The archaeologist part of me has been fighting tears since yesterday.
For those who live in a US news bubble - the National Museum of Brazil was reduced to a gutted hulk by fire yesterday.
The "official" extent of the damage has yet to be released, but pictures of the aftermath make it seem likely that little survived. The current guess is that about 10% of the collection survived, including some artifacts that are not flammable (such as their meteorites) and the library which was, thankfully, in another building.
The fire hydrants closest to the building failed, and the museum was already in disrepair. Money for a new fire control system had just been found...but no work had started.
The building itself, a former palace, is probably salvageable, but the collection is irreplaceable, including the oldest human remains found in America.
I can't even imagine what the curators and researchers are going through right now. Or perhaps I can.
We have to guard our past. And this tragedy may be an argument towards virtualizing/scanning collections (especially archives) so that at least some of the knowledge can be preserved. Maybe.
But you can't bring back what was lost here. Literally 200 years of careful collecting - numerous fossils and, perhaps, worst of all, the last remaining recordings of languages no longer spoken.
Sorry...I can't say any more about this. (And before you say people are more important, they are, and the best possible news of this tragedy was that nobody was hurt. But...this is still a great loss for Brazil and the world).
No comments:
Post a Comment