[meteorite-list] OT - Gold Hoard Found in England

From: dean bessey <deanbessey_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:46:56 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <193316.68562.qm_at_web56106.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

> From: Greg Hupe <gmhupe at htn.net>
>
> think also that the true story is all about good luck and
> the willingness to get permission and agreements from
> property owners!
>
It is more than that. It is also an example of common sense historical artifact laws at work. Britain has constructed their artifact laws in such a way that it is in a finders best interest to report all of their findings (It is also illegal to not report your findings but that dont really give you much incentive and wont work anyway).
As a result whenever artifact or coin hoards get found in UK everybody who is interested gets to study them and learn as much history as possible from the stash. And the actual finder gets more money for them than if he tried to sell them in secret on the UNESCO black market (Probably has to pay taxes on the sale of the hoard also). Finder, science, general public, government, land owners - everybody wins with british cultural property laws.
If this stash of gold was found in Italy, Israel, Egypt or Peru, the site would have been very quickly destroyed behond recognition and reburied (After dark and probably all in one night) to hide any evidence of the sites existance, and the gold melted down, stamped Johnson matthey and (With the governments full blessing) shipped out of the country.
Rather than being studied by researchers as this hoard will be, it would have gone on the next fed ex flight out and went directly from the archaeological site to a swiss bank vault.
It would have been UNESCO at work
Sincerely
DEAN


      
Received on Thu 24 Sep 2009 05:46:56 PM PDT