Word: ancient
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When such ancient treasures are discovered in Guatemala and many other Latin American nations, they legally become part of the national heritage and cannot be taken from the country without official sanction. But to the stealthy diggers in the Guatemalan jungle, the law means less than a Mayan glyph. They are members of one of Latin America's oldest and least honorable professions-grave robbers and clandestine treasure hunters...
Plundering of ancient objects has flourished since the days of the conquistadors, who shipped to Spain almost all the gold artifacts that came within their grasp, often melting them down beforehand. But lately the thieves have become more sophisticated and nearly uncontrollable...
Because the value of pre-Columbian art spirals upward faster than California real estate, even the largest treasures are not safe. Last month a quarter-ton stone figure of an ancient priest chewing coca, known as El Coquero and dating back some 3,000 years, vanished from its site in San Agustin in southwest Colombia. Ecuadorian officials are trying to retrieve an entire 11,000-item collection of Andean treasures that somehow managed to turn up in Milan and Turin, where they were being put up for sale...
Some art patrons and dealers defend the illegal trade. They contend that it has in fact preserved ancient objects that might otherwise be neglected or lost by countries too impoverished to take proper care of them...
...grave robbers damage antiquities and also trample on important archaeological clues, such as ash, seeds and bone fragments, that can reveal much about ancient civilizations. U.S. Archaeologist Emil Peterson tells how he and his team of diggers from Quito's Central Bank museum would spend weeks at a site, painstakingly excavating only a few inches at a time in order to preserve all possible traces. Then one morning they would find that thieves had come by in the night and obliterated most of the evidence. Eventually, barbed wire had to be installed and guards posted...