Yeah alas they evolved while essentially the only predators were birds, for which the strategy of being very still and looking like dense forest floor was effective. Then people came with rats and what not, and the English brought things like stoats and rabbits for hunting. :-(
The history of the rats is interesting too. The first human settlers probably brought rats, and successive waves of settlers bring more, and better, rats. When Europeans show up, they too bring new rats. But we today might get the idea it's all their fault, they're just the last straw.
If you're a moderately successful Pacific rat living on Aotearoa and white settlers just showed up on a boat then even though you're an invasive pest the rats on that boat are as a big a threat to you as to the native wildlife.
I have only seen taxidermied Kākāpō in museums, but they are quite impressive giant green flightless parrots. To get an idea of the size, here are chicks with a DoC worker:
You may be able to see a real-life kākāpō by booking to see Sirocco, New Zealand's official spokesbird for conservation. I saw him once and he's pretty cool! Not sure if he's touring at the moment.
It wasn't quite as exciting as when Stephen Fry's film crew met him. The video of that encounter is the origin of the Party Parrot emote which you might have seen on Slack.
If you're like me, you may mostly recognize kākāpō from a video that has gone viral a few times of one attempting to mate with a documentary cameraman's head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY
Worth noting as well is the involvement of Douglas Adams in the whole affair.
The documentary linked in that clip is called “Last Chance to See” and is an outgrowth of an earlier collaboration between Adams and the BBC, which also included a book by Adams that I highly recommend. The Kakapo is a prominent character.
Nothing wrong with a few false positives from the males, evolutionarily speaking! I'd say the species that's in trouble is the one whose males HAVEN'T tried copulating with some other species or inanimate object.
As with the German umlaut and the Chinese pinyin tone marks, it's also easiest to ignore ;) New Zealand has a few generations of people who pronounce Maori words by ignoring the macrons and with more English-like vowel sounds. It's as if the language has changed but there are perfectionists trying to spread popularity of the official pronunciation too.
If you ignore German umlauts, you can end up with words that sound quite different. The same goes with the Māori macron, it can outright change the meaning of a word. If you can't type them easily, you can double the vowel (Maaori), which also makes the sound change more obvious.
That's what redundancy in language is for. You hear this kind of vowel and emphasis mistake all the time in non-native English speakers and we can mostly work out what they mean from context.
The British Museum has absolutely no self-awareness:
> How do you set about conserving an extremely fragile Māori cloak, made from the feathers of a critically endangered parrot, while observing culturally appropriate practices?
Obviously, by locating it in a place over 10km from where most Māori live so actual Māori will never see it. It's like satire.
While I was thinking the same thing, it's not clear to me that this particular example was stolen.
I'm also torn, because one the one hand the plundered items the British Museum and other UK museums hold should be returned. On the other hand, being outside locations where they might be destroyed[0] e.g. Iraq,Syria, and also the sheer budget and technique to preserve things are both arguments to keep the collection the way it is. The preservation vs plunder is a long running argument[1].
Modern techniques enable digitizing[2], but that wasn't available previously. Digitizing is a path forward that's less controversial (though still isn't quite the same).
Then there is the Kohinoor[3]. Let's chalk that one under colonial plunder.
This argument definitely doesn't hold water for Māori artifacts. Or is the thinking that New Zealand doesn't have the budget or technique to preserve artifacts like this? Or that curators won't fly to New Zealand to work on extremely rare artifacts like this?
No, I agree with that. I was more responding to the broader British Museum plundering in general (or receiving plunder).
There is some benefit to spreading historical artifacts around to protect them over the long term (i.e. we can't know what any place will look like in 1000 years), but only if there are multiples, and it still has to be given not taken.
I did say that I wasn't clear that this had been plundered (as opposed to purchased), but I'm not sure that matters either. It's a piece of cultural heritage and the British were unwelcome guests.
Similarly, the British say the Kohinoor[0] was transferred legally (surrendered). But if is made under duress and it doesn't seem valid.
Except most of the places that they took artefacts from are not warzones, or under threat of war. Egypy, Greece, Nigeria, Turkey, the US, India, China, South Africa etc etc all have the capabilities to take back and house their treasures safely. It is purely British arrogance to think that many other countries don't treasure these objects nor able to look after them.
I think preservation vs plunder argument is an easy copout for those that are keeping stolen goods.
Seriously, the argument is ludicrous. I'm open to the idea that stability is important, but Britain isn't even the best candidate for that. Brits who make this argument don't seem to be very aware of their own history, as they was bombed quite badly in the 40s, causing damage https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/collections/world-museum...
