a law against climate change that calls for an increase in the use of renewable energy and that favors saving energy,“ Raquel Monton, a spokeswoman for the Spanish branch of Greenpeace, told Cadena Ser radio, AFP reported.
Greenpeace was one of about 40 green groups that backed the protest in the Spanish capital, two days before World Earth Day.
Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who was re-elected last month with a slightly bigger majority, has made the environment a priority of his second term.
Under the 1997 Kyoto protocol on global warming, Spain and the 14 pre-enlargement members of the European Union agreed to reduce their CO2 emissions eight percent from 1990 by 2012.
But unofficial estimates put Spain’s emissions at 53 percent above the 1990 level-- one of the biggest increases of any Kyoto signatory.
WWF: Canada’s Polar Bears in Dire Straits
Some of Canada’s polar bear populations risk being wiped out within four decades because of climate change and human activity including hunting, the World Wide Fund For Nature warned.
Canada, whose frozen north is home to two-thirds of all polar bears, is contributing to the creatures’ decline by failing to take action to curb its emissions of greenhouse gases, WWF-Canada official Peter Ewins said, AFP reported.
“There is rapidly mounting evidence that many polar bear populations are in crisis as a result of sea-ice habitat loss, over-hunting and industrial development pressures,“ said Ewins, head of species conservation at WWF-Canada.
The group also noted the habitat of polar bears and whales in the Beaufort Sea is set to be sold off for oil and gas exploration on June 2, without “proper resource planning that would protect such sensitive wildlife habitats.“
Titanic Ticket, Watch Sold
One of the last tickets for the Titanic’s doomed maiden voyage and a pocket watch which stopped when it sank have been sold by a relative of a survivor, a British auctioneer said.
The ticket sold for 33,000 pounds (42,000 euros, $66,000), while the pocket watch fetched 31,000 pounds at a sale Saturday at auction house Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, south-west England, AFP reported.
The items had belonged to Lillian Asplund, who died aged 99 in 2006. She kept them in a shoebox at her home in the United States until her death, when they were left to a second cousin who sold them.
Asplund was five years old when she, her parents and four brothers boarded the ship in 1912 to emigrate from Sweden to the US.
She, her mother and one of her brothers survived when they were thrown into a lifeboat, but her father and three other brothers drowned.
More than 1,500 people died when the Titanic hit an iceberg on its way from Southampton, southern England to New York.
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