Sic semper tyrannis

Some thoughts on past treatment of perpetrators of genocide, by Neo-Neocon.

AND more thoughts by Niall Ferguson in the Telegraph, to the effect that sic raro tyrannis better describes the reality of modern history:

Only a minority of modern dictators have been executed for their crimes. The most bloodthirsty of all, Stalin and Mao, died in full possession of their powers, if not their faculties. Franco pulled off the same trick. Hitler cheated the hangman with a bullet in the bunker. Pol Pot lost power, but was never brought to justice and died in his bed, as did Idi Amin. . .

For a dictator to end his life hanging from a rope, or facing a firing squad . . . requires a rather rare combination of wickedness and stupidity . . .

Hermitage woes

Another long-running story on which I'm playing catch-up; here are some recent highlights:

A painting turned over to Communist Party officials this week is believed to be a 19th-century French painting stolen from Russia's State Hermitage Museum five years ago, officials said.

The Communist leader, Gennady Zyuganov said a man had brought a nondescript package into the party's parliamentary offices Wednesday morning. Inside, party officials found a painting that had been cut into four pieces. Zyuganov did not identify the man.

Officials later realized it was the painting "Piscine du Harem" by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, which was stolen from the Hermitage in March 2001. The painting was valued at about $1 million.

From the International Herald Tribune. And from the December 5th Telegraph:

Tomorrow marks the start of an unusual exhibition in St Petersburg when the State Hermitage Museum puts 31 stolen items, returned to them by the police, on exhibition – in order to say thank you to the art collectors and dealers who have returned them.

The exhibition highlights the mystery surrounding the disappearance of 226 objects from the museum's Russian Treasury.

The Moscow procurator has sent in a team of investigators whose report is expected at the end of this month. Rumours swirl of conspiracy, insider involvement, thefts commissioned by the art trade, politicians, the FSB (the state security service) and the police.

And now, from Reuters:

A Russian is to stand trial on charges he stole art objects from the Hermitage with his late wife, a curator at the world-famous museum.

In August, Nikolai Zavadsky's lawyer quoted him as saying he had stolen the artefacts because he needed money to buy insulin for his diabetic wife.

She died suddenly at the start of an inventory that revealed $5 million (2.54 million pounds) worth of art items in her charge were missing from the museum in Russia's second city of St Petersburg.

That would buy a lot of insulin, but if you read the linked articles, you'll appreciate that that isn't the only thing about this story that doesn't add up.

Henry VIII medal at auction

A rare Henry VIII medal, military decorations and a Royal Marines helmet, belt and spurs proved to be the star attractions in Thomson, Roddick & Medcalf’s December auction.

The Henry VIII silver medal, marked Londini 1545, sold for £22,500 at the coin and numismatic sale at the firm’s auction house in Shaddongate.

Only two other examples of the medal, which bears inscriptions in Hebrew and Greek proclaiming Henry as head of the Church of England, exist.

Full article here.

The BBC's writeup, which notes that the presale estimate was a derisory £2,000-3,000, is here, but misleadingly refers to the medal as a "coin".

Medieval waterworks found at Shrewsbury

Workmen preparing the site of new public toilets have unearthed a 600-year-old sandstone watercourse, believed to have been an important feature of the Shrewsbury Abbey grounds in medieval times.

The find was made as contractors broke the ground for the new loos being built in Abbey Foregate.

Full article here.

A bridge too far?

A Peruvian mayor has built a bridge leading to Machu Picchu, Peru's Inca citadel, despite warnings it will wreck the archaeological gem and open a route for drug smugglers. The 80-metre (260ft) long bridge over the Vilcanota river is due to open this week in defiance of a court order and protests from the government, which fears hordes of backpackers will swamp the site.

It's not so open and shut, however:

Locals have welcomed the bridge for opening their remote province to commerce and tourism. Instead of a treacherous 15-hour drive over mountain passes farmers can truck coffee and fruit to Cusco in just three hours.

And perhaps key:

The bridge, 12 miles from Machu Picchu at the town of Santa Theresa, replaces one washed away in a 1998 flood but which the government refused to rebuild.