Even if you accept this premise, there are a good handful of other countries relatively untouched by war/instability that would be safer homes. The argument is a thin fig leaf.
Labor and even facilities aren't free. Not that Perth doesn't have something, but perhaps in London they have world-class facilities and expertise. You really think they didn't consider doing the work where the cloak sat?
I doubt they shipped it parcel post.
The end result is that the cloak will be on public display. TFA says that the museum where it will be shown isn't finished construction yet. The cloak will be on display at PMAG in Scotland, until the new museum construction is done (2024). After that, I imagine in the future it might even do a world tour, as many irreplaceable antiquities do.
> You really think they didn't consider doing the work where the cloak sat?
We're talking about the British deciding where to store other cultures' artifacts? What makes you think a sober look at the quality of conservation facilities would be the deciding factor?
(Though it's important to note that the thread's premise is wrong, as the article refers to Perth, Scotland, not Perth, Aus)
> We're talking about the British deciding where to store other cultures' artifacts?
No, unless I misinterpreted my parent. We're talking about where the British are /restoring/ other culture's (culture singular) artifacts. And who said the British decided it?
> A unique example of a Māori cloak or kahu kākāpō (‘cloak of kākāpō feathers’) has been preserved for future generations to enjoy after vital conservation work was conducted in a partnership between Culture Perth and Kinross, the British Museum and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Maybe the article is wrong, or did you just not see the preamble?
That quote doesn't contradict what mkl said, towards the end of the article it does say this thou, "The cloak will be on display in the new museum developed in Perth, set to open in Spring 2024."
As your quote says, the conservation work was a collaboration. The cloak itself has since 1842 been in the possession of organisations in Perth, Scotland, the most recent of which asked the British Museum and Te Papa to help restore it, and it will now be loaned to the British Museum. It has not been in New Zealand in nearly 200 years, so has not ever been in our national museum, Te Papa.
Most of the British people who looted the planet are dead by now. As a result of tending to their ill-gotten gains, their descendants learned something about preserving priceless cultural artifacts. While it would be preferable that the looting had never occurred in the first place, hard to hate on the current museum keepers.
I often feel uncomfortable walking around the British Museum, seeing important artefacts from other countries.
That said, I’ll try playing devil’s advocate.
1. Some items are from areas now controlled by very different people to those for whom the item was originally important. Do modern descendants of the Spanish have any moral claim to Aztec or Inca artefacts, for example?
2. Some items have complex histories, where multiple competing countries could all claim it as part of their history. Where the item was found is not the end of the story. Items from Greece, Turkey, Cyprus for example.
3. By storing them in the British Museum, they are better maintained for future generations. Globally, more people have access to them right now.
Perhaps for those where the answer to all three of these is obvious, it’s indefensible that the British Museum still has the items. But there is quite a lot of stuff there where it’s not so obvious when you look into the details, though we should be putting a lot of effort into trying anyway.
1. Most Mexicans or Peruvians have indigenous ancestry, they are not exclusively (or even mostly) descendants of the Spanish. It would be better to return those artifacts to the descendants of those from whom it was stolen.
2. Who has an even weaker claim than all other claimants? The British Museum.
3. 2.5M people see the Crown Jewels in a year. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in DC sees 4.1M visitors in a year. Should the Crown Jewels be moved to the Smithsonian? Surely we could take better care of them (they could go next to Dorothy's slippers) and more people would get to see them.
>2. Who has an even weaker claim than all other claimants? The British Museum.
One of the laziest dismissals I've ever read on this forum. Yep, the world is this zero sum game where they should just dump it on whoever and then let all the competing entities argue amongst themselves
Imagine that someone has died, and there are three inheritors squabbling for the various elements of the state. They can’t agree who gets the home, who gets the car, who gets the jewlry, etc.
There is also a fourth individual, a thief, who has broken in and stolen various family heirlooms of both sentimental and monetary value.
The thief claims then that, because the inheritors are squabbling, the only fair thing to do is that he should hold on to the heirlooms, at least until they sort it out (or so he says).
The response is short because the situation is simple. The British Museum contains the stolen heritage of people all over the world. Confusion or disagreement over the most rightful heirs is no defense of this crime.
>> 1. Some items are from areas now controlled by very different people to those for whom the item was originally important. Do modern descendants of the Spanish have any moral claim to Aztec or Inca artefacts, for example?
