There's probably more history now preserved underwater than in all the museums of the world combined. And there's no law governing that history. It's finders keepers.
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Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learnt about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost.
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
A museum has to renew its collection to be alive, but that does not mean we give on important old works.
In the years that I worked in museums, first as a summer student and eventually as a curator, one of the primary lessons I learned was this: History is shaped by the people who seek to preserve it. We, of the present, decide what to keep, what to put on display, what to put into storage, and what to discard.
History's written from what can be found; what isn't saved is lost, sunken and rotted, eaten by earth.
I think archaeologists are stuck, and we are losing our past at a very rapid rate. Tens of thousands of sites will be lost, and we've only unveiled a tiny percent of the past.
The primary way that we know about what lives in the ocean is we go out and drag nets behind ships. And I defy you to name any other branch of science that still depends on hundreds-of-year-old technology. The other primary way is we go down with submersibles and remote- operated vehicles. I've made hundreds of dives in submersibles.
It is important never to forget our history, but parts of our history are more appropriately displayed in museums, not on government property.
There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.
We are opening up an enormous new era in archaeology. Time capsules in the deep oceans.
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