Comments by "Nigel Johnson" (@nigeljohnson9820) on "France votes to give back artifacts looted in colonial times" video.

Unfortunately the artefacts often come from less stable countries. So once returned, there continued existence will be in more doubt. Had some of the stolen plunder been returned earlier, there is a good chance it would be destroyed or sold into private hands, I am thinking of Iran and to some extent other middle Eastern and African states. There is no doubt that western countries have stolen these artifact, but by doing so they may have preserved them for longer than would otherwise have happened. In other words the thieves provided better care than their rightful owners.
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@coochiecoocrook here is no real comparison, you are not paying to preserve the stolen artifacts. The items would have been safer left in the ground. In the case of Egypt, tomb robbers stole most of the artifacts that had conventional value, gold, precious stones and jewellery. Items of scientific value as part of the historic record were destroyed, or displaced to make them valueless. Isis and the Taleban demonstrated what can happen to historical artifacts if left in unstable countries. The items were either sold to fund their perverted religion or were destroyed, mostly to rewrite history to fit their narrative. In Africa, historical items have been sold by corrupt governments and government officials, with the proceeds put into Swiss bank accounts or to fund luxury lifestyles. In these cases the artifacts and their significance have been lost to history. The western museums have effectively preserved the history and culture of other less stable nations by keeping the artifacts safe. There is not always a guarantee that the items returned will not suffer a destructive fate in the future, governments change, and it only takes one with a perverted ideology to wipe a nation's history by destroying the relics from it's past. Greece want the Elgin Marbles back, but had they not been removed in the first place, it is likely they would have been destroyed long ago, by the polluted atmosphere that once was common in Greece. There may now be a good case for their return, based on the promise to build a Museum with an environment to protect them. The past is another country, and owner ship of items produced by ancient civilisations is questionable. Do the current occupants of the land really hold title to artifacts from such a distant past, or does the scientific value of these items belong to the whole human race, in that it records part of its history. If the latter, then the objects are better left where there is a greater chance of their continued existance and study.
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