> 1. Most Mexicans or Peruvians have indigenous ancestry, they are not exclusively (or even mostly) descendants of the Spanish. It would be better to return those artifacts to the descendants of those from whom it was stolen.
This is an "easy to say, near-impossible to do" task that's been shoved with little effort from the proposer onto the museum staff. Short of comprehensive DNA analysis, finding the proper descendants for a particular artifact is not trivial. The response given does not take into account multiple competing claims towards the artifact, nor the possibility of all descendants that could properly claim it being dead, whether natural or not.
>> 2. Some items have complex histories, where multiple competing countries could all claim it as part of their history. Where the item was found is not the end of the story. Items from Greece, Turkey, Cyprus for example.
> 2. Who has an even weaker claim than all other claimants? The British Museum.
Calling misdirection on this response: It does not properly address the original question posed.
In an attempt to give a proper solution: Items with histories from multiple countries will have to put it into a round-robin-style sharing agreement, where the item/artifact will pass through the countries one by one before circling back.
> This is an "easy to say, near-impossible to do" task that's been shoved with little effort from the proposer onto the museum staff.
In principle, this is true, but in many cases the responsible party is very well-known and yet there is active resistance from the British Museum to repatriate the plundered items. For example, the Parthenon Marbles.
According to Wikipedia, the Parthenon marbles in Britain has been repeatedly asked (by the Greek government, then by UNESCO itself) to be returned to its original Athens, Greece location. They were literally taken out of Greece by an Earl of England claiming (with no paperwork!) authority from the empire occupying Greece at the time.
There is a literal museum in Greece containing every part that wasn't stolen this way, in their exact original placement, waiting for the stolen pieces to be returned to complete it. And the British are still resistant.
For example the Koh-i-Noor diamond passed through many hands, often through conquest. And perhaps the ruler who originally owned it didn't obtain it through entirely fair means.
1. This makes the task seem hard when in fact it is easy. If you have looted artifacts from the territory of Mexico, return them to the government of Mexico. While this is an imperfect solution, it is better than keeping the looted priceless cultural patrimony.
2. It’s not misdirection it’s a prioritization of claims. The British Museum’s claim is weaker than all regional inheritors. Therefore, picking one is a better solution than the British Museum keeping it.
> The British Museum’s claim is weaker than all regional inheritors.
Why? If one of the regional inheritors only possessed it in the first place because it stole it from somebody else (albeit a long time ago), what makes their claim more valid?
One of my ancestors helped bring the Parthenon marbles to the UK.
Another helped return works that were looted by Napoleon during his campaigns (my grandmother had one of Canova’s Ideal Heads which the ancestor received as a gift from Canova for returning those artworks).
This stuff is pretty complicated, simply returning it is not possible, for example with ISIS purposefully destroying historical artefacts.
Having artefacts in foreign countries is, in my opinion, a net good. It exposes folks to cultures that they would not otherwise get to see.
Should the UK give the US the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom in perpetuity so that more people get to see them? There are more people living in America and our cultural destinations have more visitors from all over the world.
Or is it only a net good when the UK keeps the priceless cultural heritage of other nations?
The point is: if you were from a culture that was looted, rather than the one which did the looting, would you feel the same as you do now? That it was a net good that the looting had happened so that others might enjoy your priceless heritage as a trophy of conquest?
It sounds easy, but the British Museum Act 1963 was brought in specifically to make it illegal to do - presumably because the original owners of the artefacts started to make an international fuss about the theft of their stuff.
Sure, but there's no indication that this will become one of them. If the Museum decides to steal it, definitely feel free to come back and say "I told you so!". But I think that is incredibly unlikely in this case.
The provenance principal as it relates to artwork, and cultural artifacts is a pretty well established process for determining ownership. This should really be what governs if artefacts are considered stolen / looted or were gifted / sold in good faith. I bet there is a substantial amount of artefacts in museums around the world that fail a good provenance search, in this cases they should be sent 'home' if a stronger claim can be made. In this case though it's not clear, 'collected' as stated by the article could mean many things.
history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D#/media/F...
They're flightless, it doesn't help them escape rats, cats, and stoats.
Despite all of that, I can still appreciate how incredible a brand-new kakapo cloak must have looked.
Perhaps one day they will again number in the thousands. There are islands with no rats or predators where they can breed safely, now.
Related trivia: the Takahe was thought to be extinct until someone went far inland to a remote valley in the 1940s and found a population there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takah%C4%93