Surely no one wants to see a site like Machu Picchu overrun; nonetheless, should the site be protected by deliberately isolating those who leave near it? And is preservation indeed the motive here?

Conservation concern, [Mayor Castro] said, was a red herring to protect the monopoly of PeruRail, part of Orient Express Hotels, which has operated the line since 1999. Every day hundreds of foreigners pay from £33 to £230, depending on how much luxury they want, for a return trip. With the bridge backpackers can take a £2.30 bus ride to the foot of the site.

More on the Bosnian "pyramids"

I was certain I had posted on the claimed discovery of ancient pyramids in Bosnia, but it looks like I never did get around to it. I'll try to dig up some proper links, but in brief, the claim is preposterous. Nor is it benign, as the sites being dug up with such enthusiasm do contain real archeological deposits that are being destroyed in the process. The self-proclaimed "Indiana Jones" of Bosnia behind all this, Semir Osmanagić, also has less than sterling credentials, having been quite effectively outed in an Archaeology article as a New Age nut who has expounded in print on the connection of the Maya with Atlantis and Lemuria, identifying their temples as gateways to "other worlds and dimensions".

In any event, I just ran across an article in The Register that at first glance appears to endorse Osmanagić's claims, but then demolishes them flat with an interview with Cambridge Professor John Parker -- a plant scientist, but one who knows his geology, and who identifies the "finds" as the remains of a fossilized beach, and one of considerable scientific value:

Geologically it was absolutely fascinating. I've never seen a better example of this. At the same time one of my colleagues, Dr Mary Edmunds, found the most perfect fossils in the material they'd excavated on the Pyramid of the Moon. They were simply beautiful – you broke open every piece of this supposedly man-made material and inside were things like pine seeds perfectly preserved with their wings so you could even identify the species of pine – Pinus nigra that grows there still – and also birch leaves: it was full of just wonderful sub-fossil material. That alone told us that it was clearly a post-glacial phenomenon, relatively recent – less than 12,000 years old.

And when asked by the interviewer if the site was thus worthless, Parker responds:

Absolutely not. I spent considerable time looking at the fossils because I've never seen any so good from a post-glacial site. It's very sad because you could have got the most detailed and intimate knowledge of the changes in vegetation patterns from the post-glacial era. It is so clearly a natural phenomenon that it should be investigated as a natural phenomenon rather than being shrouded in all this magic and mystery.

I am worried about it because the Bosnian people deserve better than this. They are a wonderful people who have suffered so much. In this site they have a fabulous natural phenomenon and the danger is that the people and the country could become a laughing stock if the site continues to be interpreted in this way.

ADDENDUM: Osmanagić seems to have alienated even those most predisposed to believe.

Viking ship relocation controversy

The University of Oslo has decided to move three grand Viking ships, probably by truck and barge, to a new museum across town despite dire claims that the thousand-year-old oak vessels could fall apart en route. . .

The university’s board of directors voted 8 to 3 this month to move the sleek-hulled vessels over the objections of Dr. Christensen and several other Viking Age scholars, including the former director of the British Museum, David Wilson, and the director of Center for Maritime Archaeology in Denmark, Ole Crumlin-Pedersen. The board wants to transport the popular ships from a remote Oslo peninsula, where they have been housed for more than 75 years, to a large, multifaceted museum in the center of the capital.

The three ships were pulled in pieces from separate Viking burial mounds more than a century ago, then painstakingly reassembled with rivets, glue, creosote and linseed oil. Since then they have deteriorated markedly. Dr. Christensen said they have the consistency of knekkebrod, a type of Norwegian cracker.

From the NY Times. Further coverage in the Washington Post; the Viking Ship Museum website is here.

Underwater bloodhounds

Scientists have long assumed that smelling underwater . . . was impossible for mammals.

“It was something that mammals couldn’t do,” said Dr. Kenneth C. Catania, a biologist at Vanderbilt University. But Dr. Catania has discovered, much to his surprise, that moles and shrews can do it. They did not evolve a radically new nose, however. They just starting blowing bubbles.

From the NY Times.