[yjftsjthsd-h]

> If giving stuff back is important (and I think it is), I'd love it if the knee-jerk thinkers of HN would start by looking at where they live and which tribe it was stolen from by force and murder.

Okay. Where do you live, who was it stolen from, and what are you going to do about it?

[throw5345346]

In the south east of England. It's not really clear it was stolen by anyone. The only people in even slightly recorded history to really steal it buggered off a few hundred years later because they missed olive oil and hated the climate. Everyone else pretty much just turned up to run it better, like slightly violent management consultants.

The point is that commenters arguing a museum should give stuff back from where they took it are often arguing from a country that has documentary records in its current legislative body that it faux-legalistically stole the very land it is on.

In many cases, the USA stole that land well after the British Museum (which is older than the USA) acquired some of its objects. It's astonishingly well-documented.

If the argument is that all land has changed hands at some point in history and that excuses the documented way the USA murdered people, used biological warfare, and walked them to their deaths off their own land, then I'm not sure what all the po-faced American social media fuss is about the Elgin Marbles.

(Personally I think the Marbles should go home)