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from the destruction-of-human-history dept.
A 12th "Dead Sea Scroll Cave" has been discovered, but no actual scrolls have been found:
In the late 1940s, teenagers explored a cave hidden in the flanks of jagged hills of Wadi Qumran in the Judean Desert. Inside, they discovered fragments of the original Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient collections of text that contain the oldest-known biblical manuscripts. Since then, archaeologists have found 11 Qumran caves that they have extensively excavated in search of the precious scrolls that date back more than 2,000 years ago. Now, a team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Liberty University in Virginia have discovered what they believe to be a 12th cave on the cliffs west of Qumran.
The Hebrew University press release writes that in the first wide-scale survey in the area since 1993, the team unearthed storage jars and lids from the Second Temple period (dating from 530 BC to 70 CE) in the cave that some scholars [are] already calling number 12. They also found a pair of iron pickaxe heads that they identified as being from the 1950s, suggesting the cave had been looted.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday February 09 2017, @08:28PM
Maybe it depends on your definition of looting.
I think of looting as taking something that is an ancient treasure and keeping for your own personal amusement. Or private sale.
When scholars take these treasures, study them, measure and photograph them, and make this information available to all, I don't consider that looting. Especially if the actual artifacts are put into temperature / humidity controlled spaces with limited exposure to light, and carefully preserved for the future.
Is that outcome better than it sitting in the jar in a cave undisturbed?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @10:36PM
There are quite a few places in the world that would argue otherwise when it comes to the British Museum. They looted thousands of artifacts, but treated them well and studied them, but they essentially took and kept them simply because they could.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Friday February 10 2017, @07:27AM
That’s the difference between looting and archaeology I think. Looters will take ancient artefacts and keep them for their own personal amusement or sell them to other people who do want them for their personal amusement. True archaeologists on the other hand will take these same ancient artefacts and use them to learn more about the past. This focus reflects their approach to things. A looter would think nothing of blasting open a wall blocking the way to some real or imagined treasure, while an archaeologist would study the wall first and only then try to dismantle it as carefully as possible, because even a blank wall can tell you a lot about the ancients, their methods of construction, their ways of thinking, and if there are any carvings or inscriptions, even more so.
To reply to a parallel poster, it seems the British Museum has done both in its long history. It perhaps started out doing more of the former and gradually went to more and more of the latter.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.